Ford E85 Plug-In Hybrid is Hot!

We're zipping along at 40 mph on the streets of Dearborn, Michigan, and not burning a drop of gasoline. Our ride is quiet, smooth, and clean ... propelled by electricity downloaded from the grid via a standard 110 volt household outlet. This test drive of Ford's Escape Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle, or PHEV, has left us mighty impressed and ready for more.

As a PHEV, this Escape can accelerate up to 40 mph solely on electric power at a fairly aggressive rate without need for the internal combustion engine. Hold a steady 40 mph and the electric drive is more than happy to maintain this momentum on its own. Above 40 mph or during hard acceleration, the Escape's Atkinson cycle four-cylinder engine kicks in to provide extra power as needed. Even then, the PHEV Escape uses very little gasoline because it has also been modified to be a flex-fuel vehicle with the ability to operate on E85 ethanol.

For around town jaunts, it's possible to operate on just the electricity stored in this efficient SUV's lithium-ion battery, with enough juice on hand to travel up to 30 miles if you keep it under 40 mph. For longer distances, the balance of power between the electric drive and internal combustion engine will yield exceptional fuel economy. Once the high-voltage Li-ion battery is drawn down to a 30 percent charge, the PHEV functions much like your typical Escape Hybrid.

For a 30 mile trip in average driving conditions, Ford says the Escape PHEV will deliver the equivalent of 120 mpg. The longer you drive before recharging, the lower the mpg number will be, but thanks to the Escape Hybrid's 15 gallon fuel tank the vehicle isn't range-limited for cross-country travel. If your daily commute falls within that 30 mile range, 120 mpg will cut your fuel bill drastically. And since electric power is far less expensive than gasoline for low speed travel, overall energy costs will be a fraction of what you would normally pay.

The Escape PHEV's center LCD communications screen clearly illustrates the difference. On the trip computer screen, a driver can enter the current price of gasoline and the going rate for a kilowatt hour (kW/hrs) of electricity. The system then keeps a running tab of your total energy consumption and the savings achieved by the use of electric power. It also provides current average fuel economy, the previous average, and previous best economy.

Ford is using an advanced technology Li-ion HV battery with a capacity of 10 kW/hrs. The standard Escape Hybrid utilizes a 2 kW/hr nickel-metal-hydride battery pack. The Li-ion battery technology is too expensive for prime time consumer automotive applications at this stage of development, but breakthroughs in design and chemistry - along with higher volume applications - should bring costs down in the future. To recharge the Li-ion battery, a standard electrical cord is simply plugged into the port on the driver's side front fender. It's pretty cool, too, surrounded by a ring of blue LED lights with a flip-open billet aluminum door. A full charge will take six to eight hours at 110 volts. The percentage of charge shows up on a blue LED readout mounted behind the inside rearview mirror so it can be easily checked from the front of the vehicle.

We found the plug-in Escape to be great fun to drive. With the combination of the four-cylinder internal combustion engine and 94 horsepower AC synchronous electric motor, it delivers spirited acceleration. The 3,900 pound Escape PHEV is said to have an electronically limited top speed of 102 mph. It does feel a bit heavier than a standard Escape Hybrid, no doubt due to the additional Li-ion battery capacity. On electric power alone, the Escape PHEV is super smooth under acceleration and the transitions to blended power with the internal combustion engine are nearly transparent and devoid of any shuddering.

Ford has a unique two year partnership with Southern California Edison that will eventually field a total of 20 Escape PHEVs in a study and demonstration fleet. The utility company will aid in a study on the electrification of automobile powertrains and how they impact the electric grid and power infrastructure. SCE and Ford will test the vehicles in typical consumer settings and real world applications jointly.

Will plug-ins make it to consumers' driveways in the next few years? Only time will tell. Battery breakthroughs are definitely needed to reduce costs, although new federal incentives should help defray those extra costs. Several automakers are also committing to plug-in hybrids in specific time frames to gain a market advantage, a move that will spur competition among automakers and certainly work toward speeding these vehicles to the showroom.

ZEO Electric Car Concept: The Next Dodge Charger?

