Green Car Congress

JULY 26, 2010

A Porsche Boxster. Click to enlarge. Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, Stuttgart is researching and developing all-electric vehicles, with three electric Boxsters to be in testing as part of the Stuttgart Model Region for Electromobility project. The work is in conjunction with the ongoing development of hybrid concepts already in regular production. Through the test process, Porsche intends for the three electric Boxsters to provide an initial insight into new electric drive components and battery s

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Creative Greenius

JULY 22, 2010

My pals at Greenpeace, spearheaded by my sister from another mother, Jenny Binstock, produced the video above to warn folks like me, who live in ToxicTown Torrance, that we’re not really safe from the danger that surrounds us all over the South Bay and throughout all of Los Angeles. Luckily we have Greenpeace on the case to do the job that our own Mayor and City Council just aren’t courageous or visionary enough to do.

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Revenge of the Electric Car

JULY 23, 2010

Who Killed the Electric Car? alumnus and Revenge of the Electric Car consultant Chelsea Sexton recently got her turn to test drive the Nissan Leaf, and posted her findings on AutoBlogGreen : After inviting hundreds of people to Japan to check out the production-ready Leaf electric vehicle, Nissan has begun a much smaller effort in launch markets in the U.S., thus far conducting test drives in San Diego and Los Angeles, California.

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Green Car Reports

JULY 8, 2010

While the July Fourth holiday weekend has ended, many Americans still have a hefty amount of summer travel ahead. With gas prices slowly inching toward $3 a gallon, many of us who don't have the luxury of owning a fuel-sipping hybrid vehicle are looking for simple ways to save some extra cash at the pumps. There are still many ways to stretch.

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Electric Cars are for Girls

JULY 27, 2010

I need a SUV for work, but feel guilty about the gas mileage. Thinking about buying a used Land Rover and converting it myself. I've seen on the Internet.

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All Cars Electric

JULY 5, 2010

What can you do in three minutes? Boil a egg? Buy a Coffee? Check your Mail? Visit the bathroom? Thanks to Japanese based JFE Engineering, you can now add half-charging your EV to the list, courtesy of its ultra-fast charge station. Designed to comply with the CHAdeMo standard developed by Tokyo Electric Power Company, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Subaru.

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National Green Transportation

JULY 25, 2010

Electric vehicle owners have different recharging needs than owners of gasoline vehicles. Gasoline vehicles can recharge at the convenient gasoline recharging stations, but electric vehicle owners today don't have that convenience.

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Revenge of the Electric Car

JULY 7, 2010

Chris just back from a week in Denmark shooting a short film for the next UN Climate Conference this coming December. He and his crew profiled a young American band from New Jersey, Titus Andronicus , as they arrived at the Roskilde Music Festival to play one of Europe’s biggest music festivals. Nearly 125,000 visitors, campers, and volunteers make this annual 4 day event an enormously high-energy extravaganza… especially with nearly 20 hours of sunlight and total darkness only lasti

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Green Car Reports

JULY 13, 2010

Throughout the history of the internal combustion engine there have been a multitude of scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs shouting claims about revolutionary new engine designs promising greater efficiency, more power, fewer emissions and lower production and running costs. However, to this day we are yet to see anything come up to replace.

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Electric Cars are for Girls

JULY 26, 2010

My charger was not working and my batteries got so low that they do not have enough charge in them to call for the charger to cut on and charge them.

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All Cars Electric

JULY 30, 2010

Just days after Nissan announced its 8 year, 100,000 mile warranty option for the 2011 Leaf, we've had a chance to do our second test-drive of the week in Nissan's $33,750 electric baby. Earlier this week, Nissan gave us some time behind the wheel of the Leaf in San Jose, California. We had a great time and totally geeked out about the Leaf's.

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Green Car Congress

JULY 20, 2010

Cyclone Power Technologies, Inc. has successfully performed combustion acceptability tests of crude oil recovered from the Gulf of Mexico with its heat-regenerative external combustion engine. During the tests, Cyclone ignited a small amount of crude oil spilled from the Deepwater Horizon accident through its combustion chamber fuel atomizers without any system modifications.

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Green Cars News

JULY 22, 2010

The range-extended electric Ampera enjoyed an audience with a Royal this week after a visit to Kensington Palace. Prince Michael of Kent, a keen car enthusiast took quickly to the car after he was shown how the it operates and performs. According to its maker, Vauxhall, the Prince was impressed by the cars strong [.]. Tags: Vauxhall ampera electric car Prince Michael of Kent royal.

