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Wired.com’s Guide to Driving in Kabul

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Editor’s note: Wired.com contributor Zach Rosenberg recently returned from four months in Afghanistan, where, among other things, he learned how to navigate the streets of the country’s capital in a battered Toyota Corolla.

So you¹re in Kabul and need to get somewhere, huh?

Oh sure, you can take a cab. There are taxis everywhere, they’re cheap and the drivers are, for the most part, honorable and upstanding citizens, but despite a significant drop in kidnappings your safety is by no means guaranteed. There are a few unmarked call-taxi services that cater to foreigners — the drivers speak English, they know everyone you’ll want to go and they often have the connections to get you where ordinary drivers cannot.

But you want to do this yourself, huh? Let me mention that I don’t recommend going to Kabul, let alone driving there, but since you’ve made it this far, here’s what you can expect.

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Speed: 500 MPH. Altitude: 50 Feet. Feeling: Amazing.

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For pilots seeking a speed fix, this weekend’s Reno Air Races is the place to be. From the tiny Formula 1 class racers that lap the short course at more than 250 mph to the anything-goes unlimited class where pilots go more than 500 mph just 50 feet off the ground, going fast is the only goal.

The 47th annual National Championship Air Races kick into high gear this weekend at Stead Field outside Reno, Nevada. The event started in 1964 when World War II pilot Bill Stead organized a race in the high desert of Nevada, resurrecting a sport that had largely gone missing since the last of the great Cleveland air races in 1949.

Air racing had been one of the most popular spectator sports before World War II, drawing hundreds of thousands of people to events nationwide. Back then, the quest for speed pushed aviation innovation with manufacturers often developing several new designs each year in a quest to win races.

These days, everything old is new. World War II-era aircraft have dominated the field since 1964. With the exception of the recent jet class, highly modified fighter planes from the 1940s consistently have been the fastest planes in Reno. Last year’s winner in the unlimited class was Strega, an extensively modified P-51 Mustang and a crowd favorite. It was the airplane’s eighth championship title, but the first for the young man in the cockpit, Steve Hinton Jr.

Hinton is favored to win again this year, and we caught up with him as he prepared Strega for this year’s race.

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From An Irish Matchmaker To The Best Road Ever

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Driving around the world as opposed to flying is meant to negate jet lag and culture shock. But you can’t drive across the Atlantic, so the pond is one of two bodies of water we must cross by plane on our round-the-world drive. The culture shock of Big Apple to the Emerald Isle is huge.

NYC was 98 in the shade when we left. The next day we’re in Ireland and it’s barely breaking into the 60s. The Atlantic is violent over here. We touch a toe in Galway Bay as if to make a link to the place from which we have just come. Before we head inland to Galway and pick up the new fast road to Dublin we stop in Lisdoonvarna for the annual matchmaking festival.

We want to meet County Clare’s very own cupid, the amazing Willie Daly, master matchmaker.

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X Prize Winners Look Weird … With Good Reason

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WASHINGTON — Let’s start with the obvious. The three winning Progressive Automotive X Prize vehicles announced today certainly look a tad strange.

One is a banana-yellow enclosed motorcycle from Switzerland. Another is a neon-green coupe that resembles a well-rubbed bar of Irish Spring. And the big $5 million winner, the inspired creation of a startup company from Lynchburg, Virginia. called Edison2, looks like a bird skull dipped in liquid chrome, a piece of high-flown origami or a particularly angular foil-wrapped chipotle burrito — take your pick.

So chuckle if you want — but as the founder of Edison2, Oliver Kuttner, likes to say, “Facts are stubborn things.” And here are the facts…

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Automotive X Prize Winner Gets 102.5 MPG

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It may look odd, but the ultralight Edison2 Very Light Car gets 102.5 mpg, it does so with good old-fashioned internal combustion and it’s just won the Progressive Automotive X Prize.

The Very Light Car was among three innovative, if unusual, automobiles that shared the $10 million pot the X Prize promised to whomever built a production-ready vehicle capable of getting 100 mpg or its equivalent. Progressive Automotive X-Prize officials announced the winners today in Washington, D.C., some 30 months after the competition began.

“We’ve seen a shift in the market since we first launched this competition, and a greater awareness by people everywhere to think more seriously about the actions we take, and how they affect our environment,” Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, said. “Gas mileage ranks as one of our top concerns when purchasing a new vehicle and I believe strongly that the innovations showcased throughout the life of this competition will continue to impact and improve our car buying options for the future.”

Now that the contest is won, the hard work begins. The winning teams hope to leverage their success to get their vehicles, or at least the technology underpinning them, into showrooms.

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EV Advocates Offer Goodbye Gift for Ousted BP CEO

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Eco-friendly provocateurs want to help ousted BP CEO Tony Hayward get his life back with a little gift to accompany his golden parachute: an electric car.

