TransitList

TransitList eDirectory

admin — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 00:18:16 +0000

Alternative Energy Transportation- Land, Sea & Air

The world and the way we get from point A to point B is changing. Land, sea and air technologies are upgrading to more efficient, responsible technologies and, finally, alternative energy is being integrated into most all modes of transportation.

TransiListDirectory.com is a “listing” of the companies, products, services and cross-segment resources for the evolved marketplace. If you have a suggestion or idea, please let us know.

Get Listed… for Free!

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:01:28 +0000

List Your Company for Free…
So here’s the deal; TransitList is currently compiling the 2011 eDirectory. We are accepting listings from qualified companies.

Scope
TransitList is currently collecting and organizing data on companies that are…

- alternative energy transportation related (land, sea or air)
- sell nationally / internationally
- want to be found by other companies and new customers

For a more complete list of categories or to add your organization to TransitList for free, visit our listing page. If you’re interested in receiving / downloading the eDirectory when it’s complete, drop us a line.

TL Podcast: itMoves | Beyond Electric

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:41:09 +0000

Listen Now:

itMoves addresses transportation issues holistically. This “mobility as a service” company has created a very interesting business model– a model that involves a broad scale approach to long term transportation issues for a growing World commuter population.

Jose Paris has set out to create a new kind of mobility company. One that considers transportation from outside the realm of traditional mandates. A company that offers solid answers for the emerging paradigm. For the past 12 years, Jose was a concept car designer for the big OEMs. He worked and created for the best design studios in the automotive industry. During that time, he learned that many of the most needed changes can never be addressed due to the nature of large corporate organizations. “You become the voice in the forest. That’s no fun. You eventually realize that it is nearly impossible to move the needle.”, Paris describes.

Jose decided to leave the world of large automotive corporations and begin his own mobility company. Bold move. But after speaking with Jose about his ideas, you get the sense that he’s really on to something. Something that, well, should have been created eons ago. The itMoves concept is simple, intelligent, inclusive and tangible. It is personal, customizable and directly addresses the environmental impact created by traditional transportation methods. It is a solid concept. So solid that Jose’s idea recently placed runner up at the most recent Clean Tech Open. Not bad for a few month old company… And that’s just the beginning. itMoves plans to unveil it’s ME electric car (the Netbook of electric cars) and 4.ME car share concept in the new year. itMoves‘ future is very bright.

For more information on itMoves, check out their listing in the TransitList Directory. They can be found in the “Car Companies” category.

Music: Gomez, Airstream Driver

KillaCycle Affirms Life

admin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:08:56 +0000

KillaCycle Affirms Life
KillaCycle® is the quickest and most powerful electric motorcycle in the world. It is quicker and faster than ANY other electric-powered vehicle on the drag strip. It has over 500 hp and accelerates 0-60 mph (0-96 km/h) in less than a second!

The secret– The batteries!
The powerful nano-phosphate™ battery cells are what makes the KillaCycle® go as fast as it does! The same battery cells are found in DeWalt cordless hand tools.

KillaCycle® Facts:
• is the quickest and most powerful electric motorcycle in the world.
• has since 1999 continuously set and broken its own world records.
• has made the fastest (mph) and quickest (ET) ¼ mile pass ever made by any electric vehicle of any kind (7.824 s @ 168 mph, Pomona, November 2007). No other electric vehicle of any kind, past or present, has ever gone this fast or this quick in the ¼ mile.
• has been the world’s fastest (mph) electric powered vehicle of any kind (mph) in ¼ mile drag racing since August 2000
• was the first electric vehicle to break the 8 seconds barrier in drag racing (November 2007)
• was the first electric powered vehicle of any kind to go over 150 mph in a ¼ mile (August 2000).

KillaCycle® is the result of years of effort on the part of Bill Dubé, his sponsors and team members.

