Eco Green News, Technology, DIY Project and Hacks

In a joint press conference, GM and Segway officially announced the P.U.M.A (Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility) at prototype two wheeled urban transport vehicle. With a estimated rage of 35 miles on a single charge and capable of a top speed of 35 miles/hr. The PUMA aims at equipping legions of urbunites a cheep efficient way of commuting in crowded city streets (or golf courses). The two seat vehicle will feature GM Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) technology, which allows two vehicle to communicate and avoid crashes. [Engadget]

New customers of the Tesla Model-S Sedan take a ride around a parking lot at the SpaceX rocket factory in LA, during the unveiling party for the new Tesla Sedan. Tesla Model-S is the latest offering from the Silicon Valley electric car maker.

Luxim Plasma technology has a bright future. Being 10x more efficient then the standard incandescent bulb, 2x as efficient as LED bulb technology and almost 2x as bright as a standard compact fluorescent bulb, these 140 lumens/watt bulbs could see their way in to our homes in the not to distant future. The bulb works by using an amplified RF (radio-frequency) signal to ionize plasma gas, creating an superbright 30,000+ lumen glow. [Luxim]

Tesla Motors today unveiled its latest addition, the Model S sedan, to its line of electric vehicles. The Model S is its first push to make electric vehicles more affordable. The sedan will ship for $50,000 in late 2011. Tesla CEO Elon Musk explains the Model S’s three level of removable battery packs, which will propel the electric vehicles 300 mi, 150 mi …. depending on the pack installed. Musk also boasted about the battery packs impressive 45 minute charge time. [Jason Calacanis]

Wired reviews some green gadgets in honor of St. Patrick’s day.

Chris Fenton is on the beading edge of Eco Tech, with his homebrew DIY laptop built in a wooden case. While his laptop can’t compete with the latest Dells laptops, it is on par with the with computing power of a late 1980’s. SPECs: a whopping 256 kilobytes total memory, 16k of RAM, Picaxe 28X-1 Microcontroller, 24 x 8 serial character display, in a Beautiful, hand/laser crafted wooden case. [ChrisFenton]

Chris over at [DIY is the way] built an Arduino powered thermostat they you can monitor your heating and cooling system via a web interface. The project allows him to monitor and control the thermostat remotely. The project uses an Arduino (Duemilanove), an Arduino Ethernet Shield and an LM35 temperature sensor. The Arduino is a low cost open source microcontroller which has gained a huge following by DIYer and artists.

Its amazing how far logging has come since the days of the lumberjacks and chainsaws.

More great research coming out of MIT, scientists have found a way of improving the charging speed of Lithium Ion batteries. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) report in Nature today that they devised a way for lithium ions in a battery to zip in and out about 100 times faster than previously demonstrated. “We took a basically great material called lithium iron phosphate [LiFePO4] and we tried to improve it further,” “In an attempt to pick up the pace, the M.I.T. researchers coated the lithium iron phosphate material with an ion conductor, which...