Green
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Urban taxi service may be the equal of any proving-ground torture test. Taxis are driven hard, up to 20 hours a day, and must handle both bad roads and bad drivers. Those that survive without falling apart should do fine in civilian duty. Which is why Better Place chose Tokyo to test out its battery quick-swap technology six months ago--and why it's now expanding that test to San Francisco as well. The company has received a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to bring its switchable-battery electric taxi program to the San Francisco Bay Area, in partnership with the municipal...
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Will Auto X-Prize $2.5m Build Electric Cars, Or Pay Lawyers?
What do you do when a major publication publishes an expose on the firm you’d crowned winners of a competition you’d been running, asking if the winner was even eligible to take part? That’s the problem facing the team behind the Progressive Automotive X-Prize after an article in...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Tesla Gears Up $42 Million Fremont Factory For Model S
Tesla has officially completed its $42 million acquisition of the former NUMMI factory, a joint venture between Toyota and General Motors that was shut down in April due to the recession. The New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. facilities in Fremont, Calif. spans 5.5 million square feet and will...
VentureBeat's GreenBeat -
GE's 'Largest Order in History' To Boost Electric-Car Market
General Electric, the conglomerate that produces everything from power-plant turbines to television shows, wants to jumpstart the electric-vehicle market. To do that, said CEO Jeffrey Immelt yesterday in London, it will place the "largest order in history" for electric vehicles, numbering in the...
John Voelcker -
Kia Soul Flex Is Korea’s First Flex-Fuel Vehicle
At this week’s 2010 Sao Paulo Auto Show in Brazil Kia has taken the wraps off its new Soul Flex hatchback, which the automaker claims is the first vehicle of its kind to be launched by a South Korean brand. The Kia Soul Flex, if you haven’t already guessed, is a fully flex-fuel capable...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
GM To Show All-Electric Car Next Year...In India, Not Here
While General Motors is focusing its U.S. electric-drive efforts solely on the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, a range-extended electric car, elsewhere in the world it's experimenting with full battery electric vehicles. Now the company has said it will unveil a Chinese-built electric subcompact in the Indian...
John Voelcker -
Working at Tesla Motors must be a lot of fun for many reasons. There's the chance of driving a lightning-fast 2011 Tesla Roadster Sport 2.5, for one. Then there's the chance that you'll be privy to hearing your CEO say something untrue. Or just wacky. Our latest example: On the sidelines of Tesla's ceremonial opening of its Fremont, California, assembly plant, Elon Musk tells GreenTechMedia why he considers plug-in hybrids to be essentially like amphibians. We don't happen to agree with his preimse; we think battery electric vehicles (which is all that Tesla makes) are likely to coexist with...
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Wider 2012 Mitsubishi i-MiEV For U.S. Market: First Sketch
We've been waiting eagerly for more details of the modified U.S.-spec 2012 Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric car. Now, Mitsubishi has started the long tease. The company tweeted a sketch this morning that shows a wider, slightly more angular i-MiEV that still preserves the now-familiar shape of the...
John Voelcker -
What Is EVSE And Why Does Your Electric Car Charger Need It?
There was a time when an electric car could be plugged into just about any electrical outlet its owner could find. With a little bit of ingenuity and forward planning, any electric car could plug-in just about anywhere. We’ve heard stories of National Electric Drag Racing Association (NEDRA)...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Why Recycling Used Electronics Could Help Build Electric Cars
Recycling old electronics isn’t necessarily something most Americans do. Many of us, it turns out, just stash our old computers, printers, and TV sets in the closet. Or we leave them at the curb. But suppose properly recycling those electronics could help redress a potentially critical...
John Voelcker -
Is Demand For Electric Cars Overhyped? J.D. Power Thinks So
With a fanfare going up for every new electric car that hits the market at the moment, you'd be forgiven for thinking we're only a few short steps away from widespread EV adoption. According to marketing information services firm J.D. Power though, this might not be the case. According to the...
