Metro Cell Vehicle Concept; RainShine LEED Platinum House; $700 Billion Gain from Energy Efficiency; Electric Light-Sport Aircraft; BP says America’s the Land for Wind Power

Metro Cell Vehicle Concept. Single person semi-private vehicle system called PDD (pickup-drive-drop) will be implemented. With the PDD system, a driver finds a “cellular-mobile stack”, engages a car and uses it within that limited area. Once the commute is done, they simply disembark and the pod goes back to the nearest mobile stack. So very, very cool.

RainShine LEED Platinum House. The RainShine house is the first modernist home to achieve the LEED Platinum level in the Southeastern United States. This is one incredibly beautiful home, especially with the added bonus of being LEED certified!

$700 Billion Gain from Energy Efficiency. Seems like just being energy efficient can be one of the cheapest way to keep the lights on and save the planet. A massive efficiency push over the next decade could save the U.S. economy $700 billion. That is, while efficiency measures would cost about $520 to put in place, they would save $1.2 trillion through 2020. In the process, efficiency could meet 23% of America’s future electricity demand.

Yuneec e430 Electric Light-Sport Aircraft. An electric plane? Would you fly in one? The Yuneec is a Chinese-made light-sport aircraft powered by a 54-horsepower (40 kw) electric motor and a lithium-ion battery pack, which can stay in the air from 90 minutes to three hours depending on how the plane is set up.

BP says America’s the Land for Wind Power. And they think it’s much better than offshore wind, too. The attraction is scale: There are just more wide empty spaces where you can put up turbines. “We have a wind farm in Texas that’s as big as Berkshire,” says a rep from BP.