KillaCycle® Stats:

0-60 mph (0-96 km/h): 0.97 seconds
Acceleration: 2.89 G (almost 3 times free fall)
Best Top Speed in ¼ mile: 174.05 MPH
Lowest ¼ mile Elapsed Time (ET): 7.82 seconds @ 168 mph
Power: over 500 hp
Battery: 1210 lithium iron nano-phosphate™ cells from
A123 Systems
Battery weight: 200 lbs (90 kg)
Battery voltage: 374 Volts
Battery capacity: 9.1 kWh
High-current cell interconnect tabs welded with Miyachi-Unitek equipment
Motors: Two DC series motors @ 87 lbs (40 kg) each.
Bearings: All of the bearings are supplied by NSK. The highest quality bearings are a must in drag racing!
Controller: Cafe Electric Zilla2k-HV
Drive: direct chain drive on the rear wheel.
Total weight of the bike: 653 lbs (296 kg).
Electricity consumption: 0.6 kWh, worth $0.07 for each run down the strip including the burn out. It corresponds to 2 ounces (70 ml) of gasoline.
Charger: Manzanita Micro PFC-50, 12kW power-factor corrected, multi-voltage input
Tires: M&H Racemaster 10.0/27.0 – 15 MHR-68
Printed Circuit Boards: Advanced Circuits (Please type “KillaCycle” in refferal box or comments if you order PCBs!)
Including burn-outs, the KillaCycle could make 7 or more runs on one charge. Recharges in less than 4 minutes.
KillaCycle® is silent aside from the chain and some tire noise.

Products: Czeers Solarboats FAQs

admin — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 05:02:30 +0000

Czeers Solarboats FAQs

1. What is the top speed of the Czeers MkI
The top speed is 30 knots

2. How long can the MkI sail at top speed?
The production version of the Czeers MkI will be able to sail at top speed for about
half an hour. Because the resistance of a boat increases much faster then the
speed of the boat, the boat will be able to run for many many on a speed of
10 knots.

3. Are Czeers boats for sale?
Yes the boat you see on the website is the prototype of the MkI series boat. Czeers
will rapidly expand it’s range with some other smaller models. There will also be a
custom line of fully customized boats. All Czeers boats will be very exclusively
priced and are build only on demand.

4. What kind of solar panels are used?
Czeers has developed their own solar panel to be build into the Czeers MkI. The
cell’s used for the prototype are made of Silicium, on demand the boat can also
be equipped with gallium-arsenide cell’s.

5. How many persons can fit in the Czeers MkI?
The prototype of the MkI is made for 5 persons. This can be changed according to
clients wishes.

6. What is the price of a Czeers boat?
Since every boat is customized entirely to clients wishes, price is on request.

7. What happens when it becomes cloudy?
Because all Czeers boats are equipped with a large battery pack, a day without
sun is absolutely no problem. Even weeks of rain are no challenge for a Czeers
boat because it is possible to plug it in to the net, and charge it like that. Even on
energy from a conventional power plant, the boat will be a lot more
energy efficient as a conventional speedboat.

8. Is there a waiting list/period for a Czeers boat?
Yes because building a Czeers boat is a very delicate and labor intensive process
it takes some time before the actual build of a Czeers can start.

9. If I order a Czeers right now, what is the delivery time?
For custom boats it will take about 12 months, for a production version of the MkI
this can be a couple of months shorter.

10. Can I order a Czeers boat anywhere in the world?
Yes, all our boats can be delivered anywhere you like, because service is on of our
top priorities, service will always be available within 24 hours world wide, for this we
have a mechanic standing by at all time to travel to you by plane.

11. How does a Czeers solarboat work?
Solar cell’s are used to transform sunlight into electric energy. This energy is stored
in a large battery pack that is used to power the electrical engine. The engine
then powers the propelor of the boat.

Visionaries: Paul MacReady

admin — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 04:26:19 +0000

Visionaries: Paul MacReady
Anyone who happened to be on the English Channel on the morning of June 12, 1979, must have done a double take. Moving slowly through the air, just a few feet above the choppy waters, was one of the oddest looking flying machines ever built. Almost 100 feet wide and sheathed in a shiny, semitransparent skin, the craft, called the Gossamer Albatross, had a big propeller at its back but no engine to speak of. Instead, in an enclosed pod hanging beneath that huge wing, was Bryan Allen, a bicycle racer, furiously pedaling to make the impossible craft go. After almost three hours of physical effort, and flying more than 22 miles, Allen gently landed the plane on the beaches of England. The Albatross‘s inventor, Paul MacCready, who had been in a boat following the slow, tense journey from the shores of France, rushed to join the celebration.

