Philadelphia High School Students Build Automotive X Prize Contender [with Videos]

Some people are just meant to go places. In the case of 16-year old Azeem Hill and the rest of Simon Hauger's West Philadelphia-based high-school hybrid team, that place is somewhere into the vastly expanding world of alternative fuel technology.

The West Philly Hybrid X Team, builders of the EVX GT and EVX Focus, is the result of an after-school program at the Academy of Automotive and Mechanical Engineering meant to educate youth about the future of hybrid tech and transportation. What's more impressive is that this young underdog team was in the running for this year's Automotive X Prize.

After besting some really heavy hitters (like MIT, for one), the EVX team was eventually disqualified. Still, let's give a digital round of applause to these guys for going out there and doing the damn thing with the big boys.

Azeem and other members of the program started out at ground level and learned everything necessary in order to create a hybrid car with the goal of returning 100 mpg in the city, 70 mpg on the highway, and still being able 60 in under 5 seconds. Check out the vids below to learn a little more about the program and its goals.

By Phil Alex

Link: EVXTeam , Via: Green.Autoblog & Treehugger

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Volvo wants in on the EV Business, Starts Developing C30 DRIVe Electric with Fuel-Cell Range Extender

With even the likes of Porsche going green – not to mention the Chevrolet Volt or the Nissan Leaf, it's no surprise that Volvo wants a piece of the "Look at me, I'm saving the planet!" action.

They partnered up with Powercell Sweden AB (with backing from the Swedish Energy Agency) and hope that the Volvo C30 DRIVe Electric will be ready for testing on the road by 2012.

"This is an exciting expansion of our focus on electrification. Battery cost and size means that all-electric cars still have a relatively limited operating range. Fuel cells may be one way of extending the distance these cars can cover before they need to be recharged" Volvo Cars President and CEO Stefan Jacoby said. "What is more, the project gives us increased knowledge about fuel cells and hydrogen gas".

The project is in its early stages, the focus being on the range of the car. And it's no surprise, as no EV can stand a chance these days if it can't go at least 40-60 miles on one charge.

To achieve this, Volvo is cooking up -wait for it- a Range Extender. A reformer, tasked with breaking down liquid fuel and creating hydrogen gas. This gas then goes into the fuel cell and gets converted to electrical energy powering the motor.

The advantage of the process is that it's creating electricity without any emissions of carbon oxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulphur oxides (SOx) and particles whatsoever. On other thing is that the reformer can just as easily break down renewable fuels, like ethanol.

Volvo expects the Range Extender to, well, extend the range of the car by up to 250 kilometers (155 miles), in addition to the range provided by the battery pack.

By Csaba Daradics

Credo E-Bone has Funny Name, Bulbous Styling and Hydrogen Power

In the future, we will all ride around in hydrogen fueled plastic caterpillars. Or at least we will if Hungarian industrial design Peter Simon has his way. His vision for a greener public transport future is a hydrogen fuel cell - electric bus called the Credo E-Bone [is it just me, or does "E-Bone" sound like something you'd buy at an adult shop and plug into your USB port?].

The Credo E-Bone is a zero emission vehicle with a bone-like internal structure and lightweight composite plastic body. There is an electric motor driving each wheel which is presumably powered by the lithium batteries in stop-start driving and the hydrogen fuel cells on the highway. The fuel cells / batteries are stored on the roof.

For all my chiding, I do have to give Peter Simon some credit. If you square off the window- and roofline, do away with the curvy rear glass and wheel covers and replace the hydrogen fuel cells with natural gas, you come up with a very practical proposal. Not a very imaginative proposal, granted, but one that I could see on our roads within the next two to three years.

By Tristan Hankins

Source: Ecofriend , Via: Green.Autoblog

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