Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Photo: Cambridge Consultants

Jacq and I just watched Adele Live At The Royal Albert Hall (amazon affiliate link), and though every song was just wonderfully done, I found myself fascinated by what Adele was doing in between each song. Because even though most people would be interested in hearing her belt out her amazing repertoire of hits, what I took away from the performance was Adele’s real magical ability: the ability to resonate with her audience.

Know who has an interesting role? The “audience.” Look at the picture that goes with this post. None of these people would officially consider themselves the audience. They don’t list that as an occupation. None of them started out their day thinking, “You know, I think I’ll head down to Santa Monica Pier and see if I can find someone performing so I can stand there and take photos and cheer their antics.” But for a moment in time, they were the audience.

The rear view mirror is one of the most effective motivational tools ever created.

There’s no doubt that many people speed up in the face of competition. We ask, “how’d the rest of the class do?” We listen for someone breathing down our necks. And we discover that competition sometimes brings out our best.

There’s a downside, though. Years ago, during my last long-distance swim (across Long Island Sound… cold water, jellyfish, the whole nine yards), the competitiveness was pretty thick. On the boat to the starting line, there were hundreds of swimmers, stretching, bragging, prancing and working themselves up. By the time we hit the water, everyone was swimming someone else’s race. The start was an explosion of ego and adrenaline. Twenty minutes later, half the field was exhausted, with three hours left to go.

If you’re going to count on the competition to bring out your best work, you’ve surrendered control over your most important asset. Real achievement comes from racing ahead when no one else sees a path–and holding back when the rush isn’t going where you want to go.

If you’re dependent on competition then you’re counting on the quality of those that show up to determine how well you’ll do. Worse, you’ve signed up for a career of faux death matches as the only way to do your best work.

Self motivation is and always will be the most important form of motivation. Driving with your eyes on the rear view mirror is exhausting. It’s easier than ever to measure your performance against others, but if it’s not helping you with your mission, stop.

On this date in 1896, an electric car won one of the first automobile races in the United States. Amidst jeers from the crowd to “get a horse!” the ur-EV built by the Riker Electric Motor Company slowly completed five laps around a horse racing track in Cranston, RI. It took 15 minutes for the car to go about five miles.

One hundred and fifteen years later, Toyota Motorsport’s P001 (above) broke the lap record for EVs at the Nürburgring last week, becoming the first electric car to break the eight minute barrier on the 12.92 mile Nordschleife circuit.

With 520V lithium-ion batteries powering twin electric motors that put out 590 pound-feet of torque, the 2,138-pound P001 rocketed through the Green Hell in 7 minutes, 47.794 seconds — well under the previous record of 9 minutes, 1.338 seconds.

It may be depressing for EV proponents to see how little their beloved technology has come since the Cleveland administration, but Toyota engineers are still impressed with the performance of the P001.

“There’s no doubt that electric motorsport can be every bit as thrilling as traditional racing and it was an amazing sensation to watch the TMG electric vehicle fly past on the Nordschleife, with only the sound of wind rushing past and tyres squealing,” said Rob Leupen of Toyota Motorsport, GmbH (TMG). “But this is not the end of the story for TMG and I hope we will see our electric powertrains in action on the track again soon.”

In other words: Don’t believe an EV can deliver just as much excitement on the track as a gasoline-powered car? Get a horse.

Photo: Toyota Motorsport. Video: JapaneseSportCars

Back in 1955, when Bill Haley And His Comets were hitting their stride and “jet set” referred to people who actually flew places, General Motors introduced the Chevrolet small block V8 engine. A marvel of compact design, technical innovation and (relative) fuel efficiency, it didn’t take long for the potent powerplant to end up in everything from milk trucks to race cars.

The little engine that could was heralded with the usual corporate fanfare, but few expected it to be the unmitigated success it became. It transformed Chevrolet, helped drive America’s love affair with performance and became one of the 10 best engines of the 20th century. Fifty-six years later, GM says it is about the crank out its 100 millionth small block Chevrolet engine.

Sort of. Actually, not really.

General Motors will crank out a V8 Chevrolet engine that is a descendant of the engine born in 1955. But it isn’t the same engine at all. Contemporary Chevrolet V8s have little in common with the original small block Chevrolet beyond eight cylinders, a single shared dimension and a pushrod drivetrain. So it’s a faux milestone, heralded during GM’s 100th anniversary. But that in no way detracts from the original’s place in history, because the small block Chevrolet engine remains GM’s Mt. Everest.

The V8 engine was something of an anomaly before World War II, when most automakers offered inline fours, sixes and eights. That changed after the war as consumers demanded more performance and power.

Chevrolet was among the last to the V8 party, offering only a straight-six from 1929 until 1954. It was a fine engine but lacked the oomph consumers, particularly the growing post-war hot rod culture, wanted. GM chief engineer Ed Cole set out to design a powerful, light and affordable V8.