The muscle cars that fueled automotive passion in the 1960s were wildly popular because high performance is both fun and addicting. What if a car company could capture those same emotions and sensations in a package that makes no excuses for its environmental impact ... a vehicle that doesn't sacrifice performance for green credentials that literally screams, "drive me?" Meet Chrysler's latest concept vehicle, the Dodge ZEO.

ZEO stands for Zero Emissions Operation. Where premium gasoline once flowed, electrons now deliver ample power. That's right, ZEO is a pure electric car, or more accurately an electric performance car. ZEO delivers clean electric performance on par with the venerable Chrysler HEMI V-8. Acceleration is well within the realm of a true muscle car: 0-60 mph from a standing start happens in less than six seconds.

This is possible because the ZEO is propelled by a 200 kilowatt electric motor that supplies 268 horsepower to the rear wheels. The advanced propulsion system is fed by a 64 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack that Chrysler says will offer a range in excess of 250 miles. The batteries are located very low in the chassis and below the cabin floor for a low center of gravity. Although the battery pack is large, ZEO manages to weigh in at just 2,650 pounds, thus enhancing overall performance and handling.

"The Dodge ZEO concept is designed to break the paradigm of what an electric car should look like," says Bill Zheng, Dodge ZEO principal exterior designer. "An electric car can be as expressive as any gasoline powered vehicle. The Dodge ZEO concept proves that point ... and then some."

Dodge is calling the ZEO a 2+2 sport wagon. The key word here is "sport" because very little about ZEO evokes the image of a traditional station wagon. Yes, the cabin extends back to the rear bumper with cargo space behind two rear buckets, but there is certainly nothing stodgy about this wagon. Its stance is pure muscle car, with huge 23 inch alloy wheels filling the exaggerated wheel arches and wide, rounded fender lines. ZEO is a very "fast" shape. The windshield, for example, arches up at an extreme rake from the long and expressive hood, extending all the way back over the passenger compartment to the "C" pillar. The cabin tucks inward from the widest portion at the front door line to form a sculpted teardrop form at the ZEO's tail.

Fortunately, while the ZEO is very expressive, it hasn't lost the Dodge brand character. Cues like the Dodge ram head badges and crosshair grille treatment, which is illuminated from behind, make it easily recognizable as a Mopar. Both front and rear lamps are treated as separate sculptural forms that add ,to the futuristic look of the car.

Zheng and his team took an unconventional approach with the door configuration. Rather than hinging from the front or rear, the ZEO's doors swing up out of the way in a "scissor" fashion to provide unobstructed access to the interior. Once these scissor doors are open, the interior quickly becomes the center of attention. Lou Gasevski, principal interior designer of the Dodge ZEO concept, describes the interior as "an example of designing for people who are used to a dynamic lifestyle and who are surrounded with information and virtual friends at all times." Interior lines are bold, yet minimal. Trimmed in Super White leather with dark gray accents, the ZEO's interior hints at a European flair. The designers were after an integrated look and treated the interior as a single piece of sculpture, accomplished by blending individual components into a unified whole.

To create the character of a true 2+2, a dramatic center console slopes downward at an angle that extends all the way past the rear bucket seats. The ZEO's steering wheel, column, and instrument panel are a single freestanding design element that adjusts as one unit. The wheel is open, with two closely spaced spokes allowing 80 percent of the rim uncluttered. A thin blue acrylic viewing screen, which is positioned directly in the driver's line of sight through the open steering wheel, supplies critical driving information.

Clearly, Chrysler designer's had the Sixties muscle car playbook in mind when they concocted the ZEO. A lightweight platform with an oversized motor driving the rear wheels is a sure recipe for fun. Only this time around, it's good clean fun.

Camera+ for iPhone Is Back with Tons of Effects, Editing Options, Slashed Price

Developer tap tap tap has re-introduced Camera+, a powerful photography application for iOS devices. Previously rejected by Apple over a function that remapped the iPhone's volume button to trigger the camera shutter, the software is now back with a host of new features, as well as a more attractive price (albeit only for a limited time).

