Scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Transportation and Infrastructure, Germany, recently introduced an innovative public transportation solution, dubbed the “AutoTram”. The new vehicle is as long as a tram but has bus-like agility, allowing it to maneuver easily through crowded ...
Segway and GM Unveil PUMA
Segway, Inc. of Bedford, New Hampshire, has partnered with General Motors Corporation of Detroit, Michigan, to create PUMA – Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility vehicle. A small personal vehicle operating on a rechargeable battery, the PUMA is designed for efficiency ...
Toyota Plans 1/X Seaweed Car
Toyota will be showcasing a new plug-in hybrid concept car called 1/X, made with seaweed, at this year’s Melbourne International Motor Show. Toyota is calling their newly developed plastic “Ecological Plastic” (EP), and the company is planning to increase use ...
Detroit’s Dream of Aircraft Production
Modern mass production methods were first introduced by the automobile industry, but when aviation industries tried to implement them, the ride was not a particularly smooth one. Drilling the wing of a B-24 bomber at Consolidated Aircraft Corp., Fort Worth, ...
SubAviator Fast Sub-Plane
SubAviator Systems has designed a new two seater submarine designed for advanced marine exploration. Made from a lightweight composite and designed like an underwater airplane complete with wings, the SAS Aviator submarine uses electric power to travel up to 5.2 ...
Biofuel Powers Jetliner
Air New Zealand has joined with Boeing, Rolls Royce, and Honeywell UOP to perform the world’s first commercial biofuel test flight. The test used a Boeing 747-400 with four Rolls Royce RB211 engines without making any physical modifications to the ...
Jet Engine Development in Germany
Revolutionary technology takes time to mature. Sometimes there are breakthroughs that enable accelerated maturing processes, but maturing still needs time. Pumping unrestricted investments into immature technological R&D can certainly improve the pace of progress, but cannot guarantee the solution of ...
Audi’s Supercomputer
Audi has announced the implementation of a new ‘super-computer’ in their development department. Thanks to unique processing abilities, Audi’s researches can now analyze car crash models faster and better, thus improving their vehicles’ safety. According to the firm, the use ...
Genesis of the Jet Age
Jet engine technology was one of those historical technological breakthroughs that happened in several places at the same time. The most important research and development work was carried out in England and Germany. This column will try and take a ...
MIT and NASA Designing Silent Aircraft
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics recently won a contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to design quieter, more energy efficient, and more environmentally friendly commercial airplanes. The two million ...