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That still seems awfully soon for a full-scale production of a hydrogen car, but maybe Toyota knows something we don"t.  Hydrogen fuel cells have a lot of potential, but the technology and infrastructure is still way behind electric vehicles.

We"re more optimistic about the plug-in hybrid and all-electric models they"re planning for release much sooner, but we"ll be interested to hear more about the HFC model and to see if they stick to their timeline.

via AFP and Autoblog Green

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Professor Victor Li at the University of Michigan has developed a self-healing concrete that can help alleviate the need for demolition and replacement of concrete after it has been subjected to heavy stress. By devising a concrete that controls the way it cracks under stress, the concrete can withstand tensile strain hundreds of times more than ordinary concrete. Beyond its remarkable flexibility, this concrete can then heal itself, as well.

"In Li"s lab, self-healed specimens recovered most if not all of their original strength after researchers subjected them to a 3 percent tensile strain. That means they stretched the specimens to 3 percent beyond their initial size. It"s the equivalent of stretching a 100-foot piece an extra three feet—enough strain to severely deform metal or catastrophically fracture traditional concrete."

"The professor says this new substance could make infrastructure safer and more durable. By reversing the typical deterioration process, the concrete could reduce the cost and environmental impacts of making new structures. And repairs would last longer."

Link: Michigan Today (thanks KGS!)

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The consensus is almost entirely positive. But lets start out with the cons, just for fun. First, it"s pretty heavy. Though it"s designed with light-weight materials, the battery and motor make it difficult to cary up and down stairs. However, you can disconnect the battery (the size and weight of a brick) and cary it up and down stairs for charging at home while the bike stays on the street. The £1198 sticker price might also make you a bit wary. There are, after all, cars that are almost cheaper than that now. Some riders wished there were higher gears, and it"s more complicated to fix if it ever breaks down.

The good news is that it"s extremely intuitive, can add power to your ride for up to 20 miles, charges in less than three hours, and works just fine as a regular bike once the battery is dead. The sleek, collapsible design will also (apparently) turn heads and make life in a small apartment simpler.

And for those of you hard core folks whol don"t believe bikes should be tained by the scourge of coal-fired electricity, just think of this as an alternative to an electric vehicle which would, of course, use much, much more power.

Via TreeHugger

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Having shipped hundreds of electric vehicle charging stations, and with repeat orders now coming in from Europe, Coulomb Technologies, a privately-held Silicon Valley company, expects to be profitable by the 2010 introduction of the Chevy Volt, according to its chief executive, Richard Lowenthal.

(Mr. Lowenthal appears in the video above, explaining the company’s ChargePoint Network.)

“Our plan was to sell a thousand stations, but we will probably double that,” he told Green Inc. last week after the company secured its third Bay Area order this year. “Our company is structured to be profitable based on early adopters.”

Founded in 2007, Coulomb is looking to crack the chicken-and-egg riddle that bedeviled the hydrogen fuel cell industry. Without a refueling infrastructure, consumers won’t buy vehicles. But no one invested in refueling stations without potential customers on the road.

“It is a very fundamental issue for the business,” Mr. Lowenthal said. “What do you do about the road trip?”

With electric vehicles, the additional problem is that in cities like San Francisco, where almost half of all vehicles park on the city’s streets, many potential buyers couldn’t recharge their cars overnight.

Mr. Lowenthal, a Cisco veteran who served as mayor of Cupertino, said that municipalities, parking companies and condo developers represent the first tranche of customers for charge points that will be deployed on city streets and in garages. They sell for $2,500 to $4,000 and can recharge an electric vehicle battery in four to ten hours.

In what might shape up to be the VHS/Betamax duel of the industry, a Coulomb rival, Better Place of Palo Alto, is looking to develop refueling stations where consumers on road trips can swap batteries in a matter of minutes. Still other companies are building rapid recharge points.

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A new catalyst based on iron works as well as platinum-based catalysts for accelerating the chemical reactions inside hydrogen fuel cells. The finding could help make fuel cells for electric cars cheaper and more practical.

Fuel cell researchers have been looking for cheaper, more abundant alternatives to platinum, which costs between $1,000 and $2,000 an ounce and is mined almost exclusively in just two countries: South Africa and Russia. One promising catalyst that uses far less expensive materials--iron, nitrogen, and carbon--has long been known to promote the necessary reactions, but at rates that are far too slow to be practical.

Now researchers at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) in Quebec have dramatically increased the performance of this type of iron-based catalyst. Their material produces 99 amps per cubic centimeter at 0.8 volts, a key measurement of catalytic activity. That is 35 times better than the best nonprecious metal catalyst so far, and close to the Department of Energy"s goal for fuel-cell catalysts: 130 amps per cubic centimeter. It also matches the performance of typical platinum catalysts, says Jean-Pol Dodelet, a professor of energy, materials, and telecommunications at INRS who led the work.

The improvement, reported in the latest issue of the journal Science, is "quite surprising," says Radoslav Adzic, a senior chemist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, NY, who also develops catalysts for fuel cells. The new material meets a benchmark for hydrogen fuel cells set five years ago that "we thought nobody would ever meet," adds Hubert Gasteiger, a visiting professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. "For the very first time, a nonprecious metal catalyst makes sense."

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