Energy Glance
Toyota Motor Corp. is secretly developing a vehicle that will be powered solely by solar energy in an effort to turn around its struggling business with a futuristic ecological car, a top business daily reported Thursday.
The Nikkei newspaper, however, said it will be years before the planned vehicle will be available on the market.
According to The Nikkei, Toyota is working on an electric vehicle that will get some of its power from solar cells equipped on the vehicle, and that can be recharged with electricity generated from solar panels on the roofs of homes. The automaker later hopes to develop a model totally powered by solar cells on the vehicle, the newspaper said without citing sources.
Putting solar panels on the roof can cost a homeowner tens of thousands of dollars up front. That’s a lot of cash in a tight market, even if the goal is clean, renewable energy.
With enough solar panels it is possible to cover all your electricity needs with PV, year round; the downside is that it requires a significant investment up front. Installing 8 square metres of PV panels, enough to sustain a family of four in the UK, plus storage batteries and accessories such as inverters to convert DC into alternating current, can cost tens of thousands of pounds and will take up more space than is available to most urban households. Until the cost comes down substantially, switching to a grid supplier that gets its energy from renewables may be a more realistic alternative - although it will not free you from the risk of supply interruptions.
A revolutionary device that can harness energy from slow-moving rivers and ocean currents could provide enough power for the entire world, scientists claim. 
You hear about them every year: gee-whiz, plug-in, battery-powered vehicles poised to change the world. Granted, they’re tiny, or expensive, or both. And if they ever make it to the United States, they’ll be downgraded from electric vehicles (EVs) to neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs)—glorified golf carts with a top speed of 25 mph. But overseas, where getting gouged at the pump is a fact of life, EVs are a growth market. 
With Ford's chief executive in Washington contending his company is nearly as bad off as General Motors and Chrysler, Ford's messaging might seem, well, a bit crazy. But if the Fusion is as good as Ford promises, it could very well be a step in the right direction. After all, the hybrid gets 39 mpg in the city, and, according to Fields, 700 miles on a tank of gas in city driving. 
A joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell and Iraq's state-owned South Gas Co. could give Shell a 25-year monopoly on production and exports of natural gas in much of southern Iraq - the biggest foreign role in Iraq's oil and gas sector in four decades.
