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NEW YORK - Police have found a way to help save the planet and perhaps sneak up on bad guys at the same time: an all-electric, ultra-quiet scooter, Newsday reports.

Newsday further writes, “The New York Police Department will begin road testing four of the plug-in Vectrix scooters early next month _ part of a broader campaign to make the nation’s largest police department a greener one as well.

The 36,000-officer NYPD has been looking for ways to retool its massive motor fleet to guzzle less gas and inflict less harm on the environment. A handful of NYPD hybrid cars and so-called flex-fuel vehicles, which can run on both gasoline and ethanol, are already on the road.

Vectrix recently approached several big city police departments with the sleek, two-wheel scooters, but the NYPD was the first to take a serious look, said Andrew MacGowen, president of the Rhode Island-based company.

MacGowen said the Vectrix scooters, assembled in Poland, are the first all-electric vehicles to be government-certified to travel on any highway, street or road.

The Vectrix, which has a battery pack, is heavier than the Piaggio, but with a top speed of more than 60 mph, it’s nearly as fast. And riders cruise past the fuel pump: The scooters can be recharged simply by plugging into a standard outlet for two hours. MacGowen said recharging costs a fraction of refueling _ a savings he says would quickly cover the difference in price with Piaggios, which cost the NYPD about half as much.

The Vectrix can only travel 40 to 60 miles per charge, but police officials said they may be willing to sacrifice some range for zero emissions. Plus, the scooters would have the dual benefit of “reducing air pollution and noise pollution,” said Robert Martinez, the NYPD fleet director.” More at Newsday.

Commission proposal to limit the CO2 emissions from cars to help fight climate change, reduce fuel costs and increase European competitiveness.

Brussels — Dec 19, `07 — The European Commission today proposed legislation to reduce the average CO2 emissions of new passenger cars to 120 grams per kilometre by 2012.

The proposed legislation is the cornerstone of the EU’s strategy to improve the fuel economy of cars, which account for about 12% of the European Union’s carbon emissions. The proposal further underlines the EU’s leadership and determination to deliver on its greenhouse gas commitments under the Kyoto Protocol and beyond.

President of the Commission José Manuel Barroso stated: “This proposal demonstrates that the European Union is committed to being a world leader in cutting CO2 emissions and the development of a low carbon economy. At the same time, we are committed to promote the competitiveness of our industry and its global technological leadership.”

Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said: “The aim of the legislation is to reduce CO2 emissions from cars in order to help fight climate change. The legislation will also ensure important fuel savings which will translate into considerable benefits for consumers. Moreover, it will encourage the car industry to invest in new technologies and actively promote eco-innovation, which is a driver for more and high-quality jobs.”

Emissions reductions
The proposal will be a major step in lowering CO2 emissions in the EU. It will reduce the average emissions of CO2 from new passenger cars in the EU from around 160 grams per kilometre to 130 grams per kilometre in 2012 as part of the EU’s integrated approach to achieve overall 120 grams per kilometre. That will translate into a 19% reduction of CO2 emissions and will place the EU among the world leaders of fuel efficient cars.

How the legislation will work
The draft legislation defines a limit value curve of CO2 emissions allowed for new vehicles according to the mass of the vehicle. The curve is set in such a way that a fleet average of 130 grams of CO2 per kilometre is achieved. A manufacturer must ensure that by 2012 measured fleet average emissions are below the limit value curve, when all vehicles manufactured and registered in a given year by the manufacturer in question are taken into account.

This means that the level of emissions by heavier cars will have to be improved proportionately more than lighter cars compared to today. Manufacturers will still be able to make cars with emissions above the limit value curve provided these are balanced by cars which are below the curve as long as the fleet average remains at 130 grams.

The proposal will now be communicated to the Council and to the European Parliament as part of the co-decision legislative procedure. More at European Commission here and here.

On Dec 14, `07, Qantas and Airbus celebrated another major milestone in the airframe manufacturer’s relatively short but successful existence - the delivery of its 5,000th aircraft, an A330-200, to Qantas at a special ceremony in Toulouse.

“This is an historical day for Airbus and the aviation industry in general, and I am delighted that Qantas, is here to share it with us,” said Airbus President and Chief Executive Officer, Tom Enders. “After a slow start, Airbus went from strength to strength, developing a highly successful airliner family which is well established on the market place.

The success of this family is also reflected by our very strong backlog of more than 3,000 aircraft including the all new A380 and A350. This gives us great confidence in the future”.

