A bunch of images were collected from the International Space Station and put into this video. It’s an amazing piece of work, especially when you can see what the auroras look like from orbit. I’ve only see red aurora once in my life and it was awe-inspiring.

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space | Fly Over | Nasa, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

At the end of this year (yes, 2010) the Chevrolet Volt will be available for sale. This hybrid is different than all the others made by the major car companies – it can run on it’s battery only, and charge while parked with an electrical outlet. Toyota is rumored to be developing a plug-in Prius and Mercedes just announced a plug-in S400 concept. However, can a car like this succeed in Toronto?

Toronto is a very urban city. It has many, many high rises and multiple-unit dwellings where the garages are shared among all the residents. Most apartments and condos have few, if any, available electrical outlets for use by residents. How will these people charge their cars? This affects people at work too – have you considered how you can plug in your car at your office parking lot?

Toronto’s older neighborhoods lack garages. In fact in my neighborhood there is only street parking available for residents and most of the downtown core is like that. Will you run a 100-200ft power cable to your car overnight?

I’m curious how this will all play out. Plug-in hybrids or electric-only vehicles will be pretty efficient, and don’t produce much carbon. It might do good in the lawn-and-garage suburbs but it will be hard to tell how well they can sell in the urban areas.

Possible solutions are incentives for multi-dwelling buildings to implement charging technology in their garages. Having charging stations in public lots. Inexpensive home-based charging centers. It will be interesting how the private and public sectors deal with the charging issue.