Cole’s answer to that equation was elegantly simple: A compact, efficient 90-degree V8 engine with overhead valves, pushrod valvetrain and 4.4-inch on-center bore spacing. The first engine had a displacement of 265 cubic inches and delivered 195 horsepower. It appeared in the (now) iconic 1955 Chevrolet (pictured).

The engine was revolutionary for its light weight, compact size, general simplicity and remarkable durability, said John Wolkonowicz, an automotive historian and former industry analyst. Although there were some hiccups during the first year or so, GM worked them out and the engine quickly became a hit.

Consumers loved the performance and fuel economy, which was on par with the six-cylinder engine it replaced. Racers and rodders loved its performance and light weight, quickly dubbing it “Mighty Mouse.”

“Until the the small block Chevrolet, the flathead Ford engine was the rodder’s delight,” Wolkonowicz said. “That shifted right away when the small block Chevrolet came out. It was small, it was light and it lasted forever. Hot rodders loved it.”

They still do. Even now, you’ll see the small block Chevrolet and its descendants, the LS and LT engines, almost everywhere, powering almost everything. There are no end to the tricks tuners can use to generate enough torque to move houses and enough horsepower to seriously warp your perspective of time and space.

“The performance of the small block transformed Chevrolet,” Jim Campbell, vice president of GM Performance Vehicles and Motorsports, said in a statement. “The small block made Chevrolet the weapon of choice for grassroots racers on the drag-racing and sports-car tracks across America.”

You’d expect him to say that, of course, but it isn’t hyperbole because it’s true. The ubiquitous engine has appeared in everything from stock car racing (more NASCAR wins than any other engine) to drag racing to endurance racing, not to mention an ungodly number of hot rods built in the past 50 years.

The original small block Chevrolet grew in displacement and output over the years. In 1957, the 283 cubic-inch engine fitted with Rochester fuel injection became the first engine to produce one horsepower per cubic inch. The 350 cubic-inch variant appeared in 1967 and eventually appeared in everything from station wagons to sports cars. It almost certainly is the most popular small block V8 engine of all time.

The first-gen small block engine reached its zenith with the 400 cubic-inch monster in 1970. By that point, the venerable mill was all but bulletproof.

“By the time the engine was truly perfected in 1970, 300,000 miles was the norm for a 350 cubic-inch small block Chevrolet,” Wolkonowicz said. “It was a beautiful, remarkable engine.”

Those with jaundiced eyes might say, “Yeah, yeah. That was then. What does an engine designed half a century ago have to do with getting down the road in the 21st century?”

A lot, actually. The DNA of the small-block Chevrolet can be found in modern GM engines.

General Motors revamped the small block when it introduced the 347 cubic-inch LT engine in 1992 to comply with tightening fuel economy and emissions regulations. The LT featured, among other changes, reverse cooling (in which the coolant flows down through the cylinder heads into the engine block) and an optical distributor mounted at the front of the engine. But it was, at its heart, the same engine Cole designed.

GM went back to the drawing board for the LS engine, which first appeared in the Chevrolet Corvette in 1997. Yes, it’s a V8, but it’s not a small block V8.

“Everything is different,” Wolkonowicz said. “The only thing that’s the same is it’s a 90-degree layout with pushrods and a 4.4-inch on-center bore. Every other part of the engine has been redesigned.”

That doesn’t detract from the significance of the original, or the potential of its descendants. GM has stuck with the general design all these years because it still offers the same benefits: small size, light weight and excellent power.

“As fabulous as the original small block was, the new small block is better in every way,” Wolkonowicz said. “It’s more durable. It’s got more performance. It’s quieter. It’s smoother. It is is capable of better fuel economy and lower emissions. It is simply a much better engine. It is to the 21st century as the original was to the 20th century.”

Photos: General Motors

Everyone knows the Achilles’ heel of electric vehicle are limited range and long recharge time. A lot of time and money is being spent trying to change that. Lithium-air batteries are a promising technology that theoretically could create batteries the same energy density as gasoline.

We’re still a long way from that happening, but research suggests we could see lithium-air batteries that hold 5 to 10 times as much energy as lithium-ion batteries of the same weight and double the amount for the same volume.

“No other battery has that kind of energy density, so far as we know,” Ming Au, principal scientist at Savannah River National Laboratory, tells IEEE Spectrum.

This lithium-air test battery has an inlet and an outlet to allow air to flow, providing oxygen for the battery’s operation.

The promise of smaller, lighter batteries that pack a greater punch than anything on the market could boost the performance of everything from laptops to electric vehicles like the Nissan Leaf.

Such batteries use a lithium anode and a cathode comprised of a porous material that draws oxygen from the air. The lithium combines with oxygen to form lithium oxide and release energy.

Because the oxygen comes from the ambient air, the cathode is lighter than that of a li-ion battery, giving lithium-air batteries far higher energy density. The lab has demonstrated a coin-sized rechargeable lithium-air battery with a density of 600 mAh/g, far higher than the 100 to 150 mAh/g of lithium-ion batteries.

