Local Motors Rally Fighter

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Local Motors, a DIY auto manufacturing outfit based in Wareham, Mass., has developed the Rally Fighter based on user-submitted design and some top-flight hardware. Slated to be released in June 2010, the car boasts a BMW 3.0 liter turbo clean diesel motor with 265 horsepower and 425 pounds of torque. The steel tube frame is strong and lightweight. The result? Desert racer meets bat mobile.

The concept behind Local Motors is simple: ugen social design, lightweight and efficient body materials and engines, and sustainable manufacturing. The community designs the car and the manufacturing and customization is done locally. Local Motors even invites buyers to work next to its builders in a regional micro factory.

And there’s a whole slew of new designs coming including the Boston Bullet, the Desmosedici RR2, the Green Apple, the Miami Roadster, the San Francisco Ethylik (see below) and many more. What will one of these wonder cars cost you? Around $50,000… but like most things in the public arena, those costs should come down over time.

San Francisco Ethylik from Local Motors

The new engines are slated to be used in Mercedes-Benz hybrid vehicles from 2012 on and will be built in the company’s Berlin manufacturing plant.

The electric engine interacts with the combustion engine and lowers fuel consumption by recovering energy during breaking for instance. Expect to find transmission-integrated electric engines in Mercedes’ new BlueZERO E-CELL Plus cars.

French technology and car manufacturer MDI, is bringing its smart and simple, zero pollution car to the U.S.

If you thought the Citroen had a unique style, this car is offering some sort of trippy tribute to that car maker. Check out the AirPod (I’m sure Apple won’t litigate…).

The AirPod - It's French!

It’s like Jacques Cousteau wanted to resuscitate his Pacer.

And then there’s the MiniFlowAir (I’m sure Mini won’t litigate…).

The MiniFlowAir - It's French!

So next year, the year of the Chevy Volt, the year of the Nissan Leaf, will also be the year of the MDI air-compressed cars in the U.S. market. We’re looking at a 75 horsepower car, that goes 35mph (up to 90 mph with some gas involved), with a range of 1,000 miles at about a buck and a half to fill up, and has an initial investment of less than $20,000. That all adds up to interesting.

The first car the company will roll out in the U.S. will probably be the 4-door, 6-passenger CityFlowAir.

CityFlowAir

Not bad. While the CityFlowAir (or whatever better name they end up calling it) will probably start as a neighborhood compressed-air car (I might as well add the acronym NCAC), it has the capability of going much further. Sure, it’s no performance vehicle, but it’s got that one added bonus of saving the planet. i9z75k46nu

Vinod Khosla, one of the original founders of Sun Microsystems, is investing heavily in alternative energy. One of his recent investments is Transonic Combustion.  He wants to make the internal combustion engine 50% more efficient.

While Ford, GM and Daimler have been working on incremental improvements in the combustion engine, Khosla believes that only a startup can take the leaps necessary for radical change.

In May, Transonic received its C round of funding to improve upon its TSCi™ fuel injection system and get its technology to market.

EPA Cycle Testing of Transonic's Technology Demonstrator Vehicle (left) and TSCiTM R&D Prototype Injectors (right)

According to the company, “Transonic Combustion is on course to directly supply global automotive manufacturers with its high efficiency fuel injection systems. Transonic’s TSCi fuel injection system has demonstrated extraordinary fuel economy and lower emissions, while also running gasoline effectively within diesel architectures. To date, testing on several different engine platforms with multiple customers and multiple fuels has regularly achieved air-to-fuel ratios in excess of 80:1 at cruise conditions, with engine-out NOx at just 50% of comparable standard engines. These promising results have led to significant engagement with leading global automotive and engine makers.”

Fifty percent reduction in nitrous oxide exhaust. Fifty percent increase in efficiency.

Those are some nice numbers — and big promises.

Today’s engines transform about 15% of fuel into energy. Transonic promises 30%. What’s more, the company claims that major auto manufacturers don’t need to replace current engines wholesale but can adapt current designs to include the technology. The company also claims to have three of the top global car companies ready to use the technology.

Transonic expects it’s fuel injectors to be included in millions of engines over the next few years. Keep an eye out for this Khosla venture.

According to Joule, in the past two years it’s developed its Helioculture technology—a process that uses sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into the company’s SolarFuel liquid energy in a SolarConverter device.”

How does it work? It’s not exactly simple but the good news is, it doesn’t need farmland or fresh water. In the company’s own words, the patent-pending Helioculture™ technology “leverages highly-engineered photosynthetic organisms to catalyze the conversion of sunlight and CO2 to usable transportation fuels and chemicals. The scalable SolarConverter™ system facilitates the entire process—from sunlight capture to product conversion and separation—with minimal resources and polishing operations. This represents a significant advantage over biomass-derived biofuels, including newer algae- and cellulose-based forms, which are hindered by varying obstacles: costly biomass production, numerous processing steps, substantial scale-up risk and capital costs.”

Joule SolarConverter

Basically biotech agents use sunlight to transform CO2 to fuel (and by-products) — and according to the company at a cost of less than $50 per barrel (current price per barrel is approximately $70 per barrel).

Currently, the U.S. consumes about 21 million barrels of oil every day according to the CIA. Joule says it can create 20,000 gallons of SolarFuel liquid energy per acre per year. So let’s do the math: 20,000 gallons of SolarFuel liquid energy equals about 476 barrels of oil. 476 barrels divided by 365 days per year equals 1.3 barrels produced per day per acre. That’s a whole mess of acres needed to get this beast going to make a dent in the nation’s energy needs.

But… the company says the product is scalable and already has a SolarCollecter prototype running in New Mexico.

We’ll be keeping an eye on Joule in 2010.

What’s causing the rapid rise? Wall Street couldn’t possibly be looking at the automaker’s false $2.3 billion quarterly profit announced last week (at an operating loss of $424 million). And surely it can’t be Monday’s news of S&P’s outlook of Ford changing from “negative” to “developing”. Not likely.

Odds are, Ford is continually making improvements to its vehicles — improvements that matter. Last week it announced its Escape hybrid received new nickel metal hydride cells that offer 20 percent more power.

The same week, it announced that its new 2.0-liter EcoBoost 4-cyclinder engine will debut in 2010 (that’s Ford’s version of a gasoline turbocharged direct injection (GTDI) engine), along with a 6-speed dual-clutch Powershift gearbox.

Those are the steady small gains while the company aggressively pursues plug-in hybrid and hydrogen fuel-cell powered vehicles.

Plus the company’s finally paying attention to design and beginning to compete with Euro cars.

Ford Flex

That combined with paring down labor costs — and all the sudden Ford has a fighting chance of holding on to $7 and seeing a slower-paced rise into 2010.

But will the company make it to 2010 without asking for its own bailout?