Although he didn’t begin building a human-powered airplane until he was 51 years old, Paul MacCready had been involved with flight for most of his life. As a boy growing up in New Haven, Connecticut, he was fascinated with butterflies and moths, and his interests soon included model airplanes, too. MacCready didn’t just build standard aircraft. “For some reason I got interested in a variety of things,” he says. “Ornithopters, autogyros, helicopters, indoor models, outdoor models. Nobody seemed to be quite as motivated for the new and strange as I was.”

During World War II MacCready trained to be a Navy pilot, though he never flew in combat. After the war, he returned to his education, though, he recognizes now, he struggled with a mild form of dyslexia. In 1947 he earned a degree in physics at Yale, then went on to receive his Ph.D. in aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology in 1952. After CalTech he cofounded Meteorology Research, a company that pioneered weather modification, including cloud seeding. In 1970 he left to start another company, AeroVironment, to focus on new energy sources such as solar and wind power.

A Bad Debt Inspires the Condor

It was bad news that started MacCready working on human-powered flight. He had guaranteed a loan for a relative’s business. It failed, and he was stuck with a $100,000 debt. Daydreaming one day in 1976, he recalled that there was a cash prize for a successful human-powered flight: the Kremer Prize, with an award of £50,000. He remembers, “the Kremer Prize, in which I’d had no interest, was just about equal to my debt. Suddenly human-powered flight seemed important.” MacCready began thinking of ways to build a plane that could win the prize, which required flying around a figure-eight course. (Other human-powered planes had flown, but they couldn’t make turns.) The Aha! moment, as he calls it, came on a family vacation. On the side of the road, MacCready watched hawks and vultures in flight, calculating their flight speed and turning radius. He began thinking about how scaling—making something bigger or smaller—affects a wing’s aerodynamic lift. He realized that as you made a wing bigger, it required less power to keep it aloft. If you made it a lot bigger, it required a lot less power. A very light, 96-foot-long wing (as big as a DC-9′s) built like a hang glider’s would only require about .4 horsepower to make it fly—about the power a good bicyclist can produce.

It took six months of sometimes nonstop work for MacCready and his team, made up of friends, colleagues, and family, to build the Gossamer Condor. They used simple materials that were light and could be fixed easily, including Mylar, piano wire, aluminum tubing, and lots of tape. When it was finished, the Condor weighed just 70 pounds, didn’t look much like a plane, and didn’t always act like one. (Bryan Allen, the pilot/engine, said flying it was “like pedaling a house.”) On August 23, 1977, with Allen at the pedals, the Condor flew the Kremer course. Today, the Gossamer Condor hangs in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, alongside the Wright Brothers’ plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, and an Apollo Lander.

Crossing the English Channel
There was another prize to be won: the Kremer Prize’s sponsor put up £100,000 for the first human-powered aircraft to cross the English Channel. With sponsorship from DuPont, which made his planes’ Mylar skin, MacCready set about building a second plane, the Gossamer Albatross. Two years later the Albatross crossed the Channel.

From human power MacCready moved on to another challenge, harnessing the sun’s energy. Building on the design and success of the first Gossamer planes, he built the Gossamer Penguin, which in 1980 became the world’s first solar-powered airplane. The craft caught the eye of the Department of Defense, which wanted something that could stay up in the air for long periods of time. Eventually, the project was taken up by NASA, which was interested in creating an airborne platform for atmospheric observations. The unmanned Pathfinder soared to a height of 71,530 feet in 1997; its successor, the Pathfinder Plus, reached 80,201 feet in 1998. The next step in this evolution is the 200-foot-wide Helios, which might reach 100,000 feet and stay aloft for months at a time. MacCready envisions a fleet of these craft in the air permanently, serving as a high-performance communications platform.

For the past few years, MacCready has been working on small aircraft with built-in cameras to send images back to the ground. “You are looking out as if you were a little creature inside,” he explains. “You can soar with the birds. It’s just like you’re one of them.” This new vehicle fits in perfectly with MacCready’s interest in finding a balance between nature and technology. “The overall goal is a sustainable world,” he says. “Not consuming nonreplenishable resources, not getting steadily more dependent on foreign oil, and not causing global climate change.” How can a toy-like plane that lets you fly with birds help reach those goals? “If I hadn’t been doing the ornithopters 60 years ago there wouldn’t have been a Gossamer Condor or Albatross or Impact car or a mandate in California on zero emission vehicles. It’s a toy, but it’s a pretty important toy.”

