(Source: Forbes)

Smaller cars are coming, lots of them, but it’s far from clear that buyers want them.

Smaller cars are coming–we all know that. Domestic and foreign manufacturers are about to start a wave, pushed by expected higher fuel economy requirements. These smaller autos will crowd out new versions of the larger cars we have been buying. Automakers don’t have the wherewithall to build everything.

If your main concern is global warming or oil imports, this is good news. But here’s the problem: Americans have not had a love affair with smaller cars. As a rule they are less comfortable, less safe and less useful–carrying fewer passengers and a smaller load.

The danger here is that our auto sales could stay smaller for another decade if owners hang on to their old SUVs and Big Boy V8s, if they don’t like what the greens and government people say they should be buying.

The not-so-easy trick in small cars is making money off them. There are two ways. One is to make them expensive, like $30,000. But Americans think small cars mean cheap cars. Audi has a new small A1 for Europe but isn’t bringing it here, because at current exchange rates it would cost $25,000. Dealers say it’s too much: Small still means cheap.

Click here to read the entire commentary from Jerry Flint @ Forbes.

(Source: Forbes)

Automaker’s finance unit is believed to have requested $2 billion loan from Japanese state-backed bank.

Finding it difficult to raise money in the U.S., Toyota Motor is reportedly seeking emergency funding of about 200 billion yen ($2 billion) in dollars from a governmental institution in Japan to support its U.S. auto-financing operations.

Commercial banks have been cautious to grant loans amid the credit crunch, particularly to the slumping auto industry, and Toyota (nyse: TM – news –people ) and several of its financing affiliates have had their credit ratings reduced, hurting their ability to raise money on the capital markets. As a result, Toyota Financial Services, an auto-financing unit of Toyota Motor, is turning to the Japan Bank for International Cooperation as a last resort for low-interest dollar loans, various Japanese media reported Wednesday.

In response to the global financial turmoil, the government funded an emergency JBIC program late last year to provide loans and debt guarantees to help Japanese firms finance operations overseas.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: Gizmodo.com)

(Source: Jalopnik)

As we stand waiting at the starter tree of the 2009 motorsports season, we’ve let our minds wander across the infinite expanses of Google Earth, finding these shots of the world’s top 15 race courses.

Formula 1 starts up next month, IndyCar the month after and NASCAR already snoozing away got us thinking about racing. Letting our minds wander across the blue globe of Google Earth let us come up with the following list of the world’s top 15 race courses. There’s 15 below. The 16th? That’s a bonus.

(Source: Gizmodo.com)

(Source: Forbes)

Although still bad in these spots, traffic congestion in the U.S. has lessened as the economy has slowed.

  

In Depth: Bottlenecks in the 50 Largest U.S. Cities

The Cross Bronx Expressway, that fume-choked expanse of concrete and steel that slices through New York City’s mainland borough, occupies a uniquely tragic place in the history of urban planning.

It displaced more than 60,000 middle-class residents during its construction between 1948 and 1963, and it cost $250 million–more than any highway project before it. The apartment buildings that line its growling trench have been home to generations of asthmatic children who struggle to breathe in the acrid clouds of exhaust that fill the air. Its presence has so thoroughly eviscerated its surroundings that many blocks adjacent to it are occupied entirely by families living below the poverty level.

Worst Intersections of the United States

Click here to read the entire article and to watch the video.  

(Source: The Boston Globe)

(Source: TreeHugger)

Photo credit: Vivir Mexico

Mexico City’s minister of the environment, Martha Delgado, announced Friday that in August a pilot project requiring students to take school buses instead of private vehicles to school at 10 private schools would commence. The initiative was spurred by the success of a study carried out at the Colegio Oxford private school, which managed to get many of its 751 students to ride the school bus beginning in August 2008, El Universal (Spanish link) reported. As we’ve noted in the past, car use has doubled in Mexico City in the last seven years, complicating other efforts to cutpollution, so any initiative getting more cars off the road is a welcome change.

According to Víctor Hugo Páramo, director of air quality management for the ministry, the average velocity of cars circulating in the school zone increased from 16.8 to 25.7 kilometers an hour after the program began. The study also revealed reductions of 13% in the concentration of carbon monoxide and 8% in nitrous oxides around Colegio Oxford.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: Carnegie Mellon University Design Decisions Laboratory)

PITTSBURGH— Carnegie Mellon University professor Jeremy J. Michalek and researchers Dr. Constantine Samaras and C.-S. Norman Shiau report in a new study that plug-in hybrid electric vehicles with small battery packs may be the best bet for saving drivers money while addressing U.S. dependency on foreign oil and global warming.

            In an article to appear in the journal Energy Policy, the authors find that urban drivers who can charge their vehicles frequently (every 20 miles or less) can simultaneously reduce petroleum consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and expenses with a plug-in hybrid vehicle whose battery pack is sized for about 7 miles of electric travel per charge. In contrast, plug-in hybrid vehicles with large battery packs – sized for 40 or more miles of electric travel – are too expensive for fuel savings to compensate, even in optimistic scenarios.

            Plug-in hybrid vehicles use charged batteries to propel the vehicle partly using electricity instead of gasoline, which gives them potential to reduce petroleum consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. “Larger battery packs allow drivers to go longer distances on electric power. But batteries are heavy and expensive,” says Michalek. “We accounted for the effects of additional batteries on vehicle cost, weight and efficiency in order to understand the net implications on petroleum consumption, cost, and greenhouse gas emissions. Over a range of scenarios — including fluctuating gas prices, new battery technologies or high taxes on carbon dioxide emissions — plug-ins with small battery packs are economically competitive with ordinary hybrid and conventional vehicles for drivers who charge frequently.”

Click here to entire press release.

Can you attend via photo? Just take a picture of yourself, your family and friends, holding car keys and email it to us. At the hearing we’ll present thousands of photos with this message: EPA Holds the Key to Clean Cars!  Add Your Photo to our Petition!   Send your photo to: sierraclubcleancars@gmail.com Click the Key to learn more.  See who’s already signed: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sierraclub/sets/72157614384843260/