by Michael Kanellos (GreenTechMedia) A crazy wrinkle in a California law makes it a bit difficult for the Volt to qualify for the $5,000 rebate, but the company believes it will make it. Also, updates on Volt shipments. ...General Motors won't
Electric Car/Electric Vehicle (EV)
Back TO HOMECost of Electricity Will Not Rise: Dr. Joseph Romm at the Green Car Summit. Bartlett Proposes Open Fuels Act
[caption id="attachment_16299" align="alignleft" width="300"] Warren Brown, automotive columnist for the Washington Post, discusses Congressman Roscoe Bartlett's Open Fuel legislation with Astrid Dorner, US Correspondent for Handelsblatt, Lisa Lyons Wright, Energy and Stem Cell Legislative Assistant and Press Secretary for Congressman
January 31, 2011 Read Full Article
DOE Federal Lab Says Life Cycle Analysis Does Not Factor in Rare Earth Metals or Mountain Top Removal
[caption id="attachment_16291" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="From left, Warren Brown, automotive columnist for the Washington Post and Ron Cogan, publisher of Green Car Journal co-moderate Green Car Summit Panel: Tom Baloga, VP Engineering for BMW North America; Susan M. Cischke, Group VP,
January 31, 2011 Read Full Article
China Will Scale Faster Than US in Race for New Transport Fuels, Accenture Report Finds
(BusinessWire/Accenture) China could lead the race to roll out electric vehicles and will deploy new transport technologies at scale more quickly than the United States, according to a report by Accenture that compares the two countries. But the US could
January 19, 2011 Read Full Article
U.S. Car Czar: Industry Faces Massive Change by 2023
by Nick Carey and Deepa Seetharaman (Reuters) The American auto industry will change more in the next dozen years than it has during the past 50, said the U.S. Treasury official charged with overseeing the government's investment in the auto
January 12, 2011 Read Full Article
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret
by John Petersen (Renewable Energy World) ...The dirty little secret of plug-in vehicles is that they'll all charge their batteries with inherently dirty night-time power and be responsible for more CO2 emissions than a fuel efficient Prius-class HEV that costs
January 07, 2011 Read Full Article
China Has Seen the Future, and It Is Coal
by George Will (The Washington Post) Cowlitz County in Washington state ...approved construction of a coal export terminal from which millions of tons of U.S. coal could be shipped to Asia annually. Both Oregon and Washington are curtailing the coal-fired generation
December 30, 2010 Read Full Article
GM Exploring Increased Production of Chevrolet Volt, New E85 Flex-Fuel Version
(MLive.com) ...The Volt is capable of traveling around 35 miles on electricity before a gasoline-powered generator kicks to provide up to an additional 300 miles. GM global product chief Tom Stephens on Tuesday told Barkholz the company is considering a new
December 03, 2010 Read Full Article
EU-Wide Study Confirms Hydrogen Is a Key to Zero-Emission Road Transport
(MarketWatch/Linde) ...Linde is currently researching various production options aimed at gradually increasing the share of "green" sources in the hydrogen landscape. One of these uses liquid biomass (glycerine), a by-product of biodiesel production, as the feedstock. READ MORE From the report: The
November 22, 2010 Read Full Article
Governor Rendell Says Latest Investments in Alternative Fuels Make PA More Energy Independent, Spur Innovation
(Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection) Announces Nearly $8 Million for 21 Projects Promoting Biofuels, Natural Gas- and Electric-Powered Vehicles Governor Edward G. Rendell said today that Pennsylvania is cutting its appetite for foreign oil by more than a half-million gallons as
November 22, 2010 Read Full Article
Survey: Interest in Electric Cars Is growing, but Practical Concerns Remain
by Eric Evarts (Consumer Reports) ...Overall, 63 percent expect to get a significant increase in fuel economy, regardless of the type of vehicle they buy. Only 67 percent said they are considering a traditional gasoline engine in their next new-car
November 22, 2010 Read Full Article
Obama's Electric-Car Cult
by Charles Lane (The Washington Post) ...The pitch is lyrical, almost religious. It asks consumers to make an economic and technological leap of faith - just as both GM and the firm's biggest backer, the Obama administration, have invested, financially,
October 31, 2010 Read Full Article
Why Is China Still Hoarding Its Rare Earths?
