GM plans to start selling a $30,000 battery powered family car called the Chevrolet Bolt sometime in 2017.

The Bolt is designed to compete with electric offerings from Tesla Motors Inc. and Nissan Motor Co.

GM conceived the $35,000 Volt as a mass-market car that could handle most trips on electric power, but had the generator to end worries that people would run out of juice. A concept version of the first-generation Volt was unveiled eight years ago at a time when GM didn't know for certain that the battery system would work.

The company also make the all-electric Chevy Spark that can go 82 miles on a charge. Electric cars are eligible for a $7,500 federal tax credit.

The Chevy Bolt, carrying a more capable battery manufactured by South Korea’s LG Chem Ltd., will be aimed squarely at Tesla’s forthcoming Model 3, a $35,000 electric car also slated to debut in 2017.  The Bolt will be capable of driving four times farther than a Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid on a single charge.

In a new book titled Feeding Everyone No Matter What, risk researchers have imagined eight scenarios where some calamity destroyed our ability to grow crops.

The authors of the book, Joshua Pearce at Michigan Technological University and David Denkenberger at the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, were tired of people imagining apocalyptic scenarios without offering solutions for how we might plausibly feed ourselves after global devastation.

A five-year supply of food would take up an enormous amount of space and cost about $US12,000 for a family of four, according to the researchers.

“We came up with two primary classes of solutions,” Pearce said in a release. “We can convert existing fossil fuels to food by growing bacteria on top of it — then either eat the bacterial slime or feed it to rats and bugs and then eat them.”

Rats and bugs can also consume wood products, which would likely be plentiful in a disaster scenario. The researchers also included ideas about creating tea out of pine needles, which they insist would “provide a surprising amount of nutrition.”

“We could extract sugar from the bacterial slime and carbonate it for soda pop,” Pearce said. “We’d still have food scientists, too, who could make almost anything taste like bacon or tofurkey. It wouldn’t be so bad.”

The researchers insist that it’s technically feasible to feed everyone alive on the planet today, even without conventional agriculture.

“We can feed everyone if we cooperate and do a little thinking ahead of time — not in the dark when everyone is screaming. Life could continue to go on normally. Just a little dimmer.”

Perhaps we could even put some of that cooperative effort and thinking into the food problems of today. Given the dire conditions so many people live in today, aliens visiting Earth would no doubt believe that some catastrophe had already hit.

There's nothing too new about electric planes. They built a few low speed solar powered aircraft with huge wingspans all made of solar panels. But this is the first battery powed aircraft I've heard of that can carry people rather than just drones or model aircraft.

Earlier this year, the Airbus started publicly flying a prototype of the E-Fan, which weighs just 1100lbs. The France-based aircraft maker showed it off this week at the Farnborough International Airshow.

The model is impractical, but Airbus believes electric aircraft will become important in coming years as a way to cut greenhouse-gas emissions from conventional aircraft exhaust and to offer quieter planes. Noise isn't just an issue for people living near airports; quieter planes could be flown at hours that noisier conventional craft are prohibited, so airlines could schedule more flights, Airbus argues.

The E-Fan 2.0 has dual electric motors with a total power of 60kW; they drive two ducted fans with blades whose pitch can be adjusted. With a 120-cell lithium polymer battery, it can fly for one hour before a 15-minute reserve.

Its batteries are passively cooled -- in other words, they rely ultimately on air, not a powered cooling system, to keep them from overheating as they discharge power.

The prototype has two seats, one in front of the other, but the production version will have side-by-side seats, & there is also a 4-6 seat version planned.

 Comet  Lovejoy, has been  in our night skies for a few weeks now, but it's currently entering what will likely be the brightest and easiest-to-spot part of its journey around our sun, for those of us in the northern hemisphere.

The comet was discovered last August by Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy using his backyard telescope and was at its closest point to Earth on Wednesday. It will be at its brightest starting roughly now and into the next few weeks as it approaches the sun, hopefully increasing the size and brilliance of its coma while remaining relatively in our neck of the celestial woods.

On Friday the comet had a visual magnitude of 4.32, meaning it should be visible from places with limited light pollution like rural areas and outer suburbs. But even if you're in a more populated spot, there's a good chance you can spot it with a pair of binoculars.

To find Lovejoy, simply head outside on a clear night, ideally in the early evening hours just after dark, and look for the constellation Orion. The three bright stars that make up Orion's belt, and the hunter's arrow itself, will roughly be pointing toward the comet over the next week or so.

Enjoy it while you can. It won't return again for 8,000 years.