Follow-Up: Moving the US Airways Airbus A320 from Hudson River Through East Rutherford NJ (9 Photos)
Here’s a follow up to our previous post about the amazing recovery of the US Airways Airbus A320 from the Hudson River. Apparently you can move just about anything, with the right equipment and know-how…
You remember Flight 1549, of course — that was the Airbus A320, that took off from New York’s LaGuardia Airport and then landed unexpectedly (if fortuitously) in the Hudson River. After the aircraft was recovered from the drink, it was hauled to the Garden State on a barge. And after it was removed from the barge, it was partially disassembled and transported by truck through the narrow streets of East Rutherford, NJ – a town best known as the home of the Meadowlands sports arena complex.
More Photos after the break… Click “Read More”
Racing at Sebring with Mike Kern and Dalton Zehr in the FuelClinic.com Camaro
Just a quick note on Sebring. I’m exhausted, taking the day to relax and recharge, but wanted to pass along a few notes.
Mike Kern writes: Team did GREAT- Dalton got us up to 3rd in Enduro race, started 89 cars, but red flagged (rain) prior to half-way (WX-non-race) bummer.
Mike Kern with MJK Racing shared driving the FuelClinic.com camaro with an impressive young man named Dalton Zehr, an experienced racer from a family of racers.
Dalton Zehr is not just another driver trying to make it to the big times. He has an impressive background in racing which started nine years ago. This young man has already accomplished more in his racing career than most drivers hope for in a lifetime. He started racing when he was seven years old in Caldwell, Idaho in a class of dirt winged cars called box stocks. In his first race he placed second and his second race he won. He continued the year to win several more races and be the youngest kid to be moved up in class after only four races. (More about Dalton.)
This was also the debut of the new hero cards created by Shawn at S3 Creative Group – they were so popular that we ran out early… note to self, next time take 4 times as many! You can download the .pdf version of the new hero card here.
It was an intense 4 days, with lots of sun, fun, cars, racing, old and new friends. I’ll recap the event in a few days – along with photos and video highlights of the event.
Hybrid car sales go from 60 to 0 at breakneck speed; Hybrid Car Sales Take Off
Hybrid whiplash. (Two articles w/ dissimilar headlines… 3/17/2009)
- Hybrid car sales go from 60 to 0 at breakneck speed
The gas-electric vehicles are piling up on dealers’ lots as anxiety over gasoline prices evaporates. But more hybrid models are on the way.
…Americans have cut back on buying vehicles of all types as the economy continues its slide. But the slowdown has been particularly brutal for hybrids, which use electricity and gasoline as power sources. They were the industry’s darling just last summer, but sales have collapsed as consumers refuse to pay a premium for a fuel-efficient vehicle now that the average price of a gallon of gasoline nationally has slipped below $2.”When gas prices came down, the priority of buying a hybrid fell off quite quickly,” said Wes Brown, a partner at Los Angeles-based market research firm Iceology. “Yet even as consumer interest declined, the manufacturers have continued to pump them out.”
Last month, only 15,144 hybrids sold nationwide, down almost two-thirds from April, when the segment’s sales peaked and gas averaged $3.57 a gallon. That’s far larger than the drop in industry sales for the period and scarcely a better showing than January, when hybrid sales were at their lowest since early 2005…
- Hybrid Car Sales Take Off
…The hybrid vehicle market is about to heat up. Major car makers are expanding their hybrid offerings with new innovations and improvements, including greater fuel economy, all designed to help the environment. Toyota, Lexus, Ford and Honda all have announced major milestones over the past week.Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. says the total combined Toyota and Lexus hybrid vehicle sales in the U.S. now have topped the one-million mark, thanks to six hybrid vehicles including the top-selling Toyota Prius. The Prius is touted as the all-time worldwide leader in hybrid sales.Cumulative worldwide sales of Toyota and Lexus hybrids have exceeded 1.7 million vehicles through January 2009. The car maker projects sales of one million gas-electric hybrids per year by early in the next decade with the launch of 10 new hybrid models between now and 2012…
Which is it? Tell us what you think in the comments.
