The Green Show: The Brammo Enertia electric motorcycle

[ Background Music ] >> Mark Licea: Hey folks, I'm Mark Licea and this week, a new kind of HDTV technology, the Intertia electric motorcycle and the power of kinetic energy. The Green Show starts now. ^M00:00:13 [ Music ] ^M00:00:20 >> Mark Licea: Brammo's plug in electric motorcycle runs off pure electricity. And I got to check it out. ^M00:00:26 [ Music ] ^M00:00:30 >> The Intertia is our first electric vehicle product. It's designed for the urban and suburban commuter so it's got a 45 mile range. And you can charge it up in about -- a little under four hours. So it makes it quite easy to plug in anywhere you can plug in a laptop. And then it is a 45 mile range overall. From an economic efficiency, you can drive 15,000 miles for about 80 dollars. It is made from recyclable materials. All the plastics are recycled materials, so there's a whole bunch of polypropylene plastic bottles and recycled carpet in the bike. ^M00:01:05 [ Music ] ^M00:01:07 >> Mark Licea: Can you talk a little about the simplicity of this bike in comparison with your average fuel-burning motorcycle? >> We knew that it was going to have no clutch and no gear so it would be just naturally easier to ride, but, you just get on this, turn it on and you ride. ^M00:01:20 [ Music ] ^M00:01:22 >> There's no clutch, so I didn't have to worry about a clutch. It was all -- it's all here. So your wrist movements, as long as you have a good wrist, you can speed up pretty fast. It felt really light. Like I own a Vespa and my Vespa I struggle with sometimes. I didn't smell as much junk in the air because it's electric, right? >> How's the sound? >> The sound -- it was just very light whizzing. Like when you're going very slow, you hear nothing. As you speed up, you hear a little whiz. And I went on the West Side Highway a little bit. I sped up [a bit]. Everything about it was just easy. That's the best way to describe it, easy. >> You can actually order them now at Brammo.com. It's 11,995 is the retail. It is getting 10 percent tax credit at the federal level. >> And now, I think it's time to test out the ebike for myself, like a real man. ^M00:02:08 [ Whizzing sound ] ^M00:02:15 >> There's a new kind of HDTV that consumes much less energy than other TVs in comparison. It's Samsung's edge-lit LED-based LCD technology and Senior Editor, David Katzmaier has more. [ Background music ] >> David Katzmaier: This is a LCD television like all the other LCD TVs out there with one important difference. It uses LEDs to illuminate the picture. Standard LCDs have a fluorescent back light that's actually behind the entire screen. The edge-lit LED model right here, is very thin. And actually you can look at it from the side. It's a little over an inch thick, so that's one advantage of the LEDs. Another is decreased power consumption. Now in terms of picture quality, the edge-lit LED does have a little bit of a trade off. The edges around the screen are slightly brighter than the middle, so you do see with a very dark scene, for example, sometimes some bright spots around the edges. But you do have the fact also that the LEDs fade completely to black sometimes. So when you're watching for example the credits and it fades to black, the whole TV will turn off and then turn back on as the credits come up. So that can be a little bit distracting. So when we do these power consumption tests, we actually look at the TVs with an equalized light output. And again, this edge-lit technology was the best we've tested. It was about 96 watts in that mode. Of course, when you went ahead and looked at other TVs in the 46-inch size range, the best that we saw was 106 watts, so it's not really that much of a difference, but, you know, it is still the most efficient TV we've tested. You increase the brightness, you're going to see a lot brighter picture for less power than if you were to increase the brightness on a standard LCD display. It's worth mentioning of course, that plasmas used significantly more power, often double or even more, especially when you're turning up that picture brightness. I didn't mention it uses about 30 dollars a year in terms of power, but it does cost hundreds more than a typical same-size non-LED TV. So you do pay for it up front, but you get that style, and of course, the efficiency with the edge-lit displays. >> Mark Licea: If you're an avid power walker, you can put that kinetic energy to good use. The nPower PEG, or Personal Energy Generator, is a charger that converts kinetic energy into electricity. When in motion, the PEG can reportedly charge an average hand-held device up to 80 percent in about an hour. The PEG doesn't house a battery, so it can only be used as a real-time charger. It's made up of recycled materials and charges through a standard USB 2.0 port. >> By plugging into the nPower PEG and walking around for an hour is the exact same as plugging your iPhone into the wall and recharging [inaudible] for an hour. >> Mark Licea: You also won't need to hold the device in hand when you're walking. It will still be able to gather kinetic energy in your purse or your man bag, although you might not look as cool. It will sell for 149 dollars and it should be out later this summer. You can preorder your very own PEG at GreenPower.com slash buy. And that's it for this week. Send your feedback and tips. GreenShow@CNET.com. I'm Mark Licea. Thanks for watching. ^M00:05:03 [ Music ]