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National Green Transportation

JULY 25, 2010

FIM's electric motorcycle race series, e-Power, arrived this weekend at the famed Laguna Seca raceway accompanied by the MotoGP.

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Green Car Reports

JULY 8, 2010

You may remember that in California, 85,000 lucky owners of three hybrid vehicles were granted special stickers giving them access to High-Occupancy Vehicle lanes, even with only a single occupant in the car. Well, their luck runs out on December 31, the last day those stickers are valid. While Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill.

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Green Car Congress

JULY 9, 2010

Taiwan-based LUXGEN has introduced a battery-electric MPV, the LUXGEN7 MPV EV+. Working with AC Propulsion (ACP), LUXGEN developed the core technologies for the LUXGEN7 MPV EV+ including the 180 kW (240 hp) and 265 N·m (196 lb-ft) torque AC induction motor. Components of the LUXGEN7 MPV EV+. Click to enlarge. The lithium-ion battery packs supports a 200-mile (322km) cruising range at a fixed speed of 25 mph (40 km/h) on a single charge.

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Green Car Congress

JULY 24, 2010

West-side approach to Sea-Tac, showing typical flight path (blue) and RNP flight path (green). Source: Alaska Airlines. Click to enlarge. Alaska Airlines demonstrated next-generation flight procedures this week during a test flight over Puget Sound that burned less fuel and reduced emissions by 35% compared to a conventional landing. The flight was part of Alaska Air Group’s “Greener Skies” project at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (Sea-Tac) focused on using satellite-based guidance techno

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Green Car Congress

JULY 29, 2010

Gevo’s production process. Click to enlarge. Gevo, a privately held renewable chemicals and advanced biofuels company ( earlier post) , has successfully produced isobutanol from fermentable sugars derived from cellulosic biomass. The company also successfully converted the cellulosic isobutanol into isobutylene and paraffinic kerosene (jet fuel).

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Green Car Congress

JULY 29, 2010

Ford anticipates that electrified vehicles—hybrids (HEV), plug-in hybrids (PHEV), and battery-electric vehicles (BEV)—will represent 2-5% of its global fleet by 2015, and then increase rapidly to 10-25% of its global fleet by 2020, said Nancy Gioia, Ford’s Director of Global Electrification, in several talks at Plug-in 2010 in San Jose, California this week.

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Green Car Congress

JULY 23, 2010

Diagram of the proposed closed-loop fuel cycle. CO 2 is recycled into hydrocarbon fuels in a process based on: capturing CO 2 from the atmosphere, high-temperature co-electrolysis of CO 2 and H 2 O in a solid oxide cell to yield syngas (CO/H 2 mixture), and catalytic fuel synthesis from the syngas. Source: Lenfest Center. Click to enlarge. Researchers at Columbia University’s Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, in collaboration with Risø National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy, DTU, are in

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Green Car Congress

JULY 15, 2010

A123 Systems, the developer and manufacturer of Nanophosphate lithium-ion batteries and systems, has received ISO/TS 16949 certification, validating that A123’s product design and manufacturing processes meet the highest standards for excellence in the automotive industry. A123 says it is the first major US-based battery manufacturer to receive this automotive certification for cylindrical lithium-ion cells.

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Green Car Congress

JULY 6, 2010

The new 3-Cylinder HR12DE engine. Click to enlarge. In Yokohama, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. outlined the range of fuel-saving technologies—including 3- and 4-cylinder engines, CVT transmission with stop-start system and new hybrid system ( earlier post ) to be introduced on new models to be launched in fiscal year 2010. The technologies are the result of the company’s research and development efforts based on Nissan’s mid-term environmental action plan Green Program 2010 (NGP 2010)

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Green Car Congress

JULY 9, 2010

Concept of the Hydrogen Harvester. Click to enlarge. In what recently-appointed Chief Technology Officer Dr. Brian Goodall calls “ a landmark discovery ”, OriginOil, Inc., a developer of technologies for algae cultivation and extraction ( earlier post ), says it is developing a new technology to harvest hydrogen from living photosynthetic algae, providing an additional energy source from bioreactors.

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Green Car Congress

JULY 27, 2010

2011 Ecotec 1.4L I-4 VVT Turbo (LUJ) for Chevrolet Cruze. Click to enlarge. Internationally, customers have purchased 140,000 Chevrolet Cruze in the first six months of 2010 and a total of 270,000 since Cruze launched in the spring of 2009 in Europe, followed by other major markets, such as China in summer of 2009. Cruze sales are rising an average of 18% per month.

