Take two promising technologies - alternative energy and carbon capture - add a dash of ingenuity, and you may have the ideal recipe for a zero emission car. Or so a team of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology hope: they’ve developed a technology to store and eventually recycle the carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles.

They envision a system that could trap the carbon emissions - which would be collected and processed at a fueling station - and reuse them to power vehicles, thus forming a sustainable closed-loop system. The scientists are currently working on a fuel processing device to separate the carbon dioxide from the hydrogen and store it in liquid form; the hydrogen would be used as a fuel source.

Source: Tree Hugger

Z Car

Zaha Hadid Architects have developed a new design conscious city car with green credentials. Called the Z Car, the vehicle was born from a desire to create a compact city car that took design considerations into account.

“I think we are at a point in time where people not only appreciate good design but demand it,” Kenny Schachter, the man who commissioned the design, told CDN.

Far from a conventional design, the Z Car measures 3680mm long, 1700mm wide, 1400mm tall, and has a 2450mm long wheelbase with a short (600mm) overhang. Its windscreen is massive - incorporating the side window graphic - and it features a very small window at the rear, nearly horizontal on the roof of the car. Power will be provided by hub-mounted electric motors married to Li-ion batteries laid along the floor.

“There are certainly more niches to be filled today than the big automakers are prepared to invest in,” Schachter said. “If ever there was a time to introduce the first design focused electric vehicle it is certainly now.”

A London court has found former design student Guy Lloyd-Parker guilty of blackmailing US car designers.

The London College of Fashion graduate had claimed that 95 car design sketches were stolen from him by two college lecturers in 1994, eventually resurfacing as final designs in the form of the Audi TT, BMW Z3, Mazda RX-8 and the Volvo XC90.

Lloyd-Parker, having failed to successfully sue the college, began sending menacing letters to California-based Volvo Design Director Geza Loczi, former BMW and Aston Martin designer Henrik Fisker, and ex-Mazda designer Tsutomu Matano demanding £90,000.

The letters, allegedly entitled ‘The Truth’, called the designers ‘liars, thieves and cheats’ and threatened to expose the ‘whole truth’ to the world media if the demands were not met. Prosecuting attorney Ian Hope said all three victims had been facing smear campaigns after having reached high positions in their careers.

Lloyd-Parker, of Blackheath, south-east London, is scheduled to be sentenced at Southwark Crown Court.

The head of Emirates Auction, Abdulla al Mannaie, poses with the no. 1 license plate that sold for a record $14.3 million.

No, it’s not made of solid gold — just ordinary materials, evidently. But it does come with the swagger of being labeled no. “1.” And that’s evidently worth a record $14.3 million.

Today, a businessman named Said Abdul Ghafour Khouri was willing to pay 52.2 dirham — the equivalent of $14.3 million — for the local license plate labeled “1″ at an auction at the 7-star Emirates Palace Hotel here, making it the world’s most expensive license plate.