plug-ins

Above the desk of Andrew Farah, the Volt's lead engineer, hangs a clock counting down the days until GM begins the production of 80 Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid prototypes.

Production begins on June 1 with plans to ramp up to 10 prototypes a week until 80 have been made. The 30 that have been cruising around have the final preproduction powertrain, but not the final interior or exterior.

These prototypes "will look, taste, smell, and feel like the Volt. They are the Volt," Farrah is quoted saying to GM's blog about the Volt, "my goal … Read more

Piaggio Group Americas, a subsidiary of the Italian manufacturer known for the Vespa, has a highway legal plug-in hybrid scooter in the works that could be available in the U.S. for early 2010.

While Paolo Timoni, the president and CEO of Piaggio Group Americas, has made mention of this plan in interviews, the company has made no formal announcement so it's been hard to gauge whether you can hold it to the timeline.

The plug-in hybrid version in the works is a modified version of Piaggio's MP3 500 (the Gilera Fuoco in Europe). The MP3 500 scooter … Read more

GooseGrade, the service that lets your blog readers correct any mistakes you've made, has a new plug-in for WordPress users that makes it easier for blog administrators to approve and implement corrections suggested by readers.

Once installed, corrections get sent directly to WordPress' dashboard, where administrators can then make a fix just like they would approve or deny a user comment. Because the plug-in is given privileges to write over your content, it then goes back into the post and makes the edit, without the administrator having to do it manually. Best of all, it shows you a before … Read more

Not only does this free toolbar come jam-packed with all things blues-related, but it also manages to thrown in standard features to enhance your browsing experience.

Blues for Peace Toolbar adds a slim toolbar to your browser window. All the standards are there--e-mail notification, pop-up blocker, weather forecast--and they all worked very well. The toolbar can be customized to remove buttons and to include shortcuts to your favorite applications. While this is all pretty standard toolbar fare, the blues musician in you will appreciate the stellar radio feature. It comes loaded with blues stations that play without a hitch. There … Read more

A coalition dedicated to paving the way for plug-in electric cars in communities launched on Tuesday, highlighting the technical and economic challenges to electric transportation.

Project Get Ready is spearheaded by think tank the Rocky Mountain Institute and includes a few municipalities, utilities, and nonprofits as members. It counts automakers, including General Motors, and technology companies as advisers.

The group's goal is to accelerate plug-in electric car adoption by helping communities create multi-year plans for adoption. It will initially work with three communities--Raleigh, N.C.; Portland, Ore.; and Indianapolis, Ind.--and convene with over 20 communities later this year … Read more

Google has fixed a disconnect between two of its software products, its Chrome browser and the plug-in version of Google Earth.

"As of ~4 p.m. PST today, Google Chrome 1.0+ on Windows is an officially supported browser," a Google employee said on a Google Earth mailing list on Thursday. "That means Chrome users will no longer get the unsupported browser message, and the plugin and API should work just as they would in other supported browsers."

Google Earth is generally used as standalone software, but the plug-in version can be mashed up with Web … Read more

"Should Uncle Sam provide billions in loans and grants to a promising but unproven business? Or should the government wait for the market to sort things out before it backs a U.S. company?"

Those are questions posed in a BusinessWeek article last week. However, the questions are largely rhetorical: the U.S. Department of Energy already has a $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program, and many car and battery companies are counting on these loans to aid their development and production of lithium ion batteries.

So it's not a question of "should," it's a question of "how?"

Lithium ion batteries will add at least $8,000 to the price of a production plug-in hybrid vehicle, according to BusinessWeek. However, that amount is probably on the low side when you consider that the Chevy Volt is predicted to cost a bit less than $40,000, a good portion of that price being the battery. Another manufacturer representative estimated that a lithium ion battery currently costs approximately $22,000, effectively putting the electric car out of reach to all but the well-heeled greenies. … Read more

G-Force is a free visualizer plug-in for iTunes, which extends your options beyond iTunes' built-in visualizers for displaying colorful light shows to accompany your music. You activate G-Force like any other visualizer, just by selecting it while in iTunes, and then it shows complex, constantly changing visuals that move and react to whatever music you're playing. Because G-Force combines a huge number of shapes, colors, images, and other variables, this app produces millions of possible visual effects. What makes G-Force more interesting than many visualizers is hotkeys for quickly adjusting visuals on the fly (like skipping through effects or … Read more

DETROIT -- Toyota Priuses with plug-in hybrid technology are averaging 65 mpg in combined gasoline and electric-mode testing.

"That is real-world driving," said Bill Reinert, Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A.'s national alternative-fuel vehicle manager. "I ask my guys to drive them as you drive your normal Prius."

By comparison, the redesigned 2010 Prius, a parallel hybrid with nickel-metal hydride batteries, will have an estimated 50 mpg rating.

U.S. sales of a Toyota plug-in hybrid will begin sometime after 2010.

"It would make sense that we would do it with a Prius, but … Read more