Gas 2.0
Knight Rider’s KITT is a Hydrogen Electric Hybrid
The latest installment of Knight Rider was greened up for NBC’s Green is Universal week. The eco-friendly run involves select NBC shows — like the current version of Knight Rider — getting a fresh coat of green paint. Low VOC, of course!
Mini Electric Car Fun But Quirky During My Short Test Drive
The new-for-2009 Mini E electric car is undoubtedly one of the most highly-anticipated cars being released next year. Initially the car will only be offered to a select group of 500 people in the Los Angeles, New York and New Jersey metro areas who will be chosen by Mini to provide the exact set of testing conditions Mini engineers want to evaluate.
Schwarzenegger, Bay Area to Build First U.S. Electric Vehicle Network
Bay Area leaders are hoping that a combo of public and private investments can turn the region into The Electric Vehicle Capital of the U.S., by building out a $1-billion electric vehicle infrastructure. The group involves Silicon Valley’s Better Place and a group of wide-eyed politicians: California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the mayors of San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland.
VW Jetta TDI Gets Green Car of the Year Nod at LA Auto Show
Nissan & Oregon Team Up to Bring Electric Cars to the Masses
In his keynote address at the 2008 LA Auto Show today, Carlos Ghosn, the CEO of Nissan-Renault, announced a wide-ranging partnership to develop electric cars and an electric car charging network with the State of Oregon.
Citing Oregon’s environmental leadership in developing the transportation infrastructure of tomorrow, Ghosn also said that Nissan would be releasing their first electric car for the US market in Oregon in 2010. After releasing electric cars in Oregon in 2010, Ghosn then affirmed that Nissan-Renault will bring an “entire lineup” of zero emission electric cars to the worldwide market by 2012.
I was in the overflow room watching Ghosn on a big screen when he announced all this, so nobody was clapping, but this is definitely some of the biggest news to come out of the LA Auto Show this year — if not the biggest.
Honda Debuts FC Sport Hydrogen Fuel Cell Concept Sports Car at the 2008 LA Auto Show
The vehicle builds on the same hydrogen technology being used in the FCX Clarity — Honda’s “production” hydrogen fuel cell vehicle currently being tested in limited release by a couple hundred hand-picked owners in the US, including celebrities like Jamie Lee Curtis.
Corn Ethanol Bust Provides an Opening for 2nd Gen Biofuels
It’s a fact. Corn ethanol has lost its luster. Its intrigue has gone from, say, Sean Connery in Dr. No, to the “let’s-just-pretend-they-never-happened” Timothy Dalton years. Each day now brings news of another ethanol plant closure or project put on “hold.” In fact, the stream of bad news for corn ethanol has become so steady that it has largely faded into background noise — just another sign of a crashing economy.
In reality, however, corn ethanol was set up for a crash before the faltering world economy gave it the impetus to go over the edge. I’m not suggesting that corn ethanol is going extinct, just that, as some industry experts have put it, corn ethanol is going through a “major adjustment” where the outcome will be large swaths of consolidation and efficiency improvements within the industry.
In a way, corn ethanol is finally coming of age. To put it crudely, little Timmy has stopped having wet dreams and gone out and met some actual women.
Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year: Hypermiling
For the third year in a row, The New Oxford American Dictionary has selected an eco-themed word as its word of the year. “Hypermiling” or “to hypermile” as Oxford defines it, is “an attempt to maximize gas mileage by making fuel-conserving adjustments to one’s car and one’s driving techniques. Rather than aiming for good mileage or even great mileage, hypermilers seek to push their gas tanks to the limit and achieve hypermileage, exceeding EPA ratings for miles per gallon.”
The term, which Oxford says was coined by Wayne Gerdes of CleanMPG back in 2004, has received newfound attention in the last year thanks to sharp increases in gasoline prices and a political squabble about national energy policy and the benefits of properly inflated tires.
