Open source technology: Software companies do it. Why not carmakers? Photo via Riversimple.

What if you could revolutionize the way cars are designed and built by opening the process up to input from the entire community?

That’s exactly what Riversimple is trying to do. The UK-based car company will license its energy-efficient automobile designs (available under Creative Commons non-commercial license) to the 40 Fires Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that will invite engineers, designers, lawyers and other car business experts to comment on high-level design matters, for example, the use of hub motors.

On its wiki, where most of the discussion will happen, 40 Fires writes, “all we really care about is that the license works to ensure that the cars can be built in hundreds of different variations around the world, by local companies and entrepreneurs as well as big multinationals if they like, and that no one company (whether Ford or Riversimple) can dominate the market and keep the ideas to itself.”
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Steve Price won the Livable Streets Contest for his vision of a “complete street” in Portsmouth, Virginia.

Last week, GOOD announced the winners of its Livable Streets Contest.

It was a simple assignment: “Take a photo of a street or intersection you know and hate, and then use Photoshop or any other image editing techniques at your disposal to make the changes you’d like to see implemented.”

The winning submission was from Steve Price of Portsmouth, Virginia.

Contest judges Aaron Naparstek from Streetsblog and designer Carly Clark said Price’s “holistic approach is just what what’s needed in a barren urban environment like this. He’s thinking about new infill development, light rail, bike lanes, and outdoor space for pedestrians and putting it all together to create an entirely new neighborhood. Portsmouth should go and make this happen right now!”

Click here to learn more about the contest and see the other winning entries.

Zero Pollution Motors wants to revolutionize the auto industry with a vehicle that runs on compressed air. Photo via Pneumatic Addict.

From the Associated Press:

Zero Pollution Motors is trying to bring a car to U.S. roads by early 2011 that’s powered by a combination of compressed air and a small conventional engine.

ZPM Chief Executive Shiva Vencat said the ultimate goal is a price tag between $18,000 and $20,000, fuel economy equivalent to 100 miles per gallon and a tailpipe that emits nothing but air at low enough speeds….

As Vencat spells it out, the “air cars” plug into a wall outlet, allowing an on-board compressor to pressurize the car’s air tank to 4,500 pounds per square inch. It takes about four hours to get the tank to full pressure, then the air is then released gradually to power the car’s pistons.

Many of the specifications of ZPM’s car are still speculative, but Vencat expects it to go about 20 miles on compressed air alone, and hundreds more after the engine kicks in, with a top speed of 96 mph.

The ZPM website says its mission is “to bring zero pollution motoring at any speed, for any distance, to the largest number of motorists possible and, in doing so, significantly improve the quality of the air we breathe and reduce our collective carbon footprint.”

But AP reporter Dan Strumpf highlights some limitations of the new technology:

• “compressing air is notoriously energy intensive”
• air compressors are much less efficient compared to other alternative-fuel powertrains, like hybrid-electric cars
• “U.S. safety regulations could be another obstacle given the air car’s tiny size and light weight”

What do you think? Is the “air car” a legitimate solution? Or just more hot air from the auto industry?

Image via FastCompany.com.

Ever thought your public bus could feel like a “lounge or living room room on wheels,” with an electric motor, low-floor entryways, a glass roof, reconstituted-leather upholstery and recycled-wood floors?

From Fast Company:

High-Design Public Bus? Maybe in London
Tim McKeough
June 2009

Commuters using London’s public-transit system probably never dream of being picked up in an Aston Martin, but it may not be long before that happens. The storied automaker has teamed with architecture superfirm Foster + Partners to give the famed double-decker Routemaster bus a makeover.

Read more here.

Students from Appalachian State University figured out how to make working bicycles out of recycled plastic bottles. Image from 2one2Design.com.

A friend of mine from high school was part of the winning team that took home the grand prize for the first annual Juicy Ideas Competition, sponsored by Google, for his and his teammates’ innovative and environmentally responsible bicycle design.

