Wind Explorer car is both electric and kite powered, and crossed Australia

This is the Wind Explorer, and it is a car that can drive by kite.

The Wind Explorer can take credit for breaking three world records: the first continental crossing by a wind-powered vehicle, the longest distance covered by a wind-powered vehicle, and the longest distance covered by a wind-powered vehicle in 36 hours.

You can catch a video of it after the jump if you want to see it in motion. The Wind Explorer traveled 3,107 miles across Australia in about 18 days, and it uses only $15 worth of electricity. Talk about your fuel efficiency!

It is electrical, and has a battery pack and wind turbine in the back, with a trunk up in front like a Volkswagen. The Wind Explorer is made of carbon fiber and sits over an aluminum frame on top of a bicycle tires.

You will notice in the video that driving this vehicle involves some sort of control that looks like kiteboarding. The kite is powerful enough to have the ability to lift someone off of the ground. The kite pulls the vehicle, while someone else steers it.

The Wind Explorer is quite slow, as its top speed is 50 miles per hour. The best distance was 306 miles per day.

Scalextric Velodrome Racing Set for Slot Car Bikes

I would imagine that a lot of you remember slot car racing. Normally, it is done with hot tricked-out race cars, but this is done with bicycles.

All of this is a marketing promotion for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. It is known as a Scalextric Velodrome for cyclists dressed in Great Britain colors.

As you can see from the picture, there are the traditional trigger controls. There are also turns and various lane changing action to make the racing exciting. Absent from the track are loops and other obstacles in the race car tracks, but you have to be realistic about what bikes can do on tracks. This isn’t Speed Racer, after all.

I’m not certain why in the world no one made a slot car game out of bicycles before. I think someone made a slot car race out of Harry Potter’s Quidditch before. Maybe someone should have made a Lance Armstrong racing slot set. It is designed so that he wins the Tour de France several years in a row.

This should be available for about $120 sometime in the summer. I have to admit that I am glad this is being put out a year before the Olympics, even though no one might buy it until Summer of 2012.

Source

BMW creates ball-bearing boot travel suits

You remember when we discussed that car of 2100 that we talked about that was designed by a former BMW writer?

Well, as it turns out, it looks like BMW is imagining some other type of future where the single human is the primary form of transportation.

Apparently, the future is like that of Rollerball, but without the bloodsport. Everyone is rollerblading, but their boots have these ball-bearing soles that are hopefully retractable.

See that space helmet in front of the user’s eyes? Apparently, it is some sort of semi transparent wraparound display that will display real-time directions and traffic information.

Of course, I would imagine that there would be a lot accidents on the real-time directions, because this mode of transportation looks pretty dang dangerous! Seriously, do you see a future where everyone is skating around like the last scene of Gleaming the Cube? Seriously, do you? Because I’ve never seen Gleaming the Cube, but I would imagine that’s how it ended.

What’s funny is that this isn’t the only one of these future transports. I think one of them is these four-wheeled jobs that look a little safer, but resemble soap box racers.

Well, at least these ball bearing shows don’t require any gas, however, they will need some grease.

Find-My-Car insures that you never forget where you park your car

Did I tell you that I lost my rental car at the Caesar’s Palace parking garage during CES 2011 in Las Vegas? Of course I didn’t. I was way too embarrassed to put it in print.

Of course, if the garage had the Park Assist System, there would be a series of high-resolution digital cameras that can track a car by a license plate number. Then it would have scanned me in and told me where my car is after I had attended Pepcom.

So, instead of wandering around the garage and trying to retrace my steps and what elevator I took, I could have just gone up to the Find-Your-Car kiosks, punch in the plate number, and it could have guided me straight to my vehicle. This would have saved me the hour I took finding my car!

Yes, I actually spent an hour wandering around a parking garage trying to find my car. In all honesty, I would gladly take the Big Brother implications of having a Find-Your-Car System in order to save me from embarrassment of telling a similar lost car story in the future.

Yeah, it would be very easy for the police to get access to Find-Your-Car systems in order to find a convict or someone who has a lot of tickets. I suppose that the we’ll be seeing the rights about this system being debated for years before it ever gets implemented.

Source

Jet-powered Water Cannon from China

I don’t know if you are one of those people who are really worried about China tipping “the balance of the world”. I saw a whole episode of The Office devoted to it the other day, and it reminded me of conversations that I had with people who are worrying about the most populated country because they can.

In the case of the Chinese fire department in Luoyang city, I think they are seriously ahead of the game with this jet-propelled water cannon. This thing is capable of spraying four tons of water per minute, which suggests that it shouldn’t be used on crowds.