Products: Pedal Powered Submarine

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:31:49 +0000

For most of us, the world deep below the ocean’s surface remains a place we have only had the pleasure to experience vicariously, primarily through watching nature documentaries. It’s not as if we can just hop in a submarine and go take a look. Well, perhaps we can, if a Russian company’s plan to market a two-seater submarine driven by pedal power to the tourist industry is successful. The new underwater vehicle (UV) from Marine Innovation Technologies (MIT) will not only be cheaper to buy and run than existing submersibles, it will be simpler to operate, requiring no special training or expertise.

According to MIT, its underwater craft differs from comparable small tourist submarines in overcoming some of the difficulties associated with the use of traditional screw propulsion and accumulator batteries to generate motion. These kinds of submarine tend to be complex to control and service and require specialized training to operate.

Generally, submarines require a propulsion capacity of about 2.5–5 kW to maintain an underwater speed of 2-3 knots. The average person riding a bicycle struggles to generate a propulsion capacity greater than 0.2-0.4 kW over a one to three-hour time period. This means a pair of furiously pedaling tourists couldn’t muster enough power to propel an underwater vehicle.

But MIT has overcome the mathematical impossibility through both its innovative design as well as something called the Coanda effect. With both these elements in play, an average person, with the help of pedals, can generate the necessary underwater speed of between two and three knots, for two to four hours, to propel the company’s two-passenger UV.

So what is this miraculous Coanda effect the company has employed? It is a phenomenon where a jet flow attaches itself to a nearby surface and remains attached even when the surface curves away from the direction of the initial jet flow. Run a stream of water over the underside of a spoon and watch as the water follows the curve instead of dropping straight down – that’s the Coanda effect.

In the same way, MIT’s design uses rotor-jet propellers to take advantage of the Coanda effect. The propellers direct an air jet through a flat slot, in a tangential direction, onto the surface of the vehicle, where it adheres and generates thrust. The disc shape of the UV also helps to create a vacuum on the hull of the vehicle to provide additional draught. According to the St Petersburg State Marine Engineering University (SPbGMTU), which has been carrying out tests on the UV’s design, this enables two people, still producing power of less than 0.4–0.8 kW, to generate the required speed of 2-3 knots for between two and four hours.

Its breakthrough design has allowed MIT to simplify the vehicle’s construction and operation, which has also helped to keep the cost of production down. The vehicle is small enough to be transported on the back of a car trailer. It measures 11.5 feet (3.5m) long, 4 feet (1.2m) high and 6.5 feet (2m) wide and weighs between 1.5 and 2 tons out of the water.

In the water, the UV can reach speeds of 2–5 knots on the surface and speeds of 2–3 knots under the water at depths of up to 30m. For those who don’t fancy pedaling, MIT will also offer an optional low-power, combined electric drive.

The developers have also made sure the UV is simple to operate, with only foot pedals, steering wheel and minimal buttons and indicators to worry about. The onboard systems are also designed to function both in manual and automatic modes. Safety features include an automatic and mechanical drive for the release of ballast for surfacing in an emergency.

The vehicle also boasts a high degree of maneuverability: it can go forwards, backwards, up and down, hover and rotate about its vertical axis. Passengers will also be treated to spectacular underwater views with almost all of the UV’s body transparent.

MIT is banking on the UV’s relatively cheap price tag of between USD$30,000-$70,000, as well as its cheaper cost to operate and service, to find a market. Existing small submarines can range in price, from USD$100,000 to USD$200,000, and cost more to service due to their more complex mechanics. They also tend to require specialist training to operate.

It is not only the tourist market MIT is hoping to break into. It anticipates the UV will attract interest for uses in scientific research, underwater filming, technical survey of underwater structures, such as dams and pipelines, and underwater rescue.

Preliminary market research, carried out by MIT, suggests worldwide sales of the vehicle may go beyond 1 million units. MIT is seeking investors to fund the building of a prototype UV before establishing manufacturing facilities. Once in production, MIT expects to produce 10,000 vehicles a year.