Browsing Tag

green tech

The QUANT e-sportlimousine runs on saltwater and does 0-100 in 2.8 seconds (5 Pics & Vid)

July 23, 2014 By steve In Motoring

Originally teased to us in March at the Geneva Motorshow, the ridiculously good-looking and super fast hypercar, the QUANT e-sportlimousine has officially been greenlit for public road use. In Germany anyways.

Predictably this Electric Vehicle hypercar is made head to toe and monocoque included out of carbon fibre making it as light as the flowers growing on Bob Marley’s grave.

The QUANT e-sportlimousine is a four-seater layout with gull-wing doors and each wheel is driven independently by it’s own electric motor.

Power comes from a nanoFLOWcell, an electrolyte flow cell power system that comes thanks to some technology developed in the 70’s for NASA who don’t do anything of worth anymore with it or anything else they try to do.

The magic of this engine is that it’s able to run exclusively on salt water. That’s bonkers.

Performance of the QUANT e-sportlimousine is as crazy as it’s fuel is doing 0-100km/h in 2.8 seconds and reaching a top speed of 380 km/h. And it’ll do that for a range of 600km, pretty much Jozi to Durban.

As you’ll see from the inside, there’s more wood, copper and leather than the loading dock of a Sandton Botox clinic. And the result is much better too.

Google Cardboard transforms any device into a Virtual Reality headset

July 1, 2014 By steve In Technology

And all it costs is the price of your dignity, extremely sore eyes because you’ll be too close to the screen and the very likely possibility that one of your idiot mates will run up and egg flap you while you’re watching Gareth Cliff NOT get aired on Comedy Central.

Well. That’s a bit cynical. Sorry.

The idea here is that Google is trying to ‘encourage developers to build the next generation of immersive digital experiences and make them available to everyone.’
Very noble of you, Big Brother.

The plans for the DIY, folding product can be downloaded with templates from the projects site and it can be made from pretty much any piece of carboard you have handy, including a pizza box or a life-size cut out of Luis Suarez.

Get it here. If you make one, please send me pics, vids etc.

BioPhotoVoltaic table…stay with me here…it’s genius

June 7, 2012 By steve In Technology

All my years of High School science have done me bugger all good save for one process in nature I can still understand and even explain if asked: photosynthesis.

Handy then that I can tell you about this gadget, a piece of designer furniture that uses the energy released (and wasted) in photosynthesis to charge your smartphone or light a bulb.

The folk at BioPhotoVoltaics, who can explain to you many more processes in nature than I, have developed this table to demonstrate a potential future application of BPV technology.

BPV devices, like this table, generate electricity from light energy by exploiting the photosynthesis of living organisms such as moss, algae and vascular plants.

While not enough energy is being developed by BPV yet, not even enough to power that light you see, the potential is there and the hurdles that need to be jumped are being overcome.

At the moment the table plays a little animation which demonstrates the energy coming off of it.

For those who I didn’t lose during the science lesson: the table currently produces 520 Joules (J) of energy per day. A typical laptop requires about 25J per second, so in a day the table would produce enough energy to power a laptop for just 20 seconds!