In urban transportation, electric is quickly becoming king, and the Johanson3 line of electric trikes are riding right into the competition. The Johanson3 scooters sport quite a few features that make them different from just about everything else that’s out there at the moment.

The scooters’ designation as “cargo bikes” indicates the first difference. These aren’t made to simply tool around town on; they can actually function as useful vehicles that will let you get your books, groceries, or even a passenger from one point to another. And if you are using the trike as your “last mile” transpo, it detaches into two parts and folds up for easy stashing in a car or train.

The back seat allows a passenger to sit comfortably while holding onto conveniently placed handles. In the front, the driver has an adjustable seat that can be used for sitting or for standing/leaning. The Johanson3 folks say that this feature is designed to make it more comfortable to ride the scooters while riding a skirt, kimono, sari, or other garment that might make riding a traditional sit-down scooter difficult.

If you don’t have any stuff or people to haul around, the rear seat can also be used as a cargo space. There are several different models from the company, each with a different weight capacity: the Rhino is the workhorse of the bunch with a payload capacity of 660 pounds (or two rear passengers), and the Urban 2+ can carry up to 485 pounds.

It’s hard to gauge just how energy efficient the scooters will be since they haven’t yet been released and speed requirements differ from one country to the next. Twin hub-mounted motors in the back propel the trike along with zero emissions; if you’re riding hard and keeping it around the top speed of approximately 28 MPH, you’ll get between 35 and 40 miles from each full charge. Pre-orders are being taken now with prices ranging from $2,260 for the kids’ version to $3900 for the X-Plorer Cargo Bike.

The post Electric Trikes Hefty Enough to Carry Cargo + Passengers first appeared on Gajitz.

Alternative energy sources are becoming more amazing every year, and Mercedes Benz has just revealed a surprising new power boost for its future generations of vehicles: paint. The high-tech “multi-voltaic silver” paint uses two methods to generate power. First, it acts as an all-over solar panel to capture the power of the sun that’s almost always hitting your car.

Second, the paint harnesses the wind moving across the body of the car. The movement of the wind creates power through electrostatic charging. The car is powered by more conventional methods, as well. It features an internal combustion engine that powers the front wheels while the rear wheels boast an electric engine.

The Mercedes Benz Vision G-Code SUV is purely a concept – an exploration of the types of power that will power tomorrow’s vehicles. As if the high-tech paint weren’t fascinating enough, the G-Code is also designed with two electric scooters included in the back compartment so you can scoot that last mile or two to your destination instead of circling for 20 minutes looking for a parking spot.

The post Future Mercedes SUV Could Be Powered By its Own Paint first appeared on Gajitz.

Whether or not you’ve jumped on the electric cars bandwagon already, the chances are that we will all have to switch to non-fossil fuel cars in the future. Unless they’re being charged with solar power, electric cars are still consuming fossil fuels from the grid, anyway. An entirely new way of thinking about fuel inspired a company called Nanoflowcell to develop a car powered by what appears to be a salt water-powered fuel cell.

The Quant e-Sportlimousine is being touted as the world’s first salt water powered car. The technology is surprisingly simple: two liquids are combined, with metallic salts acting as electrolytes. This creates an electrochemical reaction. The solution is pumped through two separate cells to induce “cold burning,” a process that produces electrical power. The setup is known as a flow cell battery.

Although their feasibility has been questioned by some, flow cell batteries are far superior to the lead-acid or lithium-ion batteries currently used in electric vehicles. They can take a vehicle 20 times farther than a lead-acid battery or five times farther than a lithium ion battery. Unlike conventional batteries which require a long time to recharge, all that is needed to recharge flow cell batteries is an exchange of the spent electrolyte-rich fluid for new, charged fluid.

The e-Sportlimousine is still under development, but it recently got approval for road testing in Germany. It has been in development for 14 years and, besides its impressive technology, is just plain handsome with its gull wing doors and modern streamlined interior. Its makers claim that it can travel up to 600 kilometers (about 373 miles) on a single tank of salty fuel and can reach speeds of over 200 MPH. With the first prototype having been declared safe to roam the German roads, the race is now on for the company to produce and test more prototypes while refining their technology.

The post Revolutionary Salt Water Battery Powers Robust E-Car first appeared on Gajitz.

Bike sharing programs have started popping up in cities all over the world, and now similar car sharing plans are making commuting easier for urban travelers. Given their relative size and complexity, however, loaner cars are understandably more difficult to manage than bikes. Toyota is hoping to overcome that hurdle with a car sharing program that will employ electric cars to simplify that “last mile” journey from the public transit station to work or school.

The scheme, called Ha:Mo (harmonious mobility), offers up two types of cars that can be rented in 15 minute increments. The i-Road is a funky three-wheeled car that seats just one, and the COMS features four wheels and seating for two. You can reserve a car and have it waiting for you when you get to your station. Rental rates for the cars vary from around €3 ($3.89 US) for 15 minutes to €5 ($6.50 US) for 30 minutes. The plan is being tried out in Grenoble, France, where 27 charging stations will be set up around the city. When a user is done with a loaner car, they just drive to a charging station and plug it in to end their trip.

Ha:Mo is an experiment in convincing commuters to use eco-friendly public transportation for most of their commute and electric cars for the last leg of the journey, negating the need to drive their own (probably gas-powered) vehicles the entire way. The Toyotas are tiny and nimble, making them ideal for Grenoble’s notoriously narrow streets. Hopefully that will be even more motivation for people to use them rather than their own cars to navigate the city.

The post Toyota’s Tiny EVs Bring ‘Last Mile’ Green Transpo to France first appeared on Gajitz.

This funky little hybrid looks like a retro-styled SUV, but its actual story is even more intriguing. The Nimbus concept car is a microbus that can take electric hybrids off-road. The concept comes from Brazilian designer Eduardo Galvani who claims it offers a greater driving range and better fuel economy than any hybrid currently on the market.

The adorable all-terrain Nimbus is powered by a 130Kw (equivalent to 180 hp) electrical engine lithium-ion battery that works along with the car’s combustion micro-generator to keep the battery constantly charged. A small array of solar panels on the vehicle’s roof provide the car with clean energy; a regenerative brake system helps recover and save some of the Nimbus’ kinetic energy.

Inside, the Nimbus’ nimble controls are equipped with all of the high-tech gadgetry a modern traveler could want. Obstacle detection, auto-pilot, rear camera, four types of drive assistance, GPS, and the rest of the car info/controls can be accessed through the removable 7-inch tablet in the car’s dashboard. Six airbags keep the driver and passengers safe from impacts; its unique shape keeps more room between the humans and the road which ups the safety quotient. This shape also gives the Nimbus the ideal center of gravity for traveling off-road in bumpy conditions.

The car’s exterior is just as carefully designed as its interior. The body materials were all chosen for their ideal ratios of strength to weight: titanium, aluminum, and carbon fiber all help to reduce the car’s energy consumption. A panoramic window array allows for ideal views of the passing landscape. Although it’s strictly a concept and will probably remain so for quite some time, the Nimbus has the potential to change the way we travel, making off-road exploration more eco-friendly than it’s ever been.

The post Eco-Friendly Electric SUV: Retro-Futuristic Off-Roading first appeared on Gajitz.