The developers at tap tap tap not only managed to eliminate everything that could jeopardize the app’s re-approval in the App Store, but also added a range of new functions that make this app a definite must-have for anyone using their iPhone to take photos.
In addition to the advanced zooming, focus, and lighting capabilities, the app boasts a completely revamped shooting preferences panel, timer and burst shooting modes, and new Cyanotype, Tailfins, and Depth of Field effects (complete with sliders to adjust effect amount).

Additional effects can also be purchased directly from within the app. The first pack is the "I ♥ Analog" effects pack, which contains the Diana, Silver Gelatin, Helios, Contessa, Nostalgia, Expired, XPRO C-41, Pinhole, and Chromogenic effects.

New borders are to be had as well. These include Light Mat, Dark Mat, Round White, Round Black, Offset, Light Grit, Dark Grit, Viewfinder, Old-TImey, Film, and Sprockets.

Softpedia has compiled the remaining key additions in Camera+ 2.0 in the list below:

- New Darken, Cloudy, Shade, and Fluorescent scene modes
- New 3 x 2 crop, and rotation and flipping of photos
- Export of geolocation and metadata when when saving photos to the Camera Roll
- Functions to save and leave photos in Lightbox, commit all edits in photos, copy photos with edits committed, copy photos without edits, undo all edits in photos, and remove geolocation in photos.
- A new photo info panel showing photo metadata, editing recipe, and a map with the photo location

Germany's Sensitive Human-Like Robot

Science-fiction movies have predicted it, but German researchers have actually built it: a robot with two arms, three cameras, finger-tip sensitivity and facial expressions. Its name is the pi4-workerbot, and since it has basically the same size as a human, it can work at any modern standing or sitting workstation in an industrial manufacturing environment. The pi4-workerbot is not only a German success, but also an European pride, since its purpose is to help maintain the competitiveness of the European production. It is able to make more movements than any other normal robot and the most prized creation of the EU-funded PISA project, whose goal is to give flexibility to industrial mass production by using robots in the assembly processes. “We developed the workerbot to be roughly the same size as a human being,” said Dr.-Ing. Dragoljub Surdilovic, head of the working group at the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology IPK in Berlin.  The robot has three cameras, out of which the one on its forehead is a state-of-the-art 3D camera, capturing its general surroundings. It can do several tasks, like “measure objects or inspect a variety of surfaces,” said Matthias Krinke, Managing Director of pi4-Robotics, the company which should get the robot onto the market. For example, it can look at a chromed surface and see if the coating has been perfectly applied, depending on the way that light is reflected off the material. Krinke adds that “if you use two different cameras, it can inspect one aspect with its left eye, and another with its right,” and apparently it can do that over a continuous 24-hour period, which in medical technology could prove very valuable. As said before, the pi4-workerbot also has two arms, which, according to Surdilovic, “allows it to carry out new kinds of operations,” like transferring “a workpiece from one hand to the other.” The researcher explains that “conventional robotic arms generally only have one swivel joint at the shoulder; all their other joints are articulated. “In other words, they have six degrees of freedom, not seven like a human arm,” and also an additional rotation facility corresponding to the wrist of a human. Surdilovic’s group developed the control system for the workerbot, and he recalls that it proved to be a very difficult task. “Programming the two arms to work together – for example, to inspect a workpiece or assemble two components – was a real challenge. It requires additional sensor systems.” And since the robot has been built by Germans, it also has finger-tip sensitivity and several facial expressions. “If you set the strength of the grip correctly, it will take hold of an egg without cracking it,” says Surdilovic, and if it's doing a good job, it can smile happily. There are chances that this is the best Christmas gift ever, for people who built it and for those that will afford buying it.

Report: Nokia eyeing Microsoft's phone OS

Microsoft and Nokia are said to be working together on bringing to market Nokia-made smartphones that run Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system.

The report, which is the second such rumor in the past three months, comes from Eldar Murtazin--editor in chief of Moscow-based Mobile-Review.com, who some of you might remember making headlines earlier this year for a review of Nokia's N8 long before the device ever came out. This was followed shortly thereafter by Nokia reportedly going to the Russian police to get the prototype unit back.

Murtazin's post, which was picked up earlier this morning by blog Unwired View, goes into some detail about Nokia's new management (which includes former Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop as CEO) initiating discussions with Microsoft about creating a Nokia-made device that will blend technologies from both companies--specifically Microsoft's recently released Windows Phone OS running on Nokia's hardware.

