General Motors will build more than 100 Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell vehicles and will begin placing them with customers in the fall of 2007, as part of a comprehensive deployment plan dubbed “Project Driveway." Designed to gain comprehensive learnings on all aspects of the customer experience, Project Driveway constitutes the first meaningful market test of fuel cell vehicles anywhere. A variety of drivers – in differing driving environments – will operate these vehicles and refuel with hydrogen in three geographic areas: California, the New York metropolitan area and Washington D.C.
Enabled by GM’s fourth-generation fuel cell propulsion system, the Equinox Fuel Cell is a fully-functional crossover vehicle, engineered for 50,000 miles of life. Importantly, the Equinox Fuel Cell is able to start and operate in sub-freezing temperatures during its 50,000-mile life. It is expected to meet all applicable 2007 U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, and is equipped with a long list of standard safety features including driver and passenger frontal air bags and roof rail side-impact air bags; anti-lock braking system (ABS); StabiliTrak stability enhancement technology and OnStar, while providing all of the environmental benefits of hydrogen fuel cell technology.
The Project Driveway market test will provide comprehensive insight into all aspects of the customer experience, including reaction to the exciting, smooth and quiet performance of a fuel cell vehicle, and refueling with clean hydrogen gas. “These learnings will directly influence future fuel cell vehicle generations and ultimate market acceptance," Peper said. "With Chevrolet being GM’s global volume brand, it makes sense that Chevy will lead GM’s fuel cell vehicle commercialization charge."
While new technologies have made information more accessible, they have yet to live up to their full potential when it comes to knowledge sharing. Two European projects in the field of collaborative learning are looking to change that.
The IST-funded 
Masten Space Systems of Mojave, California is donating a trip to fly a U.S. teacher to space aboard a sub-orbital spaceship. The donation goes to the Space Frontier Foundation’s Teachers in Space (TIS) project, whose goal is to fly at least a hundred teachers into sub-orbital space in the next few years. With a price tag of between $150k and $200k, the seat aboard Masten’s proposed vehicle represents a valuable contribution to a project that promises to change the face of American science education.
Dalal, the director of Iowa State's Microelectronics Research Center and the Thomas M. Whitney Professor in electrical and computer engineering, has spent more than three decades finding ways for that sunlight to generate more and more electricity. He thinks his latest project can boost the performance of an Iowa company's solar cells by 40 to 50 percent.
MIT researchers are putting a tiny gas-turbine engine inside a silicon chip about the size of a quarter. The resulting device could run 10 times longer than a battery of the same weight can, powering laptops, cell phones, radios and other electronic devices.
It could also dramatically lighten the load for people who can't connect to a power grid, including soldiers who now must carry many pounds of batteries for a three-day mission -- all at a reasonable price.
An MIT researcher has a vision: Four hundred huge offshore wind turbines are providing onshore customers with enough electricity to power several hundred thousand homes, and nobody standing onshore can see them. The trick? The wind turbines are floating on platforms a hundred miles out to sea, where the winds are strong and steady.