Back from the Future! DeLorean to be resurrected

If you fell in love with the DeLorean in the Back to the Future movie series, the good news is that in 2013, you'll be able to buy a real one again.

It won't have a flux capacitor, won't time-travel and it'll still be a thirty year-old design (albeit styled by Giugiaro and structurally redesigned by Colin Chapman of Lotus fame after Delorean himself screwed up the first design).

It will have a 200+ bhp electric motor, not the original asthmatic V6 producing 130 bhp, and those awesome gull-wing doors and it'll be really retro cool.

It won't be called the DMC-12 any more either, because the 12 stood for its new price at launch - US$12,000. The new one will cost you between US$90,000 and US$100,000.

Background
Texas entrepreneur Stephen Wynne started the current "De Lorean Motor Company" in 1995 after acquiring the name and remaining parts inventory and since 2007, around 40 whole De Lorean cars have been produced from the spare parts cars.

Now the company is to go another step, and at an International De Lorean Owners Event in Houston a few days back, the new electric De Lorean was announced.

"Now we are working with electric-car startup Epic EV to put an all-electric DMC-12 into production by 2013" was the announcement on the De Lorean web site. The three-wheeled Epic EV just happens to use a 200 bhp+ electric motor too.

The Orginal
One of the original De Lorean machines used in the shooting of the "Back to the future" film franchise is to go under the hammer at an auction in December. The car is expected to fetch in the ballpark of $400,000-$600,000.

Check out the video of the new Epic EV below.

Electric car charging from public solar panels

Electric car owners in Zurich who want to charge up with green energy can have their battery communicate with a local utility’s solar panels and find out whether the panels are producing at that point in time.

If they are, the battery can instruct the utility to send electricity.

It’s part of a small trial between IBM and Swiss utility EKZ involving an app, cloud computing services and a phonebook sized data-recording device installed on “several” EVs including a Renault Twingo, an IBM press release states.

The device was developed by Zurich University.

The app also lets the car owner hand over charging responsibility to EKZ, which can schedule charge-ups when sun and wind power is available, and better manage its peak load generation.

One knock on EVs is that they’re only as green as the form of electricity that feeds them – coal-base electricity does not reduce a car’s carbon footprint as much as renewable electricity does. But wind and solar sources do not furnish constant electricity the way coal does.

The app can help assure the car charges only when the sun shines or the wind blows. (Although the bigger step will come when utilities switch to 100 percent renewable, taking the guesswork out).

The app runs on mobile devices, tablets and web browsers.

In addition, owners can read the app while they’re away from their car – say, in the office or even thousands of miles away – to check how much charge remains.

All the more reason why cars might could one day come for “free” as part of a service package from a utility, a mobile phone company or an internet provider.

Photo: BP Solar

China Detains 13 people: Death At Internet Addiction Camp

Chinese police have detained 13 people for questioning, following the death by beating of a teenager at an Internet addiction camp in southern China.

The Qihang Salvation Training Camp, one of many boot camp-style centers for Internet obsession in China, was 'found to be unlicensed' and closed down on Friday, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Parents of 122 other students took them home from the camp in Guangxi province, whilst police investigate the case.

Deng Senshan killed
A week earlier, a 15-year-old boy Deng Senshan, was allegedly put in solitary confinement, scolded and beaten to death within one day of his arrival at the camp. The boy's father found his bloodied body in a local hospital, where camp staff said they had sent him because of a severe fever.

Family Divisions
Other Internet addiction camps in China are licensed and subsidised by the government. Conservative officials blame hugely popular online games like World of Warcraft for getting teens hooked on the Web, harming their grades in school, creating anti-social behaviour and causing divisions in the family, especially with their parents.

Shock Treatment
Some of the camps have used shock treatment and aversion therapy on students, but China has since banned this practice, last month.

Cybercrime
Separately, China in recent weeks detained two hackers for stealing 450 million won (US$368,000) from South Korean bank accounts, Xinhua said.

The suspects, based in a Chinese city that borders North Korea, had stolen the money from 86 South Korean nationals over more than a year, it said. South Korean police had asked China to help crack the cross-border case, the report said.