Murtazin says the move (roughly translated) is desperate--especially for Nokia, which he compares to a diving plane with pilots who don't know what to do.

This would not be the first time rumors of Microsoft and Nokia discussing a phone collaboration have cropped up. In September, VentureBeat had a report from several sources saying that Nokia was planning to use Windows Phone 7 as "an additional platform," for its phones. This was refuted by Nokia a day later.

At the same time, these rumors do not exactly jibe with the company's talk of continuing to use Symbian and up-and-coming mobile OS MeeGo. Earlier this month, Nokia Vice President of Eseries Ilari Nurmi told ZDNet UK that the company would stick with Symbian for use on its business phone platform as a "primary"--that's even after MeeGo OS begins its mainstream roll-out in 2011.

"It's very important to note that Symbian is the primary platform today and will also be the primary platform in the future," Nurmi said in that interview.

Gift idea: 'Eye-Fi' moves photos to MacBook, PC

Though Eye-Fi's Secure Digital (SD) card has been out there for a couple of years, it's worth revisiting--just because it works. And it's not be a bad idea as a holiday gift for any digital camera owner.

Eye-Fi allows the transfer of photos from existing digital cameras wirelessly. A nice piece of inexpensive technology that has worked well for me.

Eye-Fi SD cards come in 4GB and 8GB capacities and, after a relatively painless setup, do away with USB cables and the task of inserting/removing of SD cards.

Because I own a couple of MacBook Airs, this technology makes a difference. My first- and second-generation Airs have no SD card slots and just one always-occupied USB port--one of the few downsides to an otherwise superb ultraportable laptop. So, this is a feature I need--though not to the point where I would want to limit my camera purchases to Wi-Fi-enabled models, like the Kodak EasyShare One--that was available a few years back--or the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-G3, among other cameras.

It's really just a matter of replacing your current SD card with the Eye-Fi card and having an in-home Wi-Fi router, which many people do these days.

Setup involves inserting a USB adapter into your system (the adapter is used only once at setup, after that everything is wireless), then confirming your Wi-Fi router information, and finally choosing where you want the photos to be stored on your laptop. There is a background application that handles the automatic transfers when you take photos.

Configuring the card requires you sign up for the Eye-Fi center. Setting up an Eye-Fi account did not go swimmingly when I set up the card--asking me to set up an account multiple times--but the Eye-Fi database seems--for now at least--to have resolved that hiccup.

I've been using Eye-Fi with my Kodak M580 and MacBook Air. So far, the card has done what it claims. As soon as you snap a picture, the photo is automatically sent to your PC over your home's Wi-Fi network. For me, it has been almost instantaneous.

And the Eye-Fi Center software also allows you to set up multiple networks. So, for example, I have Eye-Fi set up for my home Wi-Fi network and my mobile Verizon MiFi network (the latter is a credit card-size router that provides 3G connections for up to five devices.)

The 4GB version (which I have) is $39.99 at Best Buy, while the 8GB card is $99.99.

Two new Buick Regal models anticipate the road and the driver

In General Motors' latest effort to make the driving experience more comfortable, the company announced that the 2011 Buick Regal CXL Turbo offers three unique driving styles (standard, touring and sport) that can be changed by the flip of a switch from the driver, or automatically as the car senses changes in the road or the driver's style.

The new feature, called Interactive Drive Control System, alters the car's suspension, shift pattern, and steering sensitivity. The touring setting on the CXL offers a relaxed driving experience for long journeys. The sport setting enhances road-holding capability. And the standard, or default, setting is "optimized for all driving situations."

A modified version of Interactive Drive Control is coming to the 2012 Regal GS. The GS, which is a sportier Regal, will offer standard, sport, and GS driving styles. The standard mode is the setting for all-around use. The sport mode provides a level of performance between standard and the GS modes, and GS mode offers a tighter suspension and steering response.

"By enabling drivers to tune their vehicle to their driving situation and even their mood, we're better able to exceed their expectations and provide a more satisfying driving experience," said Robert Casparian, Regal product manager. "We fully expect to see this capability become more widely available in years to come."