Where To Live In China? All Over The PRO World of INFLUENCERS

Like  Comment  Share  Interact  Disqus  Delicious   Instagram  LinkedIn  Google+  YouTube  MySpace Press   Stumble  Tumblr  Pinterest

Career Curveballs: Embrace Change or Become Stagnant

The #1 Interview Trap Question

Talented Women: Please Do NOT Quit

Don’t F*ck Up the Culture

What you wear matters. Unless it doesn’t.

Oh Yes, Marketing to YUMmies is Now a Thing, Unfortunately


Like  Comment  Share  Interact  Disqus  Delicious   Instagram  LinkedIn  Google+  YouTube  MySpace Press   Stumble  Tumblr  Pinterest

The Urban China Initiative (a think tank focused on urbanization challenges in China and supported by McKinsey & Company) just published its most recent ranking of Chinese cities based on its own proprietary sustainability index. Take a look to find where your city ranks on the list.

What are the key messages?

Overall, China’s cities are becoming more, not less, sustainable.

 Richer cities tend to perform better on the index and so most of them tend to be in the east or on the coast of China.

 Greater sustainability correlates with size up to a point, that point being around 4.5 million people. After this, size doesn’t matter.

 Greater sustainability correlates with increased population density up to a point, that point being around 8,000 people per square kilometer. After that, higher density doesn't lead to higher sustainability.

 Five Chinese cities have already crossed these thresholds and 11 more are likely to do so soon, representing more than 20% of China’s population.

 Improving sustainability in these cities requires new forms of action, which have proven successful in peer cities globally. These include many actions that are not hard to describe, but are hard to implement consistently, whether it is in energy savings and emissions reduction, tighter supervision of polluters, pricing resources to create rational usage, smart planning of and incentives to use public transport. Implementation, not conception, makes all the difference in China.

Please read the full report for the charts which illustrate this more fully.

BY:GORDON ORR

Like  Comment  Share  Interact  Disqus  Delicious   Instagram  LinkedIn  Google+  YouTube  MySpace Press   Stumble  Tumblr  Pinterest

The Electric Plane: Inspired By Tesla. Built By Airbus

Like  Comment  Share  Interact  Disqus  Delicious   Instagram  LinkedIn  Google+  YouTube  MySpace Press   Stumble  Tumblr  Pinterest


Is Tesla dominating electric transportation? Well, if at all, then maybe in cars.

And as they're obviously focused on having less of them exploding and burning down, others have already taken the learning from the automotive and marine businesses and applied hybrid and electric propulsion to yet another market: aircrafts!

So someone else is innovating in the meantime. And it's not a funky start-up!

Whilst Tesla's founder Elon Musk still ponders about his latest vision of designing an electric supersonic airplane, with the ability to take off and land vertically, members of the Tesla Motors Club are already broadly involved in discussing the most recent and successful maiden flight of Airbus Group's new green plane.

As a matter of fact, some days ago Airbus unveiled its all-electric E-Fan 2.0 protoype electric aircraft, which has two motors with ducted fans powered by a lithium-ion polymer battery. The two-seater, which has been tested since the beginning of March near Bordeaux, is built of carbon fiber and can fly for about half an hour at 110 miles (177 kilometers). It has a wingspan of 312 feet (9.5 meters) and weighs 1,212 pounds (550 kilograms).


It could be the aircraft maker's next step in trying to enter (via hybrid electric powered engines) the market for regional jets (70-90 seats). According to Airbus, this might take anything between 15 to 20 years. Such a hybrid regional airliner could slash fuel consumption by 70-80% based on current technology and it could significantly cut noise levels. Consequently Airbus and its partners are aiming to perform research and development to construct a series version of the E-Fan and propose an industrial plan for a production facility close to Bordeaux Airport.

Certainly there is a place for electric and hybrid concepts in civil aerospace. However, the challenge will be to manage the high electrical loads on-board and to have enough power storage to fuel large jets. In addition batteries need to be stable and highly resistant in any context and given situation, something Boeing struggled a lot with on its 787 Dreamliner. Lately, it's also been rather quiet about Boeing's once very popular SUGAR Volt concept: A hybrid aircraft which would use two hybrid turbofans that burn conventional jet fuel when taking off, then use electric motors to power the engines while flying.

Indeed, currently it appears that the rather clumsy and bureaucratic Airbus group is at the technological forefront of electric airplanes—not Boeing or Tesla.

By the way, if you were to consider getting your own E-Fan 2.0, you might be interested to know that it'll be priced in-line with similar-sized planes at around $300,000.

What do you think about it? Will electric planes shape the future of transportation? Will Airbus lead the market? What about Boeing, Tesla, and other players?


BY:ANDREAS VON DER HEYDT
Interact Like Comment Share with your Social Powers

Like  Comment  Share  Interact  Disqus  Delicious   Instagram  LinkedIn  Google+  YouTube  MySpace Press   Stumble  Tumblr  Pinterest
Related Post You May Also Interested

• How To Build A Disruptive Organization
• 25 Hot Tech Start Ups To Watch For
• 14 Rules To Become The World´s Fastest Company
• The Best Niche Strategies To Compete With The Goliaths
• How Zappos WOWs Its Employees