Thirty three years ago, in May 1974, Airbus delivered its very first aircraft, an A300B2, to first operator Air France. Nineteen years later, in 1993, Airbus delivered its first 1,000th aircraft, and it took it another six years to reach the 2000th in 1999.

Reflecting its subsequent rapid growth with an expanded aircraft family and more products on offer, the 3,000th Airbus aircraft was delivered in 2002, and only three years later, in September 2005, the 4,000th.

It needed only another two years to reach the 5,000th delivery milestone of Dec 14. Also, it took Airbus more than 30 years to deliver more than 50 per cent of all airliners of more than 100 seats delivered in one year. This was in 2005, and Airbus continued in the lead since.

It also took Airbus some 30 years after its initial creation in 1970 to bypass it main competitor in terms of sales and remain constantly at around half the market share, with more than 50 percent for five years in a row since 2001.

Airbus continues to considerably ramp up its production rates so as to reach ten A330/A340, 40 A320 Family planes and four A380s per month by 2010 in order to cope with very strong demand for its products. Its backlog of more than 3,000 aircraft should be delivered within the next five to six years only. More at Airbus.

NEW YORK and FRANKFURT, Germany — Dec 13, `07 — JetBlue Airways and Deutsche Lufthansa AG today announced an agreement for Lufthansa to make a minority equity investment in JetBlue. This transaction represents the first significant investment by a European air carrier in a U.S. point-to-point air carrier.

Under the terms of the agreement, which has been approved by the Boards of both companies, Lufthansa will purchase in a private placement approximately 42 million newly issued common shares of JetBlue, or 19% of JetBlue’s equity after giving effect to the issuance.

Lufthansa is acquiring the shares at a price of $7.27 per share, or a total of approximately $300 million, representing a 16% premium to yesterday’s closing price of $6.25.

The agreement provides that a Lufthansa nominee will be appointed to the Board of Directors upon the closing of the transaction. The Lufthansa nominee will be a Class II director and will be up for election at JetBlue’s annual meeting in 2008.

Both airlines also look forward to exploring potential opportunities for further cooperation for the benefit of their customers. No specific areas of potential cooperation have been agreed. More at JetBlue, Lufthansa.

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands — Nov 26, ‘07 — Cisco announced today that Amsterdam ArenA, a premier multipurpose sporting and entertainment venue and home to AFC Ajax football club, has turned to Cisco to help make the famous stadium smarter.

With the deployment of Cisco Internet Protocol (IP) technology, the stadium is introducing several innovative services for the 2 million visitors it attracts each year. Visitors will be able to reserve seats from home, get access to real-time travel and parking information, and pay for tickets using their mobile phones. Spectators and sports fans can more easily access all stadium-related services and the organisation can deliver improved visitor service at every event.

Henk Markerink, director of the Amsterdam ArenA said: “The most important goal of the Amsterdam ArenA is to further improve the customer experience, which includes focusing even more closely on the entire service provision chain, from the moment the customer buys tickets, as they travel to the ArenA, the visit itself, to the time he or she is back at home and wants to book tickets again.

We aim to introduce the first services in the middle of next year.”

Integration with radio frequency identification (RFID) technology will make it possible to offer location-specific information to visitors as well.

Markerink added: “The Amsterdam ArenA depends strongly on its transport links. The public transport connections are perfect and the accessibility for motorists is fine, with four motorways nearby and parking for more than 11,000 vehicles. But if the area around the ArenA wants to grow further, then we need to improve mobility.

We also plan to send information to car navigation systems and mobile phones about the best route to take and where to park.”

Cisco has equipped a number of sporting arenas with similar intelligent networks, including the world-famous Bernabéu stadium in Madrid, the Allianz Arena in Munich, Ascot racecourse in the UK and the Misano racetrack in Italy. Thanks to a comparable ‘connected stadium’ infrastructure, the Amsterdam ArenA will be able to extend its reputation as a world-class multipurpose venue and business centre.”

Cisco technology to be deployed at Amsterdam ArenA includes Cisco Catalyst 3750 Series Switches, Catalyst 6500 Series Switches, Aironet wireless access points and CiscoWorks LAN Management Solution. More at Cisco.

Helsinki, Finland - Fancy a dose of culture in the Finnish city of Oulu? All you need is a mobile phone. Says Reuters.

Get theatre tickets digitally, download a smart video trailer of how the play was directed, order and pay for snacks for the interval and, after a culture-packed night, order a taxi home — all by just swiping a cellphone over smart tags placed on the menus or around the foyer of the theatre.