Optimistic: T. Boone Pickens Expects Obama Administration to Implement Pickens’ Plan
After eight long years there is finally a cause for hope here in the United States. George Bush may still be in office, but right now all America’s problems are President-Elect Obama’s to solve (see Obama Recession, thanks Rush), but he seems ready for them.
New GM Poll: Most Americans Support an Auto Industry Bailout
In a random survey of 804 American adults conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates and commissioned by General Motors (PDF), there is broad support for bailing out the the American auto industry — and even broader support of President-elect Obama’s plans to make sure “the American automobile industry continues to be able to operate.”
Pressure To Bailout Big Three Grows, But What About Startups?
Whichever path they choose, Democrats could be headed for a confrontation with Mr. Bush and were setting the stage for a dramatic lame-duck session
The confrontation in question is a proposal from Senate Democrats, with backing from President-elect Obama himself, to bail out the Big Three, under the premise that they are too big to fail and that if they went under, the ripple effects would be devastating. Curiously absent from the discussion, however, is the fate of a host of cleantech startups making extremely efficient vehicles powered by electricity, electricity plus gasoline or biofuels, and so forth.
Butanol Could be a Much Better Gas Replacement Than Ethanol
Regardless of how the debate between corn ethanol and second-generation, non-food ethanol (cellulosic ethanol) pans out, we may be arguing about the wrong thing. “Why’s that?” you might ask. You see, as a source of fuel, ethanol poses several serious problems.
Air New Zealand Schedules First Commercial Biofuel Flight
Former Iowa Gov. May be Obama’s Choice for Agriculture Chief
From a biofuels standpoint, the choice of Vilsack would be a clear indication of the direction an Obama administration would likely take. As a political leader from a corn farming state, Vilsack has shown strong allegiances with the corn ethanol industry in the past and has been an outspoken advocate of alternative energy.
Biodiesel Powered Plane Makes History With First Flight Across US
Earlier this month, pilots Carol Sugars and Douglas Rodante made history by becoming the first flight-crew to successfully fly across the US in a plane predominantly powered by biodiesel.
Of the total 2,486 miles flown from Reno, Nevada to Leesburg, Florida, 1,776 miles were 100% biodiesel-powered. The remaining 710 miles were powered by a 50/50 mix of biodiesel and standard jet fuel.
Electric Car Start-Up, Fisker, Opens Huge Center in Michigan
Fisker Automotive yesterday announced (PDF) the opening of a 34,000 square foot Engineering and Development Center in Pontiac, Michigan, that will house up to 200 engineers and designers in support of Fisker’s much anticipated plug-in hybrid car, the four-door Fisker Karma.
With New Ethanol Price Volatility, Farmers are at a Loss
Oregon Proposes $1 Billion-Plus Transportation Investment
The new transportation investments would be paid for with a myriad of tax and fee hikes, including:
- a 2-cent per gallon gas tax increase
- doubling the vehicle titling fee to $110
- raising the vehicle registration fee from $27 per year to $81 per year
- creating a first-time fee of $100 for titling cars new to the state
- raising the tobacco tax by 2½ cents
The plan also calls for borrowing $600 million and using and additional $16 million in lottery money.
No Joke: Flying Car Runs on Ethanol with 180 Mile Range
Best part? All you need is a one day course and a powered-parachute license to fly the Skycar.
“I started making a paramotor on wheels that you sit on and take off and it suddenly occurred to me, ‘Why not just have a car that does everything?’” said Gilo Cardozo, who owns a Wiltshire-based company called Parajet.
2008 LA Auto Show Green Preview: Electric & Alternative Cars
Given announcements last Friday that the American auto industry is on the brink of extinction, it seems to me that the more important cars at the show are the ones that, if they’re smart, the American auto industry will quickly turn to as the future of transportation. In honor of these sentiments, it’s only fitting for Gas 2.0 to do a preview of the cars and technologies you care about, and leave the relics to the pros.
I’ll be covering the LA Auto Show during press days on November 19-20, so stay tuned to Gas 2.0 for live coverage. Until then, check out the small taste of what’s to come below.
