Boeing’s Dreamliner has likely become a nightmare for the company, its airline customers and regulators worldwide. An inflight lithium-ion battery fire broke out Wednesday on an All Nippon Airways 787 over Japan, forcing an emergency landing. And another battery fire occurred last week aboard a Japan Airlines 787 at Boston’s Logan International Airport. Both battery [...]

Since America’s love affair with cars really got rolling after World War II, nothing but a gasoline-burning internal combustion engine would do. Until now. The gearheads at Motor Trend have named the Tesla Model S the car of the year for 2013—the first time an all-electric vehicle has ever won the honor. “The turning point [...]

A person’s arsenal of wireless communications devices—smartphones, tablets, laptops, et cetera—places a heavy burden on surrounding cell towers. But when storms or power surges interrupt electrical service, these towers are forced to rely on a costly and environmentally unfriendly combination of lead-acid batteries and diesel generators to keep wireless users connected. GE on Tuesday unveiled [...]

No matter how fancy mobile gadgets get, they’re useless when their batteries run out. With the push toward cloud computing and the always-on wireless culture gaining momentum every day, laptop, tablet and smart phone batteries are being asked to do more despite no real breakthroughs in battery technology hitting the market. Consider: Twitter users send [...]

It may seem slightly ridiculous to consider the prospects for a future solar-hydrogen economy at an institute for theoretical physics in Waterloo, Canada. After all, Canada is the capital of unconventional oil, also known as oil sands, also known as tar sands, which supply more than a million barrels of oil per day to the [...]

Perhaps the biggest winner of the Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE competition is the X PRIZE Foundation itself. The organization, formed in 1996 with the Ansari X PRIZE competition to stimulate private spaceflight, not only issued a challenge to seen if automakers could build a vehicle that could get 100 miles per gallon (or the [...]