The Oulu City Theatre in northern Finland, 373 miles (600 kilometers) north of Helsinki, says it is the world’s first cultural institution to use the hippest handset technology, expected to turn mobile phones into wallets.

NFC (near-field communication) technology is activated by waving phones over wireless readers, or smart tags, and is widely used in public transport access cards.

The theatre is running a pilot, involving technology from Finnish mobile phone-maker Nokia and telecommunications operator TeliaSonera, until the year-end and will extend its usage more widely if it proves successful. More at Reuters.

AT&T, a company that once was a poster child for telecommuting, is downsizing its long-running telework program and requiring thousands of employees who work from their homes and other virtual offices to return to traditional AT&T office environments, reports NetworkWorld citing sources.

NetworkWorld further writes, “A spokesman in AT&T’s San Antonio, Texas, headquarters denies there are broad-scale plans to end teleworking arrangements, but acknowledges there may be some isolated cases. “Teleworking is at the discretion of the business,” says Walt Sharp, the spokesman.

He says AT&T is in the process of reconciling the human resources policies of the legacy AT&T, SBC Communications, which acquired AT&T in 2005; BellSouth, which was acquired in late 2006; and the former Cingular wireless operation, previously co-owned by BellSouth and AT&T.

“We have recently merged [these] very large companies, each of which has separate policies on everything, and we’re in the process of integrating all of those policies and coming up with integrated policies for AT&T overall,” Sharp says. “I believe the teleworking policy is expected to be integrated some time next year.”

Telework advocates have loaded praise on AT&T over the years for its telework program, which the telecommunications company formalized in 1992 and grew to become one of the largest and most successful in the nation.

Enabling employees to telework has been lucrative for the company. AT&T was able to slash its annual real estate costs by $30 million and gained $150 million in extra hours of productive work from teleworkers, the company told Network World in 2005.

AT&T’s telework resource site, once contained content for employees and managers, including case studies, tips for developing a business case, dos and don’ts, and policy documents. The link is no longer active.”

More at NetworkWorld.

SINGAPORE – Nov 19, ‘07 –PRNewswire — A young couple from Singapore and the U.S. — she’s a currency trader, he’s an IT guy — plan on not missing a day of work as they travel around the world.

To get the public to tag along and see how they do it, Grace and Pedro have hired TransMedia Group to publicize their daily online TV show at Worldiki.

“Hopefully by the time they arrive in New York, a great many voyeuristic fans around the world will know why they’re doing this,” she
added. They’re currently traveling throughout Asia just as a “warm-up” for their grand tour commencing in January, 2008.

This adventurous couple, Grace, 27, from Singapore, and Pedro 26, from the U.S. and Spain, are embarking on this peripatetic journey to show vividly in high-definition film that you can travel the globe without sacrificing your career one bit, said Morgan.

Grace makes money by trading money online (forex trading). She has also authored a book on forex trading (“7 Winning Strategies For Trading Forex”, Harriman House, 2007). Many know her to be this “too-young” girl who crazily takes the road less traveled. After a few years of trading currencies intensively and not having enough time for fun stuff, she has now decided to take her trading on the road and travel the world while managing her trading.

Pedro is an IT geek who wrote his first basic program on an Apple II when he was 7. Since then, he’s done everything from running servers, developing real-time applications to managing the IT infrastructure and department of an MNC. He has now decided to work on his own business and travel the world while doing so (with internet available almost everywhere, this is now possible!), and what would seem more natural for a geek but to blog about it!

From Singapore, the couple will travel to dozens of countries and visit perhaps as many as 30 or 40 cities, including Thailand, Cairo, Jerusalem, Jordan, South Africa where they plan to go on safari at Kwandwe Game Preserve, Guayaquil, Peru, Santiago, Chile, Madrid, Budapest, Rome, where they will visit The Vatican, Mexico, where they will see first hand the devastation caused by recent floods, Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and wind up in New York.

“We might squeeze in Australia with maybe a stopover in Tahiti on the way to Hawaii,” said Pedro, who together with his wife, Grace Cheng
has managed to merge their mutual love of travel with earning a successful living as they go. The public can follow their travels daily on their blog, said Morgan. They plan ultimately to turn their travels into a reality television series.

Tempted by the ‘unbeatable prices’ and ‘unmissable deals’ that airlines offer if you book online? You may be. At least, that is, until you read the small print.