The folks at Hello Electric have posted an online goodbye card that, if signed by 25,000 people, will be delivered to Hayward attached to an EV. It’s the same gesture of goodwill gesture you’d offer a laid-off coworker, except instead of a round of drinks at Chili’s, it’s a new car for a guy about to get a $17 million pension.

“Now that you’ve got more time on your hands, we’re offering you the chance to truly move beyond petroleum by driving an electric car and encouraging the world to do the same,” the card reads. “To make it easy for you, we’ve picked out a brand new electric car and paid the deposit… You’ll never have to make a trip to a gas station again!”

According to an image at Hello Electric’s website that just to be the second-worst Photoshop job we’ve seen since the April spill, the group appears to be giving Hayward a Nissan Leaf. Of course, Hayward will have to turn over a new Leaf to actually claim the car, as it comes with the catch that he gets the car only after he “agrees to become a worldwide ambassador for the technology.”

If he accepts, Nissan’s polar pitch-bear might be joined by a Gulf Coast Walrus,” an Arctic animal famously included in BP’s Regional Oil Spill Response Plan.

We suggest that Hayward take the car. If anything, it’s probably small enough to keep on board his yacht.

UPDATE 2:15 p.m.: Hmmm… Hello Electric’s web site seems to be down.

Photo: Flickr/energycommerce. Tony Hayward testifying before the US House Commitee on Energy and Commerce

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Enzyme Discovery Could Boost Biofuel’s Viability

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Wood, straw and other plants are an excellent source of sugar that can be fermented to make ethanol, but extracting it is difficult because the biomass is so tough. Researchers in the UK think they have a solution to that problem that could boost the biofuel’s viability.

The team, based at the University of Cambridge and part of the BBSRC Sustainable Bioenergy Centre, has discovered two enzymes that toughen wood, straw and plant stalks. By identifying and studying the genes of those enzymes, they’ve raised the possibility of breeding non-edible plants that require less processing, less energy and fewer chemicals to refine into biofuel.

“There is a lot of energy stored in wood and straw in the form of a substance called lignocellulose,” lead researcher Prof. Paul Dupree said in a statement. “We wanted to find ways of making it easier to get at this energy and extract it in the form of sugars that can be fermented to produce bioethanol and other products.”

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Video: Matt ‘The Right Stuff’ Dieckmann

Matt Dieckmann was a pioneer in the budding electric motorcycle scene and an entrepreneur you just knew was going places. He firmly believed the future was electric, and he died last month hoping to prove it. The folks at TTXGP eGrandPrix have compiled a nice retrospective of his brief racing career and the bike he built for Electric Race Bikes.

Video: TTXGP

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TTXGP Barnstorms Through California

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We’re convinced Azhar Hussain doesn’t sleep. The head of the TTXGP electric motorcycle grand prix, which wrapped up its inaugural North American season last month, is barnstorming through California to spread the e-bike gospel, line up new partners and, hopefully, draw more teams.

The big news is the North American launch of his Mavizen TTX02 electric motorcycle — along with the equally sexy eSuperSport from Roehr Motorcycles — Thursday at Hollywood Electrics in Los Angeles. Then it’s off to Mindshare Los Angeles, the monthly techie confab that’s a bit like TED-lite, to spread the electric gospel. All of this follows Tuesday’s meet-and-greet at Intel, where he chatted up the brass and showed off the Mavizen, which uses an Intel Atom processor in its power management system.

There’s still a lot of action left in the TTXGP series, with races slated for Assen and Brands Hatch before the world championship race in Albacete, Spain. Next season should be just as exciting, with a new spec class (details are still being worked out) and rumors that two major manufacturers are interested in racing.

Photo: TTXGP. Jennifer Bromme of Werkstatt Racing and Repair aboard the Mavizen TTX02

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General Motors Boosts OnStar to Challenge Sync

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After watching Ford dominate the in-car connectivity market with Sync, General Motors is fighting back with a slew of new features for OnStar in a push it calls “responsible connectivity.”

OnStar will roll out a long list of improvements, including Pandora online radio, Stitcher podcasts and wi-fi. Down the road, we could see voice-activated Facebook, texting and iPod control so you can stay connected while keeping your hands firmly planted at 10 and 2.

OnStar, long known for its ability to unlock your doors and alert the cops when you crash, enjoys excellent brand recognition. Eighty percent of consumers who buy a GM vehicle cite OnStar as a reason, the company boasts. But OnStar is trying to catch up with Sync, which has been hugely successful as Ford goes nuts with in-car connectivity. To that end, OnStar, under the leadership of former GM PR boss Chris Preuss, will introduce improved service and hardware in 40 different models.

“Our system is first and foremost about safety and security, but we are evolving that now to include connectivity,” said Sam Mancuso, OnStar chief marketing officer. “Some people might say that we are behind in that space but we are not. We were doing connected services as far back as nine, 10 years ago but the marketplace really wasn’t ready for it yet.”

Times have changed, he said, and the market is ready.

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