Gearfuse

Every concept car has to look like it’s straight out of The Fifth Element. If it doesn’t, it might as well be an inflatable Porsche. Not solely making walkers for old people, Honda has brought forth its new concept, the FC Sport. It’s a three-seat hydrogen fuel cell sports car that comes stocked with a high-power fuel cell stack placed between the rear seat, and a backup battery pack placed in the middle of the car.

Don’t expect to be driving it any time soon, or it all for that matter. It’s just a concept, though. So you know it will more than likely never be available commercially. Seriously, whens the last time you got to sit in the driver seat of a high-performance, low-weight hydrogen sports car?

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Anyone interested in DIY, energy or our ecosystem should most definitely check out the Alternative Energy Gift Guide from MAKE. They cover some key issues that we as Americans must confront head on, such as our dependence on foreign energy and oil. There’s a bunch of a kits you can browse through that will have you using the Sun as your new battery pack in no time.

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• Finger Warming Keyboard [Amazon] – For ultra toastyness while you click away.
• People use IM to hook up then break up [Ars Technica] – Something tells me the majority of this survey was taken with the 14-17 age demographic.
• Wall-Mounted Shoe Dryer [Core77] – Something about hanging sopping wet shoes on a device plugged into a wall socket doesn’t seem too safe to me.
• China starting to use fuel cell powered buses [Ecofriend] – Sure, that will help the the edge off of the thousands of factories billowing out smoke.

Fuel cells seem to be the rage these days, what with LG showing off a concept laptop powered by one, and now Casio has developed this tiny wonder. Measuring just 27.2 x 46 x 2.8mm, Casio’s new fuel cell converts methanol to hydrogen gas. DigitalCameraInfo claims the device can remain ‘autonomous and continuous’, though it’s unlikely they mean that literally, which would make this a perpetual motion machine. In any case, this tiny chemical engine could be driving a camera or laptop near you soon, as Casio plans to release it early next year. — Mike Payne

[via DigitalCameraInfo]

LG has unveiled a new concept laptop they call the ‘e-Book’. No, this isn’t an eBook reader. It’s a forward-thinking laptop, sporting an OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) screen (which is much more energy-efficient than an ordinary LCD screen), a second OLED screen for the keyboard, and a fuel-cell battery. Here’s where things get confusing. Some sources report the battery uses ‘blue methyl alcohol’ (Engadget), while others claim the e-Book uses ‘natural gas, methanol, and other eco-friendly liquid fuels’ (Laptoping).  The concept received a ‘Red Dot Award’, a German prize for industrial design, and has us here at Gearfuse eagerly hoping the e-Book makes it into production soon. — Mike Payne

[via Laptoping]