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Green Car Congress

JULY 12, 2010

Design of the lightweight hydraulic accumulators. Click to enlarge. Lightning Hybrids Inc. (LHI), the developer of hydraulic drivetrain technology for vehicles ( earlier post ), introduced its lightweight high-pressure composite bladder accumulators for hydraulic and other energy storage applications. LHI says its composite tanks are one-third the weight of standard steel accumulators and offer significant energy savings due to weight reduction, increased safety due to a higher than standard bur

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Green Car Congress

JULY 31, 2010

VärmlandsMetanol AB has selected Uhde, a ThyssenKrupp company, as technology supplier and engineering partner for a biomass-to-methanol plant in Hagfors, Sweden, with an annual production of 100,000 tonnes of fuel-grade methanol from forest-residue biomass. Investment for the plant will be about SEK 3 billion (US$416 million). The VärmlandsMetanol plant will be the first full-scale commercial biomass-to-methanol plant.

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Green Car Congress

JULY 2, 2010

BMW Group Megacity Vehicle Design Sketch. Click to enlarge. At BMW Group’s Innovation Days: Mobility of the Future briefing in Munich, the company outlined its plans for the upcoming electric Megacity Vehicle (MCV), due onto the market in 2013 ( earlier post ), as well as the new LifeDrive architecture upon which the MCV is based. The LifeDrive concept consists of two horizontally separated, independent modules.

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Green Car Congress

JULY 26, 2010

Hybrid Owners have the highest interest in PHEVs. Source: EPRI/SCE. Click to enlarge. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and Southern California Edison (SCE) designed and implemented a survey to characterize consumers’ perceptions of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and their expectations of their electric utility as a supplier of transportation energy and associated services.

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Green Car Congress

JULY 30, 2010

Due to what it termed “ strong public interest ” in the Chevrolet Volt, General Motors will increase US production capacity of the Volt by 50%, from 30,000 units to 45,000 units, in 2012. The announcement came as US President Barack Obama toured the Detroit-Hamtramck facility, where the Volt is being produced now for sale later this year. This week, participating Chevrolet dealers in launch markets began taking customer orders for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, following the release of retail and leas

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Green Car Congress

JULY 25, 2010

University of South Florida researchers say they have definitively connected clouds of degraded underwater oil found in the northern Gulf of Mexico to the Deepwater Horizon well (MC252) through Compound-Specific Isotope Analysis (CSIA). Biodegraded oil was found suspended at depths of 400 meters (one-quarter mile) and 1,000-to 1,400-meters (two-thirds to three-quarters of a mile) beneath the Gulf’s surface in the form of microscopic droplets.

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Green Car Congress

JULY 15, 2010

Mitsubishi Motors Australia Limited (MMAL) has three times as many applicants to lease the i-MiEV electric vehicle as available vehicles at this point, according to MMAL’s CEO and president, Masahiko Takahashi. “ We could not have wished for a better response ,” Takahashi said. MMAL recently announced members of the inaugural Mitsubishi i-MiEV Foundation Group—organizations which have successfully applied to lease one of the company’s electric vehicles when the first shipment arrives in Au

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Green Car Congress

JULY 9, 2010

Thomas Built Buses, Daimler Trucks North America’s (DTNA) school bus manufacturer, has received an order for 130 compressed natural gas (CNG) school buses—the biggest contract for natural gas buses in the company’s history—from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The vehicles are scheduled to be delivered in the fourth quarter of 2010.

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Green Car Congress

JULY 9, 2010

Four different architectures of Li-air batteries, which all assume the use of lithium metal as the anode. The three liquid electrolyte architectures are aprotic, aqueous, and a mixed aprotic-aqueous system. In addition, a fully solid state architecture is also given. Credit, ACS, Girishkumar et al. Click to enlarge. While the practical energy density of Li-air batteries could approach that of gasoline—after factoring in tank-to-wheel efficiencies—and thereby enable a transition to an electrified

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Green Car Congress

JULY 5, 2010

The electric concept car DeZir features gull-wing doors that open in opposite directions symbolizing “a yin and yang-style amorous harmony”, according to Renault. Click to enlarge. Renault has provided a preview of its new concept electric car, DeZir, ahead of this year’s Paris Motor Show. The “Z” in the name DeZir is a direct reference to Renault’s Z.E. signature for its forthcoming electric vehicles, and several features of its design are suggestive of two q

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