Orion Alerter Basic-4 (12-gauge) Launcher Red Flare/aerial Signal + 4 Handheld on 2040-parts.com

Lexus CT 200h: Lexus at Geneva Motor Show

The Lexus CT 200h - Geneva bound Last year we had the Lexus LF-Ch concept in all its goldness at the Frankfurt Motor Show. Then a few weeks back that became the Lexus CT 200h. Which is actually what we thought the Lexus Premium Compact would be called – the Lexus CT – when we first reported on the baby Lexus.

Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid (2011) first official pictures

Porsche has released details of its updated 911 GT3 R Hybrid – the 2010 original nearly won last year's Nurburgring 24hr race before (ironically) it retired with petrol engine failure.  The 2011 Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid – the lowdown Before this report disappears in a chorus of ‘it looks the same as last year’s one’, let's outline where Porsche’s engineers have been busy. At the unfashionable end of the car remains a 4.0-litre flat-six engine producing approximately 470bhp. Up front are twin electric motors, now producing 75kW of power each (up from 60kW) and combined these give the GT3 R Hybrid a 197bhp electric boost, which can be programmed to activate automatically via the throttle pedal, or manually selected during overtaking. F1-derived hybrid tech for the 911 GT3 R Hybrid Power for the two electric motors doesn't come from batteries, but flywheel accumulator technology from Williams Hybrid Power, an offshoot of the Williams Formula 1 team. The flywheel, encased in a carbonfibre safety cell in the space where the passenger seat would be, spins at up to 40,000rpm and acts as a mechanical energy store for the electric motors. Regenerative braking feeds energy back into the flywheel system – no surprises there, as the technology is derived from Williams' exeprience with Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) in F1.

Electric-car guru Tom Gage steps down from AC Propulsion

Electric-car innovator Tom Gage resigned the morning of Oct. 5 from California company AC Propulsion, Autoweek has learned. Gage, the now-former CEO, joined the company in 1996, several years after its founding, and has become its public face and a widely used resource on electric cars.