On Saturday, I went to the first annual MAKER Faire in San Mateo, CA, sponsored by MAKE magazine. I love the magazine with the slogan “technology on your time,” and this two day festival was a great celebration of the magazine’s DIY ethic. At this fest, I saw some very cool rockets, robotic devices (giraffes, pteryodactals, Bender types, etc), portions of a backyard monorail, fire-breathing devices, wooden bicycles, neon glass bending, claymation-type stop-motion animation demonstrations, and a lot of really amazing stuff.

You can see some great photos of this event at the Laughing Squid blog, Flickr, and the official Maker Faire website.

The one thing that really stood out for me was the Maker Faire booth for CalCars. These folks demonstrated that a standard hybrid car can be hacked to get 100+ mpg with technology that exists right now! Can you believe it? I just don’t understand why this technlogy isn’t used by any car manufacturers right now. Here’s an excerpt from the CalCars website:

How does this sound: 100+ MPG in a regular, full-sized vehicle?

We can achieve that — today — with a plug-in hybrid (PHEV). Like current hybrids, PHEVs have unlimited range (you can fill them up with gas and go as far as you want). But with its larger battery packs, anytime you recharge a PHEV (at any 120-volt outlet), you’ll get a pure electric, zero-emission car for your local travel.

It’s like having a second small fuel tank that you always use first — only you fill this tank at home with electricity at an equivalent cost of under $1/gallon. Another way of thinking about this: at $3 for a gallon of gas, driving a non-hybrid car costs 8-20 cents/mile (depending on MPG). With a PHEV, all-electric local travel and communting can drop to 2-4 cents/mile.

Other benefits:

  • Recharging is not required, but if you do so often, chances are you’ll need to go to a gas station less than once a month.
  • Electric energy is cheaper than gas, cleaner than gas, and domestic.
  • Lifetime service costs will be lower for a vehicle that is mainly electric.
  • Fleets are interested in a vehicle with stored energy that saves them thousands of dollars for towed generators to use where grid power is unavailable.
  • Blackout-wary Californians welcome ready access to a car that could be hooked up via an extension cord to provide emergency backup power for a few home appliances.

To me, this sounds like an absolute no-brainer. As I hear about all the financial problems that General Motors is having, I wonder why they’re not actively building these types of cars. It’s no wonder to me that Toyota, which has had so much success with the Prius, is the most successful automobile manufacturer in the world right now.

If you want to see where automobile industry should go if it had any sense, check out CalCars.org.