There are, of course, some bugs to work out. The biggest is the limited number of times such batteries can be cycled. The lithium-air battery that Au’s team developed can be recharged 50 times or so.

The challenge lies is converting the lithium oxide back into lithium, which at this point can be done only with catalysts. Researchers also hope to speed up the recharging process. Another challenge is ensuring there is absolutely no water in the electrolyte or water vapor in the oxygen because lithium reacts violently with water.

Au said rechargeable lithium-air batteries probably won’t be commercially viable to many years.

The technology got a boost last year when researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology discovered electrodes that use gold or platinum as a catalyst are more efficient than carbon electrodes. They hope to determine the optimal catalyst for use in lithium-air batteries.

The MIT team also wants to study the chemistry of the charging and discharging processes to determine what compounds are produced and how they react with others in the system.

Photos of an experimental lithium-air battery: Patrick Gillooly / MIT

The World-Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has unveiled a new logo for HTML5 — and along with it, a new way of framing the conversation about newer web development technologies.

The topic of HTML5 has been one of great debate and no small amount of confusion over the past year or so. With the ardent support of companies such as Google and a great deal of enthusiasm from developers in all areas of work, HTML5 has taken its place in popular conversation as the magic-bullet antidote for everything that’s wrong with web development (we’re looking at you, Flash).

On the logo’s new site, we read, “It stands strong and true, resilient and universal as the markup you write. It shines as bright and as bold as the forward-thinking, dedicated web developers you are. It’s the standard’s standard, a pennant for progress. And it certainly doesn’t use tables for layout.”

The logo was designed by boutique agency Ocupop, a firm that focuses on branding, identity and web design, among other facets of marketing and design work.

Ocupop logo designer Michael Nieling said in a statement, “The term HTML5 has taken on a life of its own; there has been significant confusion and debate both within the developer community and in the public at large as to what exactly HTML5 is when the term is used outside of simply referring to the spec itself… The standard needs a standard. That is, HTML5 needs a consistent, standardized visual vocabulary to serve as a framework for conversations, presentations, and explanations.”

The HTML5 badge comes in a keystone shape that symbolizes “how HTML5 stands at the center of this current technology movement,” as Neiling put it. The shape is also reminiscent of a coat of arms, a sort of “badge of honor we felt captured the spirit and substance of the open web platform and the community surrounding it.”

The logo is meant to be taken and used by all members of the web developer/designer community; in fact, on the logo’s site, you can customize your own badge according to the types of technology you use with eight classes that range from semantics to styling.



The site also offers free stickers (just send in a self-addressed, stamped envelope) and $22.50 T-shirts with the new HTML logo. And of course it’s got a full gallery of sites that truly showcase what devs and designers can do with HTML5.

Neiling concludes, “Paul Rand was quoted at some point saying that great logos have ‘the pleasure of recognition and the promise of meaning.’ At first glance, people immediately see the number five, the badge, the power, and the excitement of this logo and the movement as a whole — they get that ‘pleasure of recognition,’ they get it immediately. Then the shape, the shading and very real latent meanings… also come through.

“That promise of meaning, that potential that the open web platform and the ‘new’ HTML5-driven web offers, that’s there too.”

What do you think of the new HTML5 logo? Let us know in the comments.

The makers of a new all-electric trash truck soon to be plying the streets of a Paris suburb promise that the only fumes coming from the truck will involve rotten fruit and expired cheese, not clouds of diesel exhaust.

Despite what gets loaded into the hopper, the 26-ton truck’s emissions are clean, with each truck saving an estimated 130 tons of CO2 emissions each year over a diesel-powered model. The trash truck, built by PVI Electric Powertrain, features liquid cooled lithium-ion battery packs from Dow Kokam that tout a 10-year usable life and stability in extreme climates. Each truck will have five strings of seven battery packs, which provide the equivalent of 250 kilowatt hours of energy.

“This achievement demonstrates that real advanced battery solutions exist for the commercial and fleet industry today,” said Dow Kokam Vice President Jean-Francois Herchin. The company claims that it’s the first fully-electric trash truck with the performance of a diesel-powered truck, and perhaps one of the largest electric utility trucks on the road.

Utility vehicles like trash trucks — and the hybrid street sweeper we told you about last week — are ideal for electrification, as they travel fixed routes at predetermined times and often replace noisy, smelly vehicles in dense urban cores. The PVI electric trash truck is no exception. Drivers can pick up 16 tons of trash in two rounds of service with a recharge or battery swap during the driver’s lunch break or a shift change.

Anyone who has ever been stuck behind a slowly accelerating trash truck will be glad to hear that PVI designed a gearbox that allows the truck to climb hills without impeding traffic, and the electric drivetrain means that 100 percent of torque is available at acceleration.

The first truck will debut in the Paris suburb of Courbevoie as part of the fleet of SITA Ile de France, a division of Suez. By the end of 2011, another eleven electric trash trucks will hit the road.

Photo: Dow Kokam