Antony Ingram -
Electric Car Drives 375 Miles at 55 mph, Recharges In 6 Minutes
We all know that battery packs are the weakest link in electric vehicles. Not only are they heavy and expensive, but they take a long time to recharge and on average can only provide around 100 miles per charge. A German-based company has changed all that with a new vehicle capable of driving up to...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
At this week’s 2010 Sao Paulo Auto Show in Brazil Fiat rolled out a new concept car previewing a possible solution for efficient urban mobility. Such concepts are nothing new but where Fiat’s latest design is unique is in the fact that it does not entirely belong to Fiat but also to people just like you and I. The new concept car is the Fiat Mio and it’s the result of an online collaboration among thousands of consumers and experts. More than 17,000 people registered at a special website set up by Fiat where they could contribute more than 10,000 ideas and suggestions. Topic...
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Can Smarter Red Lights Let Cars Drive Greener And Save Gas?
We've all driven through--or waited a long time at--intersections that have car-sensing traffic lights. Now Denso has modeled the next iterations of a "smart traffic light" system. It would use messaging between vehicles and the traffic-light controller to let the light make better decisions about...
John Voelcker -
How Smaller Engines Offer More Power: Superchargers Vs Turbos
Turbochargers have been with us in volume production only since the Seventies, but superchargers have a long and honorable automotive history. They were used on the Blower Bentleys that won Le Mans 80 years ago, and have appeared ever since on high-performance engines, often larger ones. A boost...
John Voelcker -
Does the 2011 Nissan Leaf Deliver Its 100 Miles Of All-Electric Range?
Your Mileage May Vary. One of the terms banded about time and time again by automakers as a justification for why your car doesn’t get the fuel economy it says your car should. The reason? Fuel economy is affected by many different variables, from the mood of the driver to the weather, tire...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Recharge As You Revere: Charge At Church, It Pays To Praise
Think of all the places you might go in a week that would give your electric car enough time for a top-up. The mall? The cinema? Restaurants? How about church? EV networking company Coulomb Technologies has revealed that Wooden Cross Lutheran church in Woodinville, Washington will be the first...
Antony Ingram -
Audi A3 TDI Completes 1,000 Mile Trek On Synthetic Diesel
A few years ago the idea of cars running on fuel created by people in a lab rather than dug out of the ground after millions of years of mother nature’s work would have been considered almost science fiction by most. However, just this past week a pair of Audi A3 TDI hatchbacks have traveled...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Did you notice? Us either. Nonetheless, last week, the first commercial hydrogen filling station in the country was opened in Wallingford, Connecticut, by startup firm SunHydro. The company generates hydrogen onsite using electricity from an array of photovoltaic solar cells that splits apart water molecules to yield hydrogen and oxygen. There are roughly 70 hydrogen filling stations nationwide, most of them in California, but this claims to be the very first one to be open to the public at large. So if you happen to be one of the very, very few people driving a hydrogen fueled car--whether...
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EPA Proposes 10-to-20-Percent Gas Mileage Rise for Big Trucks
Well, now we know the numbers. And there are a lot of them. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation jointly proposed cutting greenhouse-gas emissions from medium and heavy duty trucks by 10 to 20 percent, starting in 2014 and extending through 2018. (The actual...
John Voelcker -
What Happens When the 2011 Nissan Leaf Battery Pack Runs Low?
The PR guy got us lost. Twice. But David Reuter, Nissan’s chief communications director, didn’t break a sweat even when the Remaining Range indicator fell below 5 miles and started flashing. Which leads us to think that even after the 2011 Nissan Leaf battery pack hits...
John Voelcker -
Delphi Working On Wireless Charging System For EVs
Plugging a cord into an electric vehicle to charge it up after the daily commute doesn’t take more than a few seconds, and it’s a process we do almost every day with appliances and other electric items used around the house, but that hasn’t stopped companies from attempting to...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
PETA Proposes Ads Urging Electric-Car Drivers To Go Vegan
Ah, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the gift that just keeps on giving headline fodder to eager editors. Which is probably just what PETA intended. We learned last week that PETA proposed to Boston's chief of environmental and energy services, Jim Hunt, that it run ads promoting the...
John Voelcker -
Video: 2011 Nissan Leaf - How It's Made
With the first Leafs now rolling off the production line, Nissan has given us an insight into how the car is produced with a short video. The video shows different aspects of production, such as how the battery is produced and installed, how the inverter is made and how the motor is made and...
Antony Ingram