Fuelishness Marathon! – Part 4: Cellulosic Ethanol Could Have “Unintended” Environmental Consequences; $25 Billion For Green Cars;
- MIT Study Says Cellulosic Ethanol Could Have “Unintended” Environmental Consequences : Producing cellulosic ethanol from non-food feedstocks has been studied extensively at a local scale, but it’s difficult to estimate the environmental impacts on larger, heterogeneous regions. In this study, researchers evaluated two potential consequences of diverting usable land to biofuel production: either existing agricultural operations are intensified, or large areas of natural forest are cleared to increase cropland.
- $25 Billion Federal Loan Fund For Green Car Manufacturing Still Untapped : The program wasn’t funded until September 2008, and DOE reports that 43 of the initial applications landed during the final three days leading up to a Dec. 31, 2008 deadline.
- 1936 Chevy Sedan gets the electric car conversion treatment [w/video] : Shade tree mechanics. A 1936 Chevy Sedan. Down home narrator vibe. Yup, this video from a local TV station in Oklahoma has got everything you might be looking for to prove that electric cars are as American as apple pie.
Fuelishness! Marathon – Part 3: What is cellulosic ethanol; Algae Farming; Most Efficient Way to Travel 350 Miles
- What is cellulosic ethanol and how does it fit with green cars? : There is a lot of controversy surrounding biofuels. Various studies have shown that crop-based biofuels contribute to global warming more than they help prevent it, that ethanol is no better than gasoline, and that South East Asian rainforests are suffering for biofuels, to name just three. The most dramatic recent claim was that ethanol was the worst type of renewable energy.
- Algae Sizzle and Algae Steak : Bionavitas “Light Rod” idea called Light Immersion Technology that looks like a giant tapered optical fiber that places light at depth into algae cultures. Ingenious as ideas go, with a near stunning amount of coverage on Wednesday the idea might get some financial and research legs. What has been left out is the details about the light. The photos seem to leave out the top of the rod or fiber or just show a shaft, whose top area sets the amount of light; no matter how deep it is distributed. The idea solves a problem in algae culturing, getting light deep so that the culture isn’t just a thin layer at the sunlit surface.
- How Many Gallons of Fuel Does it Take to Travel 350 Miles? : GOOD Magazine, in collaboration with Robert A. Di Leso, Jr., explores fuel use by various modes of transportation. In what is essentially a fancied up bar chart, we see how many gallons of fuel it takes for a passenger to travel 350 miles by cruise ship, Amtrak, Boeing 737, Sedan, hybrid, etc. A couple of non-fuel modes of transportation are included as well using caloric conversions. It’ll take about 48 Whoppers with cheese to walk 350 miles. Good to know, especially since I was planning on walking 350 miles today. Totally kidding. I’m walking 360. Like a circle.
FuelClinic.com Camaro Racing at 12 Hours of Sebring
We are pleased to announce MJK Racing will be competing with the FuelClinic.com Camaro in two separate events at this months 12 Hours of Sebring race this March 18th – 21st.
Mike Kern will race the FuelClinic.com Camaro in the Enduro on Thursday, and in the 30-minute Sprint on Friday. Mike will have a practice session earlier in the week, on Wednesday.
If you will be at Sebring this year, please stop by the garage-tent and say Hello.
Fuelishness! Marathon – Part 2: Plug-In Charging Stations; Mille Hybrid-Powered Race Recovery Vehicle; Omnivore Concept Engine
- Raleigh, N.C. to Install Plug-in Hybrid Charging Stations : Like the San Francisco-based program, drivers will access the charging stations through key-cards. In Raleigh, this means simple credit card access at a cost of about 2.5 cents per mile, while the SF-based program uses chargers provided by Coulomb Technologies at no cost, but are only available to members of the car-sharing programs City CarShare and Zipcar.
- Miller Industries Adds Eaton Hybrid-Powered Race Recovery Vehicle To Fleet : The debut of the colorful white and green vehicle as part of Miller’s 12-truck fleet at the famed Daytona International Speedway was so successful that Miller announced plans to have it added to the company’s fleet of race recovery vehicles that will be operating throughout 2009. Miller supplies race recovery trucks for a large number of NASCAR events.