by Steve LeVine (Foreign Policy) ...China's ban on the export of the 17 so-called rare-earth metals -- indispensible as of now in the manufacture of high-tech products like wind turbines, advanced batteries and flat-screen TVs -- has now passed three
October 14, 2010 Read Full Article
Three Fuel-Efficient Cars Win Automotive X Prize Competition
(Los Angeles Times) ...The Edison2 entry Very Light Car #98 from Virginia won $5 million in the mainstream class, running on E85 ethanol fuel. The aerodynamic 4-wheeled auto demonstrated the equivalent of 102.5 miles per gallon on the test track
September 21, 2010 Read Full Article
HSBC Predicts Bigger Growth for Low-Carbon Cars than Renewables Sector
by Damian Carrington (The Guardian) ...When fuel-efficiency measures and switches to lower-carbon transport such as trains and coaches are included, the report for investors predicts that the market will be worth $677bn (£440bn) a year in 2020 – up from
September 07, 2010 Read Full Article
New Fuel Economy Window Stickers Chock Full 'O Numbers
(Jalopnik) One of the draft window stickers released today will give buyers of 2012 models efficiency data for gas and electric vehicles. U.S. regulators want you to decide: How do you like letter grades? UPDATE: Automakers give it a "F." ...A
August 30, 2010 Read Full Article
Low Voltage
(Washington Post) Editorial: PRESIDENT OBAMA was back in Michigan recently, breaking ground on a plant that will make batteries for the Volt, the plug-in hybrid electric car forthcoming from government-owned General Motors. The Energy Department paid half the factory's $300 million
August 03, 2010 Read Full Article
Firm to Deploy 15,0000 Electric-Car Chargers in 13 Cities, Including District
by Danielle Douglas (Washington Post/Capital Business) ...Many of the nearly 200,000 electric hybrids on U.S. roads use internal generators to create power, but a fraction of these cars are plug-in hybrids, the market's fastest growing segment. Yet, there are only 465
July 06, 2010 Read Full Article
Ethanol Likely to Have Major Role as Fuel
by Jim Kenzie (Wheel.ca) ...So far, everyone seems to think that the only way we’ll wean ourselves off decomposed dinosaur remains is if we either can’t find any more, or it becomes so expensive to find/extract/ship/refine that we’ll have to find
July 05, 2010 Read Full Article
California Energy Commission Approves $114.3 Million for Electric and Ethanol Vehicle Infrastructure
(Los Angeles Times) ...The California Energy Commission approved three awards to help set up electric- and ethanol-powered vehicle infrastructure around the state. Of the funds, $15.4 million comes from state coffers, $49.6 million is federal money and $49.3 million comes
June 26, 2010 Read Full Article
Battery-Only Cars Face Avalanche of Negatives
by Neil Winton (Detroit News) ...The only way that unaffordable, impractical, battery-only cars will sell is because of huge government subsidies, and a few early-adopter zealots with too much money who don't mind being stranded every couple of weeks. Germany,
June 09, 2010 Read Full Article
Honda: "Electric Cars Not Viable"
(Racer) Honda's chief executive Takanobu Ito has conceded the car industry still needs a breakthrough in battery technology in order to make electric cars viable. ...Ito also predicted that it will take 10 to 20 years before battery-run electric cars became
June 02, 2010 Read Full Article
Mississippi State University Wins Top Honors in Year Two of EcoCAR Competition
(General Motors) Student-Designed and Built Vehicles Put to the Test; Virginia Tech, Penn State Finish Second and Third. Students from Mississippi State University placed first in the 2010 EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge finals in San Diego today after designing and building
May 28, 2010 Read Full Article
Tea Party With a Difference
by Thomas Friedman (New York Times) ...I’m sure like all such protest movements the Tea Partiers will get their 10 to 20 percent of the vote. But should the Tea Partiers actually aspire to break out of that range, attract
May 11, 2010 Read Full Article
230 MPG For Chevy Volt? Not Likely
by Reilly Brennan (AOL Autos) EPA Mulls New Fuel Economy Guidelines The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will soon draft a new regulation for the way it calculates fuel efficiency for electric cars, potentially deflating the stratospheric fuel economy numbers trumpeted by
April 22, 2010 Read Full Article
V2G: Transportation Electrons vs. Power Electrons
by Eric Weshoff (GreenTechGrid) Integrating electric vehicles into the smart grid is an enormous and potentially explosive challenge. Erfan Ibrahim of EPRI has said that if electric vehicles reached a high level of market penetration and were to charge at night
April 09, 2010 Read Full Article
GSA Doubles the Federal Hybrid Fleet, DOE Takes the Lead in Updating to Hybrids
Agencies Move to Increase Energy Security and Fuel Efficiency. President Obama announced March 31, 2010, that the Federal Government will lead by example in replacing older cars in the federal fleet with fuel efficient hybrids and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, reducing our
April 06, 2010 Read Full Article
North American Grid Operators Study Concludes 1M Plug-in Electric Vehicles May Be On the Road by 2020; Staggered Charging Can Reduce Potential Negative Impact on Grid
(Green Car Congress) A group of US and Canadian power grid operators, who manage most of the North American bulk electric grid collectively, studied the effect that plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) would have on the electric power grid. Their study, “Assessment
April 02, 2010 Read Full Article
The View From Big Oil
by Alan Murray and Kimberley Strassel (Wall Street Journal) These days, giant oil companies find themselves trying to balance two big pressures on their business. Governments are trying to slash carbon emissions—but the world's thirst for oil is growing by leaps
March 22, 2010 Read Full Article
GM Confirms First Gen Volt Will Not Support E85 Ethanol
by Nick Chambers (Gas2.0) This morning I wrote a piece about how GM is lamenting the lack of E85 fueling stations in the United States. But the other interesting tidbit of information in there was a simple statement by GM’s
February 18, 2010 Read Full Article
Battery-Only Cars Make No Sense, But Still Find Investors
by Neil Winton (Detroit News) It's a bit like those old Looney Tunes cartoons, when the Road Runner races off a cliff and it takes a little while for gravity to establish its case for the inevitable swift vertical descent.
