today the newest wired
arrived.
as always, when scanning it for worthwhile stuff to read, my eyes get caught on the “fetish” page
. nope, it’s not your normal fetish like latex and leather and stuff like that, but shining and gleaming gadgets and gizmos.
this time, the wired staff portrayed the toyota volta
, a hybrid concept car.
the volta is the bigger and much much spiffier brother of the toyota prius
, which is a really big hit in the us.
i presume that hybrid cars are the only way electric cars are ever gonna be popular. (heck, even gearbits
loves it :-)
a hybrid car is - for all those that do not know - a car that has both a conventional engine and an electrical engine.
both share the work, the electrical engine all the work where a conventional one is not good, e.g. accelerating and small burst of power, and the conventional engine comes to help when maximal power is needed, like on auto-routes.
thus, such cars manage to be really fuel-efficient and environmentally safe (at least many of times safer than a normal car) while leaving the man or woman behind the steering wheel with the experience of a real car, so no charging of the battery or searching for that hydrogen filling stations.
and hey, who could argue with a sports car (0-100 km/h in 4 seconds ) that uses only 1 liter of fuel on 100km ? (and is named after a famous physicist :-)
oh, and by the way, i’m not really a car-fan, this is just as geeky as it can get…