Self-healing rubber bounces back

Interesting and possibly sustainable development from Ludwik Leibler, at the Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution in Paris. Its a new technology rubber, made by molecules that link with hydrogen bonds. If the bonds break, they can be regenerated by simply pushing the broken parts back together. The time of immortal rubbers is close...

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080220/full/news.2008.611.html

The Air Car

Forget about Hydrogen, electric, hybrid and all the rest, how about just plain old air - compressed that is. Just came across this on BBC News.com and it sounds very interesting.

The BBC reports that:

The OneCAT will be a five-seater with a glass fibre body, weighing just 350kg and could cost just over £2,500.

It also reports that while a 'breakthrough' has been talked about for over a decade, the inventor, Guy Negre has recently struck his first manufacturing deal with Tata in India to produce the car.

What is interesting beyond simply the idea and technology, is that Guy Negre is trying to build sustainability into the business model by encouraging local production and sourcing of materials.

Overall a very interesting concept and one which sounds like it's well positioned to become a commercial reality.


More info:
http://www.theaircar.com/acf/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_car
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmqpGZv0YT4
http://business.theage.com.au/air-car-to-call-melbourne-home/20071202-1ee6.html (especially relevant for me being a Melbournian, great news! :))

HighTech-LowCost Lithium Batteries coupled with UltraCapacitors in hybrid cars

Very interesting development for the hybrid car industry and the electricity storage in general:
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10601407

and for more details on the car:
http://www.afstrinity.net/Jan08-AFSTrinity-XH150-Presentation.pdf
and
http://www.afstrinity.net/afstrinity-xh150-pressrelease.pdf