February 10, 2010 Read Full Article
Tesla To Kill Electric Roadster In 2011
by Ray Wert (Jalopnik) Who killed the electric car? Well, a closer evaluation of today's Tesla's IPO filing with the SEC reveals Tesla will. They plan to kill the Tesla Roadster after 2011. No, seriously. The boys over at Wired:Autopia pinged
January 30, 2010 Read Full Article
Washington Auto Show Emphasizes Electric Cars. Where’s DOE, Tesla, Fisker? Novozymes Represents for Advanced Biofuels Industry
[caption id="attachment_6035" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Last year DOE displayed the Green Challenge winner, but not in 2010. DOE also recognized young innovators and educated the public on its projects and investments in biofuels. Not in 2010."][/caption] by Joanne Ivancic (Advanced Biofuels USA)
January 28, 2010 Read Full Article
Why Does the Electrification Coalition Want $124 Billion of Your Tax Dollars to Charge Electric Cars?
Robert E. Kozak (Advanced Biofuels USA) The Electrification Coalition, an industry group composed of Cisco, Pacific Gas and Electric, NRG Energy, Nissan, and various investment bankers among others, wants to spend $124 billion dollars of US taxpayer money to put
January 24, 2010 Read Full Article
Electrification Coalition Publishes Roadmap Describing Challenges Facing Electric Cars
…It is one thing to sprinkle a modest number of electric-drive cars throughout a nation as large as the United States; it is quite another for even a seemingly small number of those cars to operate simultaneously in a specific
January 24, 2010 Read Full Article
Group Wants Government to Jump-Start the E.V. Revolution
by Jim Motavalli (New York Times) Calling for what amounts to a Marshall Plan to start manufacturing plug-in hybrids and battery-electric cars, a group of executives from the auto and utility industries, and prospective plug-in fleet buyers laid out a strategy
December 29, 2009 Read Full Article
The Hidden Cost of Electric Vehicles
(Environmental Leader) Although electric vehicles show higher non-climate damages than many other technologies, they will not be significantly cleaner than cars powered by fossil fuels until they rely less on electricity produced from coal-fired power plants, according to new research
December 29, 2009 Read Full Article
Audi Exec: Obama's Love for Electric Vehicles Premature
by David Shepardson (Detroit News) Audi's top U.S. executive said here Monday that political leaders have "fallen in love" with electric vehicles even though widespread use may be two decades away. At a speech at the National Press Club, Audi
December 15, 2009 Read Full Article
Environmental Warning over Electric Cars
by Kevin Clark (Sunderland Echo) The move to electric vehicles being spearheaded on Wearside could lead to a rise in greenhouses gases, claims a new report. The Environmental Transport Association (ETA), which campaigns for sustainable transport, says a move to
November 22, 2009 Read Full Article
Report Examines Hidden Health and Environmental Costs Of Energy Production and Consumption In U.S.
... Damages per vehicle mile traveled were remarkably similar among various combinations of fuels and technologies -- the range was 1.2 cents to about 1.7 cents per mile traveled -- and it is important to be cautious in interpreting small
October 24, 2009 Read Full Article
Vehicles Running E85 Corn Ethanol Have 30 Percent Lower CO2 Emissions than the All-Electric Tesla Roadster, Study Finds
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) In Florida, Biofuels Digest has found that cars running on E85 corn-based ethanol, at the proposed new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, will generate 30 percent lower CO2 emissions over an average car lifetime
October 14, 2009 Read Full Article
As Hybrid Cars Gobble Rare Metals, Shortage Looms
by Steve Gorman (Reuters) The Prius hybrid automobile is popular for its fuel efficiency, but its electric motor and battery guzzle rare earth metals, a little-known class of elements found in a wide range of gadgets and consumer goods. That
September 02, 2009 Read Full Article
Manufacturers' Electric Dreams Likely to Stumble on Forecaster's Reality
by Neil Winton (Detroit News) While manufacturers like Nissan of Japan jostle for the lead in the race to saturate markets with electric cars, automotive forecasters seeking to cut through the hyperbole tell a more sober story. ... Automotive forecaster