Squeezing Ideas out of a Throw-Away Item
Google Student Blog
March 2, 2009

How would you define innovation? Environmentalism? Or entrepreneurship? The Juicy Ideas Competition asked college students to demonstrate all three. Attracting nearly 900 college students from roughly 30 schools, The Juicy Ideas Competition asked students to create an innovative product out of a “throw-away” item. They were then asked to post a video that illustrated these three factors and post it to YouTube.

Videos poured in from all over the country - we saw everything from blankets made out of plastic bags to coffee tables made out of Gatorade bottles. But none of the ideas stood out as much as the four students from Appalachian State University in North Carolina. Spencer Price, Ryan Klinger, Andrew Drake, and Justin Henry created a working bicycle out of used water bottles to win the Juicy Ideas grand prize trip to the Google Headquarters in Mountain View.

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This summer, residents in Chicago and the surrounding region will be asked to plan for their own future, thanks to a collaboration between the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning and a real-life version of SimCity, known as MetroQuest.

From the University of British Columbia Public Affairs:

How do you want your city to look in 100 years? A technology created at the University of British Columbia [based on models developed by the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES)] is giving communities around the globe a peek at how today’s decisions can rewrite tomorrow’s cities. Like a Web 2.0 crystal ball, the software dramatically illustrates the future impacts of city planning proposals, helping to steer stakeholders away from pitfalls such as urban sprawl, gridlock and decay.

Inspired by the game SimCity, which allows players to imagine different scenarios for fictional cities, the tool is called MetroQuest, a computer software that allows various stakeholders in the urban planning process to simulate the consequences of different policy choices 40 years into the future. For example, how will expanding mass transit affect commute times? If regional policies favor car drivers, how will that impact local air quality?
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Supercities will “radically redefine the world’s future macroeconomic and cultural landscape.” But how do you make sense of it all? Image via 192021.org

Some of the greatest minds of design and marketing are working on a five-year, multimedia project to collect information about the rise of urban populations to better understand its impact on urban and business planning and its effect on consumers.

The project is known as 19.20.21, based on the premise that there will be 19 cities in the world with populations of 20 million people in the 21st century. You can learn more about it online in a spiffy Flash-based presentation:

http://www.192021.org
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The coolest thing about Zipcar’s new FastFleet service isn’t the technology–it’s the buzz. Photo by dominiccampbell.

In response to yesterday’s post about Zipcar’s launch of FastFleet, a municipal fleet management service, Clayton Lane, the chief operating officer of EMBARQ and co-founder of PhillyCarShare, shares his opinion about what’s new and why we should care.

The Story is the Story
By Clayton Lane
Chief Operating Officer
EMBARQ - The World Resources Institute Center for Sustainable Transport

This is a great PR “win” for sustainable transportation. But the real innovation here isn’t the cool technical solution, which is very “2004.” It’s the buzz. Zipcar and D.C. are recycling a truly sustainable solution and making a big fuss about it. For that, they deserve our compliments.
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The world’s first Urban EcoMap combines the social networking capabilities of Facebook with the geographical data of Google Maps to help urbanites reduce their carbon emissions. Image via Urban EcoMap.

Just in time for Earth Day last week, Cisco IBSG and San Francisco’s Department of the Environment unveiled Urban EcoMap, a Web-based tool that “provides urban communities with relevant data regarding the primary [greenhouse gas] contributors—transportation, waste, and energy.”

Working off the idea that knowledge is power, the tool intends to build awareness about climate change so that urban dwellers will take action to reduce their carbon emissions, as well as to support decision-making for policymakers, businesses, and other people involved in urban design and development. J.D. Stanley from Cisco describes this process as “digital swarming,” or “an approach that blends elements of social networking with human networking and with emerging capabilities provisioned through digital fabrics.”
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Open-source technology is required to develop competitive sustainable urban transport systems. Photo by B.J. Allen.

Robin Chase, one of The City Fix bloggers and founder and former CEO of Zipcar, says that “open technology” is a key part of making intermodal transportation a reality.

“Users (people or freight) need to know the schedules, requirements, and opportunities, need to book capacity and to make payments seamlessly, not only between modes but between states and perhaps countries as well,” she says as part of an online panel for the National Journal’s transportation blog.

So what does “openness” mean for different technology platforms, information, devices, and networks?
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