- Geneva Preview: Lotus to unveil Omnivore concept engine : The Omnivore is specifically designed to take advantage of varying fuels and modern electronic control capabilities. Like most research engines, this is a single cylinder design that allows the Lotus engineers to more quickly make changes and study the effects. This is also a two-stroke design with an air assisted direct injection system provided by Orbital Corporation of Australia. Those interested in two-strokes may remember Orbital from the early nineties when a number of manufacturers were investigating two-stroke engines. The concept engine uses a mono-block layout with a single hunk of metal comprising the cylinder block and head and no poppet valves. Instead the ports are exposed by the piston’s motion. Variations in timing between intake and exhaust are achieved by valve in the exhaust port that traps the exhaust.
“Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry” Fails CAFE Standards
The was a minor kerfuffle last week as one blogger did the math and determined that the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry would fail CAFE fuel economy standards…
The vehicles owned by the Obama administration’s auto team were released in a list today by The Detroit News. While Detroit is focusing on the fact that the “Big Three” are underrepresented amongst the auto-owners on the federal task force, I just did some back-of-the-envelope math and made a shocking discovery…The federal task force fails CAFE standards.
I’d like to mention that both the CAFE and EPA ratings have very little to do with _actual_ fuel mileage (fleet or personal), and can be exceeded in nearly any car by anyone taking the initiative to practice simple “eco-driving” techniques.
Obama’s task force could track their actual fuel mileage using their existing cars on a website like FuelClinic [www.fuelclinic.com] and use the eco-driving techniques to show the nation the easily repeatable efficiency improvements _anyone_ can make – and it wouldn’t cost a dime.
FuelClinic.com and MJK Racing Sponsorship Goals
FuelClinic started sponsoring MJK Racing last year, and we’ve enjoyed every minute of the time we’ve spent working with Mike and his team, and we look forward to continuing this sponsorship. But not everybody “gets it” – why a fuel efficiency site would sponsor an auto-racing team.
At first glance you might miss the connections, here are some of our thoughts and intentions…
- Energy conservation and fuel efficiency are topics important for everybody to consider, not just the tree-hugging bumper-stickered Prius drivers who aren’t too impressed with auto-racing. If the goal here at FuelClinic is to help conserve enough fuel that we can make a real difference in the market, when you think about it, the tree-hugging Prius drivers are pretty much already doing what they can to conserve fuel. It’s vitally important to reach out beyond the crowd of people already on board with our mission. (To the Prius drivers – you know we love you! But you see my point, right?)
- Automotive racing is quite literally the “NASA” of automotive engineering, the proverbial tip-of-the-spear for innovative engine technologies, systems reliability, safety improvements, and energy efficiency. Some of their best work finds its way to the consumer-level automobiles, and we benefit from the hard work and money spent in the research and development of the racing community.
- The topic of fuel efficiency can be pretty boring. We wanted to add some excitement to the discussion, to have something out of the ordinary that might get people’s attention. MJK Racing and Mike Kern in particular add a sense of something a little bigger than life. In person this guy gets attention, knows what he’s talking about, and can explain it to anyone. Just the kind of partner any business would love to have. (If you are interested in working with a real pro, Mike has additional sponsorship opportunities available.)
Motorsports are “going green” along with the rest of the world, and green-themed subjects like fuel efficiency and running a “green” team are more important than ever.
Its been said that race fans are the most loyal sports fans. I know that the access they can get to the drivers and cars at this level makes it a very “personal” sport, fans identify with their favorite drivers, and by proxy they identify with the things the drivers talk about.
All that, and on a personal level, I still enjoy the sounds of a fire-breathing V-8 engine… I just don’t drive one to work every day any more. Maybe that’s the biggest reason I feel this sponsorship makes sense to me. I can drive my gas-sipping econobox each day, careful not to accelerate too quickly, being a “smooth operator”, trying to conserve fuel… knowing in the back of my mind that on race day I’ll feast my eyes and ears on the high-octane super cars like Mike’s and my other (new) racing friends. It appeals to me. I can’t be alone in that. Look in the stands.
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