Nano-engineered Bug Electric Car

Ricardo Fedrizzi, Bug, micro-car, Futuristic Vehicle

Conceived by designer Ricardo Fedrizzi, the “Bug” is an agile urban micro-car for two people that allows safe, brisk and sustainable commutation on city roads. Touting an aerodynamic shape, with fluid curves, which gives greater efficiency by increasing the autonomy, the new electric car by the Brazilian designer focuses mainly on maximum weight reduction, promoting economy and performance. The micro-car replaces the glass windows and windshield with much lighter and resilient polycarbonate to ensure complete safety. Made in recyclable and renewable materials, such as polymers with a load of vegetable fiber, the Bug comes with both light and tough alloys, designed using nanotechnology, to allow a safe and an environmentally responsible traveling, and that too at an affordable price.

What's the Latest Development?
A California company has announced its plan to build the world's first prototype for a 'nanotechnology-based, zero-carbon' process for producing renewable hydrogen and natural gas. Using waste water, HyperSolar, Inc. will use an artificial photosynthesis process to break down water molecules into their constituent hydrogen and oxygen elements. A similar project at the University of California, San Diego, uses a 3D nanowire to split water molecules using a photoelectrochemical process, requiring the presence of sunlight to function. read more →

The Car Industry

The automotive industry has appreciated for some time that nanotechnology can offer many benefits to this highly competitive and litigation-driven sector. Research is taking place into many applications of nanotechnology such as - improved lubricants, fuel cells for clean energy, lighter and stronger engine and body materials, better catalysts, nanoporous filters, self-cleaning windshields, self-healing and scratch-resistant coatings, environmentally friendly corrosion protection and colour-changing paints – to name but a few! Major advances are also being made in the use of polymer nanocomposites for body panels as these can be made lightweight yet rugged, and in new metal nanocomposites to improve engine efficiency. Specially designed nanoparticles are presently used as fuel additives to lower consumption in commercial vehicles and reduce toxic emissions. Cars are notable for progressively increasing their high technology content, using smart nano-sensors for the prevention of possible problems from a tyre blow-out to brake failure, even to avoiding a collision!
Car manufacturers are keen to be more environmentally friendly in their manufacturing processes as well as in the final product. Investigations are underway in how nanotechnology may lead to a reduction in toxic wastes and by-products by substituting new nanomaterials for hazardous reactants and solvents or, better still, by using nanotechniques to eliminate their need altogether.

BMW's (nanotechnology?) shape-shifting car
(Nanowerk News) It seems that reality is catching up with science fiction fast. On TV, the latest Knight Rider series features a car that embraces nanotechnology to change colors and morph into similar car forms temporarily.
Yesterday, BMW introduced it's "GINA Light Visionary Model".

The car has a flexible outer skin, making some elements of the substructure moveable.
The GINA Light Visionary Model takes the sculptural design that has already been established by a number of production cars to a new, unparalleled conclusion. The car’s front and sides, including the doors, create one single uninterrupted, seamless whole that converges to form an optical as well as a structural unit.
The body consists of only four elements. The largest component extends from the front of the vehicle to the edge of the windscreen and down the sides to the rear edge of the doors. The large side panels start at the front where the rocker panels emerge and run across the rear wheel arches into the rear. The fourth component is the central rear deck element.