BRUSSELS, Belgium — Nov 14, ‘07 — Free or cut-price tickets that turn out not to be available; airport taxes and other hidden costs; insurance that’s automatically added unless you opt out – these are just some of the unlawful practices the EU has found on over 50% of the websites checked.

The ‘airline sweep’, carried out by 15 EU countries on 24-28 September, was more than just a fact-finding exercise – the goal is to enforce consumer rights. “Whether in Brussels or Barcelona, Munich or Manchester, consumers deserve clear and fair pricing and no hidden surprises in the small print of contract terms” said EU consumer protection commissioner Meglena Kuneva.

National enforcement authorities examined 447 websites, of which 226 were flagged as breaching consumer protection law. The companies involved have now been given four months to correct irregularities. The idea is to keep the names of the companies secret for this period, to encourage them to act. But Ms Kuneva has made it clear she will not hesitate to name and shame those who fail to take the necessary steps by the January deadline. Airlines that don’t toe the line may be fined, or have their websites shut down.

“There is a substantial problem in the industry,” said Kuneva after investigators checked more than 400 Web sites through much of the 27-nation bloc. “Over 50 percent of sites checked seem to mislead consumers.”

Allegedly cheap tickets are often leaden with hefty charges. Kuneva said investigators found offers for 20 euros only to find out five pages further on that the total price was over 100 euros. Sometimes there simply are no flights for the lowest prices advertised or insurance is automatically added to the price.

Belgium came out worst, with 46 of the 48 sites showing irregularities. Of the 15 EU nations checked, only Austria, Cyprus and Greece had a clean bill of health in the test of airline and travel Web sites. Kuneva said Web site operators had until the end of January to clean up their act or face fines or closure. More at European Commission.

NORWALK, Conn.–BUSINESS WIRE–Nov. 5, 2007–Priceline.com announced today that it will permanently eliminate airline ticket booking fees on all published domestic and international fares. This means that, in most cases, priceline.com customers will pay less for their tickets than they would at other major full-service online travel reservation services, including Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz.The booking fee elimination applies to all priceline.com tickets purchased on a published-price basis and does not apply to priceline.com’s Name Your Own Price airline ticketing service, which already delivers some of the deepest discounts among the so-called opaque ticketing services.

“Today’s announcement reinforces priceline.com’s brand position as the online travel service with the best deals,” said priceline.com President and Chief Executive Officer Jeffery H. Boyd. “We already offer consumers an easy, one-stop way to do comparative ticket searches for most popular airlines, flights and prices. With our new no-booking-fee policy, priceline.com customers can get the best possible price on their tickets no matter which flight they choose.” More at Priceline.

“Smart Cities” team at MIT Media Lab is developing this cool stackable electric car and concept scooter.

City Car:

The City Car is a stackable electric two-passenger city vehicle. The one-way sharable user model is designed to be used in dense urban areas. Vehicle Stacks will be placed throughout the city to create an urban transportation network that takes advantage of existing infrastructure such as subway and bus lines. By placing stacks in urban spaces and key points of convergence, the vehicle allows the citizens the flexibility to combine mass transit effectively with individualized mobility. The stack receives incoming vehicles and electrically charges them. Similar to luggage carts at the airport, users simply take the first fully charged vehicle at the front of the stack. The City car is NOT a replacement for personal vehicles, taxis, buses, or trucks; it is a NEW vehicle type that promotes a socially responsible and more effective means of urban mobility.

The City car utilizes fully integrated in-wheel electric motors and suspension systems called, “Wheel Robots.” The wheel robots eliminate the need traditional drive train configurations like engine blocks, gear boxes, and differentials because they are self-contained, digitally controlled, and reconfigurable. Additionally, the wheel robot provides all wheel power and steering capable of 360 degrees of movement, thus allowing for Omni-directional movement. The vehicle can maneuver in tight urban spaces and park by sideways translation. This technology is patented-pending and under design development at the MIT Media Lab.

Scooter with ITRI and Sanyang Motors:

The MIT Media Lab is co-developing with ITRI and SYM an innovative concept scooter. The vehicle design reflects innovations in new materials, ergonomics, emerging connectivity, mass customization, and social networks. The project embodies new aesthetics as a result of novel and re-organized functionality by achieving high levels of styling and product packaging.

Working with SYM and ITRI, MIT is also considering future product planning, branding strategies, and new ownership/business models. The final show-quality prototype will be formally presented at the Milan Motor show in November of 2007. More at MIT Media Lab here and here.