Jeff Nolan's take on innovation, entrepreneurship, tech and stuff that interests me
We’ve been hearing from practically every car manufacturer that they will be releasing plug-in electric models of popular cars. Enough with the announcements, we need actual sellable cars in dealerships. Instead, we have Volt in 2010 (and it’s arguably a pretty significant development that is coming in on schedule), Toyota is dragging their feet on [...]
The results are running neck-and-neck. After seeing it for the second time, it doesn’t look as disappointing but I’d still prefer the concept. Count me in for one at any rate, I’m buying one of these as soon as it’s available. On a related note, the EV1 from GM was fugly, if they had made [...]
Quick, how much is $2.7 trillion? Answer, the entire annual U.S. Federal government budget. The reason why I’m skeptical of these plans is that they feel a lot like “have your cake and eat it too” plans. For example, Schmidt suggests that his plan costs will be recovered in savings and from half a million [...]
I’ve been watching Pickens with a high degree of curiosity as he pitches his energy plan. On one hand I see a guy worth $4b that isn’t in this for the money, yet I haven’t seen too many billionaires that were not always looking for a 45 degree angle on a deal. I was therefore [...]
Interesting analysis on the candidates proposals for alternative energy and vehicles. PM’s Geek the Vote series takes an in-depth look at the presidential candidates’ policies and positions on science and technology. In this installment, car-tech experts evaluate the stances of Senators John McCain and Barack Obama on America’s future electric vehicles, including funding for battery [...]
I long ago stopped watching IPOs but A123 Systems is going to be one to watch. The company makes advanced lithium ion batteries that are primarily targeted to the transportation market and as you can imagine this has been a hot growth market. A123 alone went from less than $1m in revenue in 2005 to [...]
I hadn’t written about Zigbee is so long I had to go back to my old blog to search for it. I remain pretty bullish on this category of technology but am pragmatic about medium term results for several reasons. Commercial power users have a lot of incentives to retrofit facilities with energy saving technology [...]
For all the talk about the lowly light bulb being a primary front in the ongoing journey to becoming green, the fact is that there are few good options to replace the incandescent when it comes to light quality, cost, and environmental impact. I have a few CFLs in the Nolan household but I simply [...]
This is great news. Technology people like to point to clean tech solutions that are literally decades away from mass market because they are the more intellectually interesting problems to tackle. Environmental zealots think the government should just start banning anything that emits exhaust, throwing us back to the Neolithic period somewhere between the Copper [...]
I met the CEO of a Kalex Systems recently, really neat guy with a fascinating company. The company’s technology is based on the Kalina Cycle, a method for recovering heat and converting it into mechanical power. I get excited about technologies like this because so much of the available energy at our disposal is thrown [...]