evs

Mitsubishi is partnering with California utility companies Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison to bring the oddly named i MiEV electric vehicle to the Golden State. Here's the catch: you won't even be given the option to purchase one. The vehicle, which is based on Mitsubishi's "i" gasoline-powered mini car on sale in Japan, is being imported in limited quantities for testing purposes only and will not be available for public purchase.

A 330-volt lithium ion battery system, located under the floor deck, powers a permanent magnet electric motor. The 47-kW electric motor … Read more

Who's bringing the electric car back to life? Mayor Gavin Newsom hopes he can help in San Francisco by partnering with Project Better Place, according to Earth2Tech.

The venture, founded by the mayor's friend Shai Agassi, aims for all passenger vehicles in Israel to run on batteries rather than gasoline. Drivers would subscribe to cars much like they subscribe to cellular phone plans. The biggest challenge is to create the electric car infrastructure, a network of stations for charging vehicles and replacing batteries.

In Israel last week, Newsom met with CEO Moshe Kaplinsky and volunteered to make the … Read more

The HTC Mogul is about to get fast...real fast. Today, Sprint released a software upgrade that brings an EV-DO Rev. A upgrade to the Windows Mobile smartphone, making it the first such handset in the United States. EV-DO Rev. A is an evolution of EV-DO which boosts download speeds from the 400Kbps-to-700Kbps range to 600Kbps-to-1.4Mbps range, while upload speeds will average about 350Kpbs to 500Kpbs (compared with EV-DO's 50Kpbs to 70Kbps). In short, you're going to get faster Web browsing, e-mail, and downloads--that is, if you're lucky enough to live in a coverage area.

According … Read more

In order to get its electric sports car to owners sooner, Tesla Motors plans to deliver cars with a temporary transmission that falls short of its originally promised performance.

The news was distributed to the wide world on Thursday in a blog post from Ze'ev Drori, Tesla's new president and CEO.

The post is a reprint of a letter that was sent to Tesla purchasers on December 21, as a follow-up to a town hall meeting for Tesla owners that took place on December 12. About 100 people, including those who called in, participated in the meeting, according … Read more

I wrote about Kindle when it was announced, and again when it arrived, but all of that was just warmup. Today I'll be providing a genuine review.

I've had my Kindle for eight days now. I've bought eight books for it (well, seven plus a short story) and read three of them, installed over 90 other free ebooks, spent time browsing the Web, and... I actually read the manual. On the Kindle, naturally.

It's a good thing I ordered mine so quickly, Amazon's web page for Kindle says they're sold out and they don'… Read more

Amazon has released Kindle, its new e-book reader.

[Later update: my Kindle review is online now.]

Newsweek has published a lengthy article about it. CNET's coverage includes a review, a photo gallery, a Crave blog, and a News.com blog. That's plenty of factual coverage.

I won't rehash the basic features of Kindle, but I will try to compare it with the Sony Reader--now in its second generation and Kindle's primary competition. I will also talk about what I see as the strong and weak points of the Kindle design.

Disclaimer: This is all based on … Read more

DIXON, Calif.--I'm sitting on a stairway in the middle of the world's-largest corn maze and blogging the experience. Literally.

I like to say I'm the first to do things, and of course, you never really know if it's true. But I have to say I think the odds that someone else has been blogging inside this maze, which comprises 40 acres of healthy cornfield in this small farming town near Sacramento, are pretty small. But you never know.

I'm doing it thanks to the Verizon EV-DO card I've been using, and the ability … Read more

Starting this month, five Hewlett-Packard business notebooks will be come packaged with Sprint's mobile broadband network.

The HP Compaq 2710p convertible notebook, 6510b, 6910p, 8510p notebooks and 8510w mobile work station, are the first offerings from HP to be eligible for embedded Sprint service. Prices for the five models range between $959 and $2,049. HP says to expect additional models to be added later this year.

The companies will jointly market the notebooks, which will have access to Sprint's 3G EV-DO network beginning sometime in October. Customers who sign up for a one- or two-year service agreement … Read more

I'm sitting in a tent at 4,000 feet, surrounded on all sides by national forest. And I'm online.

It's astounding.

This is where my in-laws live, on top of a mountain, a 45 minute drive to the nearest town. I've never been able to get online here before. In fact, when I was first coming here, in 2000 or so, we could barely get a cell signal.

But here I am, connected--albeit, certainly not at high-speed--via Verizon's EV-DO network. Doing Google searches. I even got into Second Life for a moment.

I mean, I'… Read more