The Human Powered Car

During this series on green/sustainable living, I’ve talked about various types of cars: electric cars, biodiesel cars, wind-powered cars, and even cars fueled by pee.

But how about a car powered by people? It gives new meaning to the term “Power to the People.”

Well, there is a car that fits that description. It’s called the HumanCar.

Now, when you think of a car, you probably include things like an engine, or at least a motor, gasoline, even batteries. But what if there could be a car powered entirely by human motion; one that did not need an engine, fuel, batteries, or even electricity?

That, my friends, is the HumanCar, and the Human Car, Inc. company, located in Oregon and founded by engineer Chuck Greenwood, are developing these new models of transportation.

HumanCar is exactly what it sounds like: a car (well, it has four wheels, at least) powered by people. The HumanCar FM4 (pictured above) has seats for four; the passengers “rock it like an engine,” which roughly equates to pushing and pulling on the amber-handled levers to generate speed (up to 60 mph, going downhill) and leaning to turn.

It’s street-legal, so try to not to act too surprised when one of these cars pulls up to you at a stop light.

Technically, according to the company, the HumanCar is powered by a simple yet robust control system. Conventional mini-contactors connect both motors in parallel for acceleration. Alternatively, they are reconnected in series when the brake lever is actuated. This creates a much higher output voltage that is temporarily stored in a small bank of ultracapacitors, and then re-regulated down nominal storage battery voltage.

The high end state-of-the-art system, the Imagine LMV HumanCar pictured above, uses a pair of 3 phase AC frameless motors along with a special controller adapted from machine tool industry, and 200 VDC NiMH batteries (or Lithium Ion if functional and available).

Check out the HumanCar FM4 in action in the above video, and you’ll see how well and fast it can move. Then get together a couple of your friends and go for a test drive yourselves.

To find out more, you can go to the HumanCar website, or to their Facebook page.

The Wind-Powered Electric Car

Last week, during this series on green/sustainable living, I told you about some upcoming electric cars.

Now the knock on electric cars is that they have to plug into the power grid to get their energy, and thus they are still causing a drain on the world’s finite sources of energy. That’s why some people are developing other sources of energy to power cars, such as algae and used cooking oil.

British entrepreneur Dale Vince, who made a fortune building wind turbines, recognizes this fact, and so is developing an electric car that can be powered up by wind turbines. He has developed a prototype that’s a sports car and is called the “Nemesis.”

You can learn more about it and watch the prototype Nemesis burn rubber after a few tweaks, in the above video.

The reason Vince wants it to be a sports car is to prove that an electric car – or in this case, a wind-powered electric car – could outpizzazz any gasoline-powered car. Vince’s goal was for the Nemesis to be able to go from 0 – 60 faster than a V12 Ferrari.

And in a recent test drive, Vince was able to prove his point, as he got the car up to 100mph very quickly!

Vince is an interesting personality, a risk-taking entrepreneur in the Richard Branson mold. In fact, in a recent poll taken in England, Vince defeated Branson and received 60% of the vote to win the honor of being considered Britain’s most inspiring business leader.

Dale Vince is founder and managing director of Ecotricity, the UK’s leading supplier of green energy. Prior to starting Ecotricity, he also founded NexGen, a manufacturer of wind monitoring equipment, and before that spent ten years living a low-impact lifestyle as, what he calls, a “new-age traveler.” He is a vegan, and continues to experiment with green energy and low-impact living at home.

In his own words, this is what Dale Vince has to say about renewable energy sources:

“Fossil fuels have their days numbered – there’s nothing else in the ground to replace them with and even if there were we can’t afford the carbon emissions that would bring.

“In the future renewables will be all we have – even uranium is a finite power source – it’s just a matter of how far forward you look, and how prepared we are – it may be ‘kicking or screaming,’ but our futures will be renewable powered – just as our past has been.

“Conservation of energy and efficiency measures are ‘the other side of the coin’ essential in the move to a more sustainable life – we could probably reduce by 50% the average amount of energy that houses use – and this would halve the number of windmills or other sources need to provide power. Essential.”

So, you may not be ready to drive a wind-powered electric car that can go faster than a souped-up Ferrari, but be ready for the next generation of vehicles that run on renewable sources of energy.

These are the low-impact, Low Density Lifestyle, waves of the future.

