It’s hard to ignore the lack of infrastructure and safety for cyclists in the Middle East. In Egypt you might get sexually harassed if you are a woman riding a bike in Cairo. With the raised sidewalks, when they exist in Amman, Jordan; and the deathly traffic and smog, riding in Amman isn’t such a […]
After a test trial on about 250 cars Israel’s Better Place electric car company has opened its doors to the general public this week. Apart from announcing new pay-as-you-charge deals, instead of the off-putting flat rate, the company offers a new twist on the limited mobility of EVs: battery switch stations located throughout the country […]
Have you received an email saying your car’s air con could kill you? The jury is still out until more scientific evidence comes in. Car and home air conditioning units provide a cooler internal environment, and may also be a possible source of drinking water in emergency situations . But there is another side to […]
It’s mission accomplished. The Solar Impulse, the world’s longest solar powered flight has landed back home in Madrid, Spain. The flight took 17 hours from Rabat, Morocco. The plane’s maiden voyage was from Spain to Morocco, proving that a solar-powered plane could fly both day and night. Next, say its owners Swiss pilots Bertrand Piccard […]
Better Place driving guide Ronit hooks up ZE car after test drive In the six month period since Better Place put its first 100 Renault Fluence electric cars on Israeli roads in January, 2012; the company headed by entrepreneur Shai Agassi has already put around 300 cars on Israeli streets and highways. Many of them have […]
Weird science that this video clip of bus drifting from Saudi Arabia comes to my attention just as I hop off my office bus in Jordan. My bus is a small one, seats maybe 24. It’s lightweight and nimble, one of hundreds cruising Jordan’s roads. Absent a reliable mass transit system, these little buses, which […]
Pilot Andre Borschberg was forced to fly the Solar Impulse back to Rabat when turbulence made it impossible to cross the Atlas Mountains in southern Morocco on June 14, 2012. But yesterday’s second attempt was finally successful, and the team was welcomed in Ouarzazate by a jubilant crowd. The 683 km journey was completed in 17 hours […]
100% electric and driving around Israel: nothing plainer than that! I’ve seen a Better Place Renault Fluence ZE all electric car in the suburban community of Ramat HaSharon, and more than five months after Better Place put 100 electric cars on Israeli roads I spotted another Renault Fluence ZE car in the city of Netanya. This spotting […]
With 23 seats and 16 doors, the all electric Superbus is no ordinary car It’s 15 meters long, super luxurious and totally electric powered. It’s called the Superbus, and it was originally proposed as a super fast and luxurious commuter vehicle between the UEA Emirate states of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. This totally electric and […]
The world watched with bated breath as André Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard respectively made their way from Switzerland to Spain and finally to Morocco in the sun-powered Solar Impulse. The first solar-powered transcontinental flight has come to a close but the journey towards a more sustainable method of global travel is only just beginning. As Piccard, who […]
We would give anything to be in Rabat as the world’s first solar-powered transcontinental flight comes to an end at roughly 11pm local time. Despite the relatively late hour (chosen to avoid dense air traffic), delegates from the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (MASEN) and others will be at the airport to congratulate pilot Bertrand […]
More clean tech innovation from Israel? Researchers Prof. Moti Herskowitz and Prof. Miron Landau from Ben Gurion University in Israel were recently awarded a highly competitive Israel Strategic Alternative Energy Foundation (I-SAEF) grant to further their groundbreaking research in liquid fuels. Herskowitz heads the BGU Energy Initiative, which is developing multiple alternative fuels from solar […]
High performance and gold plated to boot: a Porsche 997 GT2 on sale in Dubai. Photo: GT Spirit.com We’ve written lots about super luxury cars in the Gulf region on Green Prophet. While one of them, a white gold Mercedes sports coup was touted to be able to run on bio-fuel; others like a gold trimmed armored […]
Seeing a prototype Better Place EV car is a lot different than the real thing on the road. Photo by Maurice Picow More than five months have passed since Shai Agassi’s Better Place electric car company put its first 100 Renault Fluence EV on Israeli roads. The event was covered with a certain amount of […]
Headphones kill pedestrians and cyclists who can’t hear traffic. Israel proposes new legislation to ban the music while cycling. Israel is rapidly becoming a nation of bikers, from cycle-tourism to the bike-sharing program that earned Tel Aviv municipality a Green Globe Award this year. But it has proven a risky method of transit on crowded streets. Sunday, […]
As I write this, the Solar Impulse is traveling 94.2 km/h at an altitude of 7,016 meters en route to Madrid, where co-pilots Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg will switch seats before leaving for their final destination Morocco. This is the world’s very first sun-powered transcontinental flight and its historic landing in Rabat, Morocco will […]
Volvo’s new C30 electric model emphasizes safety over performance Electric cars, including the Better Place Renault Fluence EV, of which 100 cars were launched on Israel’s roads in January of this year; are having issues involving safety factors. This includes GM’s Chevy Volt where lithium battery packs were catching fire in side impact crash tests. But […]
Better Place revs up its charge spots in Israel Shai Agassi hopes Israel is ready to embrace the efficiency and economics of electric cars. His company Better Place rolled out four electric car charging stations in northern Israel. He plans to quickly grow this network so that every place in Israel with be within range […]
Visit Autopooling.com to car pool in Lebanon. It is often true that through hardship people naturally become more resourceful. Carpooling first became prominent in the United States as a rationing tactic during World War II. It returned in the mid 1970s due to the 1973 oil crisis and the 1979 energy crisis and it has […]
A new adaptor ring cuts noise pollution at airports. Airports are like Desperate Housewives. Unpopular neighbors, but crazy sensual. You can see them, feel them, smell them, and you absolutely hear them. Ask anyone living or working near an airport and they’ll tell tales of noise pollution so extreme it wakes babies, rattles windows, and sets off […]
Tel Aviv’s mysterious gas smell is nothing compared to Cairo’s annual “black cloud”. Tel Aviv is Israel’s largest city, and at times has been so saturated by car exhaust air pollution environmentalists have sometimes said that people run a serious risk of brain damage if they ride their bicycles there during heavy air pollution days. […]
You see all kinds of weird transportation in the Middle East: but the worst is drifting where young Arab males purposefully “drift” their cars into crowds of people. I don’t understand the lust for cars. I’m unresponsive to the siren call of Formula 1, NASCAR, and Top Gear. I think commuter trains and subways are […]
Math helps us understand how people flow, and just maybe it could help Hajj pilgrims stay safe. A Californian jogs to the beach. Coming towards him on the sidewalk is a Texan. Unless one steps aside they’ll collide. Quick: which way does the jogger move? If this is in Europe or the USA, heavy odds he […]
Morocco’s zero-carbon car factory opening earlier this month, via NY Times. The CEO of Renault–Nissan alliance Carlos Ghosn and Moroccan King Mohammed VI inaugerated French automaker’s one-billion-euro plant in Tangier which is set to boost Morocco’s automobile industry.The plant will build several new ‘low cost’ vehicles with an annual capacity that could reach ups 400,000 […]
“Bring waste oil, take away money” reads this advertisement for BAYTOM, a machine that incentivizes Turks to recycle cooking oil into biodiesel. In Turkish cities with BAYTOMs (Waste Vegetable Oil Collection Machines), residents can bring their used cooking oil outside and pour it into a machine that will measure its fat content and dispense a […]