This water can move at speeds that are so quick that they choke fires from the oxygen surrounding them. It also has quite a huge range for this blaze blaster at 120 meters (400 feet).

There is a video of this guy on my Source that I wasn’t able to import. I like it because it reminds me of a cross between an oil tanker and a giant cannon.

By the way, this bad boy costs about $456,000, and I am sure there are now people everywhere saying that the Chinese have these giant cannons capable of spraying the United States. Yes, they are powered by the Pacific Ocean that they can spray at us. We are helpless to stop them.

iCar has discovered the secret of flight: It’s the wheels

I always love to report on flying cars as much as I can.

This one, which is called the iCar, doesn’t need any wings or magic to fly but uses specially designed wheels. Apparently round spinning surfaces can create lift, which is called the Magnus Effect.

The iCar takes advantage of the Magnus Effect to turn its wheels into wings. On the ground, the iCar is a one seater sports car with four traditional wheels and giant cylindrical hubs. To get airborne, it extends its hubs outward to create a larger lifting surface, the hubcaps on the two front wheels swivel forward to turn into propellers, and the car is ready for takeoff. As it starts to move forward, the cylinder wings spin (driven by electric motors), and they generate enough lift to get the iCar airborne in about 1,500 feet.

Apparently, the car has a range of about 500 miles and has a cruising speed of 200 miles per hour.

As you can see, the iCar is in its concept stage, which is visible in this particular mock-up. I’m not certain what it is called the iCar, generally that small “i” gets associated with Apple products. Still, I hope to see this sometime flying over me someday.

Car Theft by Antenna (Researchers beat automatic locking and ignition systems)

No key required: A researcher shows how an attacker could start a car using an antenna. A signal from the car is transmitted to a computerized key, which is tricked into enabling the engine ignition.

Credit: ETH Zurich

Car thieves of the future might be able to get into a car and drive away without forced entry and without needing a physical key, according to new research that will be presented at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium next month in San Diego, California.

The researchers successfully attacked eight car manufacturers' passive keyless entry and start systems—wireless key fobs that open a car's doors and start the engine by proximity alone.

Srdjan Capkun, an assistant professor of computer science in the system security group at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, who led the work, says he was inspired to investigate the security of keyless entry and start systems after buying a car that had one. Capkun and Aurélien Francillon and Boris Danev, both researchers in the same institution, examined 10 car models from the eight manufacturers. They were able to access all 10 and drive them away by intercepting and relaying signals from the cars to their wireless keys. While they could relay the signals from the key back to the car as well, usually they did not need to because the key transmits its signals up to around 100 meters. The attack works no matter what cryptography and protocols the key and car use to communicate with each other.

Normally, when a wireless key is within a few meters of the right car, it detects a low-powered signal that causes it to issue a command that opens the car enable the ignition. The researchers used a pair of antennas to transmit these signals from the car to the key when the key was farther away, tricking the car into opening without the ordinary authorization. One antenna needs to be very close to the car, and one needs to be within eight meters of the key.

The researchers came up with two versions of the attack. In one, they ran a cable from near the car to near the key and used it to transmit the signals. They conducted the other wirelessly. Francillon says that the materials for the wired attack cost about $50, and those for the wireless attack cost between $100 and $1,000, depending on the electronic components used.

The researchers tested a few scenarios. An attacker could watch a parking lot and have an accomplice watch as car owners as entered a nearby store. The accomplice would only need to be within eight meters of the targeted owner's key fob, making it easy to avoid arousing suspicion. In another scenario, a car owner might leave a car key on a table near a window. An antenna placed outside the house was able to communicate with the key, allowing the researchers then to start the car parked out front and drive away.

This is what a car could look like in the 22nd Century.

If you look at automobiles eighty or so years ago, you’ll find that they were all box-like and monochromatic. Compare that to the cars of today, which can be very curvaceous and colorful.

Just imagine what cars will look like 100 years from now! This is what engineer Peter Maskus has attempted to do. Maskus has worked at BMW, Porsche, and Ferrari, and has now started his own company in Switzerland called Acabion. This particular mock-up is called the “da Vinci”, and it is an all-electric vehicle that is ultra-fast with a top speed of 375 miles per hour.

Okay, I’m pretty certain that our current highways cannot accommodate a car that is at this speed. Most maglev trains don’t go this fast, but who knows, maybe all of our cars will be maglev like in Minority Report. I suppose the wheels would not be required then.

I don’t know if it is possible to design cars for the future. According to my Source, there may be one big tube between New York and Paris which will allow anyone to go anywhere in the world within two hours. Once again, maglev will be the mode of transportation there.

Of course, I once heard that same thing about the world of 2000, back in 1980. So let’s just see how accurate this drawing is in the year 2100.