Save Heat, Save Money: How to Cut Your Heating Bill, Save Energy, and Lower Your Costs

Winter may be over, and you’re probably not cranking the heat anymore, unless you live in Alaska, Antartica, Siberia, or some other tundra.

But regardless of it not being winter anymore, if you want to be a good Low Density Lifestyler, you want to think of how you impact the earth, and how much heat you use to keep your house warm in the winter.

High temperatures in your home lead to high utility bills — not to mention a high price paid by the earth to keep you warm.

And so, yesterday I told you about affordable electric cars that are on the horizon, and today I’m telling you about making your heating bill affordable, along with saving energy.

And as I’ve pointed out in this entire series about the environment – from the articles on the White House Organic Garden, sustainable foods, and other articles, living a Low Density Lifestyle is not just about your own health and wellness and healthy living, but the health and wellness of the entire planet, and for the entire planet to experience healthy living.

I’ll be back tomorrow with the last article in this series on the environment and living a Low Density Lifestyle.

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Electric Cars Everyone Can Afford

I want to continue on the green living theme by talking today about electric cars, which more and more are becoming part of the landscape. Hybrids are readily available – the most popular being the Toyota Prius – and soon, the next generation of electric cars – plug-in hybrids – will be coming out.

But I want to tell you of a different type of car. No, not the sustainable cars of the future that I talked about a few days ago, nor the electric two-wheeler or wind-powered cars, also of the future, that I featured in a separate article a few days ago. No, I want to tell you about a different type of electric car that will be making its way onto our roads in the near future.

One of the most important things about these cars that make them different is that they will be affordable. Many of the new types of electric and plug-in hybrid cars that will be coming out on the market will be beyond the budget of the average person—the Chevy Volt will cost $40,000, and the Tesla $100,000—while the electric cars of the near future will be much more in the budget range of the average person.

Imagine that? If you had your choice of buying a gas-powered or electric-powered sedan that each cost about the same amount of money, which do you think you would buy?

That’s the dream of two separate entrepreneurs, with two separate car companies, and if all goes well, this dream will be coming to a car dealership near you very soon.

Let me tell you about both of these companies. You can also watch the video above from CBS News to learn about one of these companies.

The first company is called Better Place, and was started by Silicon Valley millionaire Shai Agassi. Agassi’s dream has enticed serious venture capitalists, whom have sunk $1 billion into it. One large venture firm said, “I think it’s one of those seminal companies that is going to change the way the world functions.”

Agassi’s idea is to get the world’s car companies to build electric cars with swappable batteries, so that you’re not buying the battery, only the car.

Agassi’s plan is in three steps. 1: Persuade the world’s car companies to make electric cars with swappable batteries. 2: Persuade governments to install millions of recharging outlets. 3: When people want to go on longer drives, when there’s no time to recharge the battery, build battery-swapping stations all over the world.

When you’re driving and your battery starts to run low, you stop at a swapping station and swap out the battery. Because you don’t own the battery, you pay for miles, similar to a prepaid cell phone, where you pay for minutes.

But this is not just a pipedream. So far, the countries of Israel, Denmark and Australia, and the province of Ontario in Canada, and the state of Hawaii in the U.S. have all signed on and agreed to build the recharging outlets that are needed. The San Francisco/Bay Area is also close to signing on. And the carmakers Nissan and Renault have agreed to manufacture the first battery-swappable cars.

Agassi also plans to have the cars plug into an energy grid that is from a renewable power source.

The second company is a Chinese battery maker turned automaker, BYD. They have produced a plug-in electric car that goes 62 miles on a single charge and will sell for $22,000, which is less than a Prius.

Warren Buffet has bought 10% of BYD, because he believes BYD “has a shot at becoming the world’s largest automaker, primarily by selling electric cars.”

One of the things about the batteries in these cars is that they will be 100% recyclable, so there won’t be the concern about the toxic byproducts that other electric car batteries produce.

BYD also has the advantage of the Chinese government support—China has been pouring huge subsidies into clean cars. Chinese leaders have adopted a plan aimed at turning the country into one of the leading producers of hybrid and all-electric vehicles within three years, and making it the world leader in electric cars and buses after that.

So, there you have it. Two companies moving us closer to the reality of electric cars that everyone can afford.

And as more and more people begin driving electric cars, that will mean that more and more people will be treading lighter on the planet, which will help to create a Low Density Lifestyle environment on the earth.

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