(Source: TreeHugger)
Xcelsior Hybrid Bus. Image credit:New American Flyer, Inc.
Taking advantage of the Federal stimulus package, Maryland’s Governor O’Malleyannounced the State’s intention to purchase hybrid 100 hybrid diesel/electric buses for $62 million.
Click here to read more.
(Source: GM’s Fast Lane Blogs, via TreeHugger )
GM
Defends the Volt’s Design
A recent Carnegie Mellon University study (pdf) challenged the real-world gasoline savings and cost effectiveness of plug-in hybrids like the Chevy Volt. GM’s Vice President Global Program Management, Jon Lauckner, who has been involved in the Volt project responded on the company’s blog. Find out what he had to say below.
All-Electric Range
The first thing is the electric range of the car. Somewhat strangely, the CMU study found that “for urban driving conditions and frequent charges every 10 miles or less, a low-capacity PHEV sized with an AER (range) of about 7 miles would be a robust choice for minimizing gasoline consumption, cost and greenhouse gas emissions.”
7 miles? Really?
Well, Jon Lauckner responds:
I’ll cut to the chase; for starters, the study’s endorsement of plug-in vehicles with only a “token” electric-only range (seven miles) overlooks the inconvenience of recharging for the vast majority of drivers (approx. 90 percent) with a daily commute that exceeds seven miles. I mean, honestly, how many customers are going to stop every seven miles and wait at least 30 minutes (if a car has a high-capacity charger like the Volt with the same level of electrical energy to match it) for their battery to be recharged? […] And, if customers don’t recharge during the day, these “token” plug-ins will run primarily on gasoline. How is that consistent with reducing green house gas emissions and our dependence on petroleum?
Click here to read the entire article.
(Source: New York Times)
Amid a wave of government-led bailouts for car companies, a group of international agencies and motoring organizations called on Wednesday for car makers worldwide to reduce emissions.
“In confronting the economic recession this is a real opportunity for governments to combine support for the auto industry with measures to achieve environmental and energy policy goals,” said Nobua Tanaka, the executive director of the International Energy Agency.
“Battery electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids and possibly hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are expected to become increasingly available in the near-to-medium term given recent improvements especially in batteries,” the 50-by-50 campaign noted in a leaflet. “However, these advanced technologies are not necessary to achieve the 50 percent potential described here, but could result in further CO2 reductions and oil savings if they succeed in achieving mass-market commercialization.”
Click here to read the entire article.
(Source: Washington Post)
In the viability plans General Motors and Chrysler submitted to support their federal aid requests, the companies pledged to try to meet new fuel economy standards.
GM said that within six years its cars would average 38.6 miles per gallon. Chrysler proposed 35.4 mpg.
Yet whether those levels will be enough to meet new federal fuel efficiency standards is unknown because even as the Obama administration is trying to revive the American car industry, it is simultaneously drafting tougher fuel economy standards of the kind that many in the industry had said were bad for business.
If the administration opts for tougher rules, it could make its own auto rescue efforts more expensive and more complex.
Balancing the two goals — saving the industry and the environment — has emerged as a test of the administration’s aims. And the decisions the president’s auto task force must make in the coming weeks give it broad leverage to shape not only the industry’s finances but its product lines.
Click here to read the entire article.
(Source: Room for Debate, a New York Times blog)
(Photo: Librado Romero/The New York Times) In Times Square, pedestrians often find themselves maneuvering among cars blocking the intersections.
The pedestrian mall, the urban planner’s failed attempt to revitalize Main Streets during the 1960s and 70s, is back!
This week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that cars would be barred from several blocks of Broadway, including Herald Square and Times Square. He said the changes would relieve traffic congestion and crowded sidewalks – far different problems from what spawned the pedestrian malls of the 70s. And it’s not just New York that’s rethinking this old idea. San Francisco is considering restrictions on private cars on Market Street, the city’s main artery.
When do these car-free zones succeed? And why have they left streets deserted and unappealing in the past?
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(Source: Gizmodo.com)
MIT’s latest creation, a speedy solar car cheekily named Eleanor, can reach 90 mph (good for enticing lead-footed Americans) and is packed with tech that could outfit mainstream hybrids soon (good for everyone else).
Eleanor, with her flying saucer-esque lines and solar panel skin, was constructed by students in MIT’s Solar Electric Vehicle Team. The cutting edge electric vehicle tech contained inside comes with an unsurprising $243,000 price tag.
Click here to read the entire article.
(Source: Seattle Post Intelligencer)
If you make it as easy as possible to take a bus, train or car pool to work — short of making the trip free — you can get more people out of their cars and into alternative modes of transit.
At least that’s the hope of Commute Seattle, an online tool for planning trips to and from downtown.
The nonprofit group on Thursday tried luring Seattle’s commuters with free pastries and coffee, and the chance to win a bike in exchange for promising to use forms of commuting other than driving alone.
About 280,000 people commute into downtown every day and nearly half of those are in a car by themselves, according to government surveys.
With more growth expected in the city’s center, an additional 25,000 cars could be clogging Seattle’s roads and jockeying for parking, said Jamie Cheney, director of Commute Seattle. It would require 20 blocks of 10-story parking lots to accommodate all those vehicles.
Click here to read the entire article.
(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.
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