Massie Santos Ballon's blog

On a showroom floor in India’s westernmost state of Gujarat sits the prototype for a car made at a local production plant and expected to be commercially available early next year.

The non-air conditioned, four-seater model is expected to be priced at Rs. 85,000 to 1 lakh ($1,748 USD to $2,057 USD).

And it’s an electric car, one that’s said to run on either nickel-metal hydride or lithium-ion batteries.

It's the rickshaw everyone wants to drive. 

At least, that's the kind of reaction India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research is hoping to get for the newly-launched "soleckshaw." (Sorry fans of the Tata Nano).

And with the tagline "Robust and ergonomically designed to take the drudgery out of the rickshaw driving," who could possibly resist?

Will a luxury car lose street cred if it starts talking about fuel efficiency?

Australia’s orange-bellied parrot is so rare, it’s estimated less than 200 of them can be found in the wild. For years, the governments of South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania have worked with conservationists to protect the critically-endangered bird. They’ve found that saving the species may not necessarily be synonymous with saving the environment.

If it were a little bigger it might serve as a banana boat.

Cue the Jaws theme.

Just two weeks after introducing the fuel cell company's first commercial product at the Consumer Electronics Show, Power Air (OTC:PWAC) CEO Remy Kozak has made a different kind of announcement.

Stepping down from his executive position "effective immediately," Kozak is to remain with the Livermore-based company until the end of February to ease the transition of power.

Israel doesn’t think India's cows are good enough.

Surprisingly, India agrees.

According to The Economic Times, the Israeli agricultural minister offered India technological assistance in improving dairy production. This apparently includes applying "the genetic properties of Israeli cows" to the local livestock, according to the article.

The lack of protest is unexpected given that India is arguably the only other place on earth [ed.: other than California?] that happy cows could call home.

Pity Carnival cruises. Not only has its public relations office had to deal with passengers falling deathly ill of noroviruses, but now it has to fight charges that it releases too much carbon.