This week at TreeHugger: The FuelVapor Alé purrs along while sipping gas to the tune of 92 mpg, efficient enough to go from San Francisco to Vancouver on a single tank of gas. Fact or fiction: “By 2012, it will be safe to say that televisions will use more power than the average refrigerator (usually the biggest energy-sucking appliance) in an average household.” We dig in to the debate. Inspired by traditional bucket-and-bamboo water carriers, designer Waikit Chung created this digital boombox for monks. Los Angeles has demanded fire-fighting goats, so goats are headed to the Hollywood Hills to chew clover and kick ass. And they’re all out of clover. Lastly, this week’s sign that the Apocalypse is upon us: the solar-powered floating alligator.
Aside from having a pretty interesting fish-like design, the FuelVapor Alé boasts some pretty interesting technology under the hood. In order to sip gas at the slowest rate possible, developer Fuel Vapor Technologies employs computers to eek out the extra-performance fuel economy by automatically determining when the engine in not in high demand and closing off the fuel injectors so the engines purrs along on vapors alone, at a ratio of 20 part air to one part gasoline (most car engines are said to be about 14.7:1). They’re looking for investors to make the Alé dream a reality.
“By 2012, it will be safe to say that televisions will use more power than the average refrigerator in an average household.” So said Keith Jones of Digital CEnergy Australia, who consults to the Australian Greenhouse Office (AGO) and was once the General Manager of Panasonic TV (Australia). He goes further, saying that early generation plasmas can be four times as energy hungry as the venerable CRT (cathode ray tube) sets. Considering the AGO estimates home refrigeration use requires about 9% of all electrons flowing into your home, TVs passing this mark would be significant (and not in a good way, really).
Inspired by traditional bucket-and-bamboo water carriers, designer Waikit Chung created this digital boombox for monks. While Wakit’s design might be slow to market (the Zen Buddhist/ loud music crossover market is definitely niche) the blaster is a great example of design that fits seamlessly within the cultural and natural ecology of its intended users. It seems almost a reaction to the iPod and its ilk, fostering community rather than headphone-assisted isolation. The controls are simple, and the use of an SD card instead of an internal drive encourages sharing. Factory-formed bamboo as the main structural material creates an interesting contrast with the ghettoblaster’s silicon guts, but as we’ve seen before, bamboo enclosures for electronics are becoming more and more common.
A herd of goats is headed to the Hollywood Hills to chew clover and kick ass. And they’re all out of clover. But that’s only if the good citizens of Los Angeles get their way. They’re crying out for a herd of four-hoofed firefighters in the wake of a series of wildfires that devastated wide swaths of urban wilderness, killing or displacing thousands of animals and endangering nearby homes. No ifs or…heh….butts about it: L.A. wants goats. According to an ongoing petition: “Goats are economical, ecological fire-fighting machines that produce fertilizer as they clear hills and canyons of weeds, poison oak and dry chaparral. Additionally, the animals are charming, newsworthy ambassadors for fire safety, a subject that needs to be more widely discussed.” Hmm…
Lastly, in a nearly sure sign that the Apocalypse is nigh, we bring you this: the solar-powered floating alligator. We are nuts for anything solar, so couldn’t pass on this useful device, designed as an “Environmentally-friendly deterrent that wards off fish-eating birds geese, herons, egrets, ducks and small animals without harm – day and night!” Evidently the solar panel on its nose charges up internal batteries and when the sun goes down its eyes glow like a live gator. Spooky.
TreeHugger’s EcoModo column appears every Tuesday on Gizmodo.
