Electric vehicles are everywhere these days, and with them comes along a whole slew of charging infrastructure. The fastest of these are high-power machines that can deliver enough energy to charge a car in well under an hour, but there are plenty of slower chargers available that take much longer. These don’t tend to require […]
Disposable vapes aren’t quite the problem/resource stream they once were, with many jurisdictions moving to ban the absurdly wasteful little devices, but there are still a lot of slightly-smelly lithium batteries in the wild. You might be forgiven for thinking that most of them seem to be in [Chris Doel]’s UK workshop, given that he’s […]
One of the ongoing rumors and scandals in professional cycle sport concerns “motor doping” — the practice of concealing an electric motor in a bicycle to provide the rider with an unfair advantage. It’s investigated in a video from [Global Cycling Network], in which they talk about the background and then prove its possible by […]
There aren’t many speed records that remain unbroken for the greater part of a century, but one of them is that of the fastest steam locomotive. As with so many such things, there’s a bit of controversy and more than one contender, but the one in the record books is the A4 Pacific, Mallard. In […]
It’s a blustery January day outside Lakehurst, New Jersey. The East Coast of North America is experiencing its worst weather in decades, and all civilian aircraft have been grounded the past four days, from Florida to Maine. For the past two days, that order has included military aircraft, including those certified “all weather” – with […]
BMX bikes are a unique frame geometry, essentially forgoing all travel efficiency for maneuverability and sturdiness. For how much abuse these bikes are designed to take, these are all good tradeoffs. But it turns out that these bikes also have an exceptionally low center of gravity, which could make them useful for drag racing, provided […]
Theoretically a belt drive makes for a great upgrade to a bicycle, as it replaces the heavier, noisy and relatively maintenance-heavy roller chain with a zero-maintenance, whisper-quiet and extremely reliable belt that’s rated at an amazing 20-30,000 km before needing a replacement. Of course, that’s the glossy marketing brochure version of reality, which differed significantly […]
On the list of cars widely regarded as the most reliable vehicles ever built, up there with the Toyota Land Cruiser, the Honda Civic, and the Mercedes W123 diesels, is the unassuming Toyota Prius. Although it adds a bit of complexity with its hybrid drivetrain, its design eliminates a number of common wear items and […]
Although at its face the results seem obvious, a recent study by [Sandrah Eckel] et al. on the impact of electric cars in California is interesting from a quantitative perspective. What percentage of ICE-only cars do you need to replace with either full electric or hybrid cars before you start seeing an improvement in air […]
Airport runways seem pretty simple, just another strip of asphalt or concrete not unlike the roads that our cars drive upon every day. We can even use these same highways as landing strips in a pinch, so you’d assume that the engineering for either isn’t that dissimilar. Of course, you can use a highway for […]