Monday, April 5, 2010

Gas 2.0

Gas 2.0

Finnish ‘Electric Race About’ to Participate in X-Prize

Posted: 05 Apr 2010 11:59 AM PDT

Finland isn’t exactly a tour de force in the automotive industry. The small, scrappy Scandinavian country is mostly known for its exports of electronics and ships, as well as the tenacity of its Skiing soliders. But cars? That’s for the Swedes!

Though maybe not anymore. Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences has unveiled its Electric Race About electric car, which will be competing in the Automotive X-Prize competition this fall.

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Mercedes S-Class Could Go Hybrid-Only

Posted: 05 Apr 2010 11:54 AM PDT

Mercedes probably has better green cred than most people give them actual credit for. Sure, they are over-complicated, full of production-intense technology and luxury, and they offer V8 engines with pretty much every car. But they also produce lots of clean-diesel engines, and 40% of their models are powered by such fuel-efficient engines.

Still, that might not be enough to meet increasing fuel efficiency standards the world over. So could the brand’s flagship vehicle, the S-Class, become a hybrid-only nameplate… even including the AMG performance models?

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Japan Securing Battery Raw Materials With Economic Aid to Bolivia

Posted: 05 Apr 2010 11:48 AM PDT

In the quest to secure the raw materials that are required to build next generation automobile batteries and motors, Japan seems to have grasped the importance of locking down supplies now.

A report in the Japanese Nikkei newspaper (subs req’d) says that Japan will loan tens of billions of yen to Bolivia this summer to help them build modern power plants and put solar panels on a hospital. In exchange, Japan will get guaranteed access to Bolivia’s vast supplies of lithium. Sometimes the difference between “bribery” and “help” can be so blurry.

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What Does Obama’s Offshore Drilling Plan Mean?

Posted: 05 Apr 2010 11:11 AM PDT

Did you know that America is still the third largest supplier of oil in the world? We pump around 8.3 million barrels of oil out of the ground on a daily basis, exporting around ten percent of it. The rest we consume… as well as another 12 million barrels. Every day. And the number could actually increase in coming years thanks to President Obama’s new plans.

For a guy who has clad himself in green armor, dolling out billions of dollars to fund alternative fuel research and improve the public infrastructure, approving new drilling seems counterintuitive. So is it a political olive branch to Republicans, a bent knee to oil companies, or just good forward thinking?

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Portland, Oregon, Finds That Cars Produce Less Than 25% of Region’s GHG Emissions

Posted: 05 Apr 2010 11:07 AM PDT

A new report by Oregon’s Portland Metro has found that emissions from driving cars and providing energy only account for about half of the GHGs emitted in the northwest Oregon region. The other half is a direct result of the consumption habits of the region’s inhabitants.

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VW Says 85% of Jetta SportWagens Sold in March were Diesels

Posted: 05 Apr 2010 10:18 AM PDT

It’s hard to believe how much difference a couple of years makes. I remember when those of us that were banging our gongs to the European automakers to bring diesels back to the US were dismissively waved away as “not understanding the American market” or “not in touch with reality.” How wrong the high paid salesmen, marketers and bean counters can be sometimes, no?

VW has just released its March sales figures, and their TDI clean diesel models are doing amazingly well. Just as an example, of the 2,000 Jetta wagons sold fully 85% of them were diesels. Yeah, Americans will never take to diesels. Sure.

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