(Source: LA Times)

At a recycling plant in San Pedro and five other similar operations around California, giant shredding machines annually reduce 1.3 million junk cars, refrigerators and other appliances into fist-sized chunks of metal.

(Source: earth2tech via Reuters)

Cities have thrown down the gauntlet for electric car charging in recent months, and utilities are increasingly eager to tout infrastructure efforts. Among automakers, the Renault-Nissan Alliance has been out in front working to coordinate governments, utilities and charge station companies to develop regional networks of hardware and services that drivers will need to make the automakers’ upcoming electric cars practical for daily use. But what steps follow a big partnership announcement, after a utility, a vendor or an automaker says it’s done a deal to ready the power grid for an EV rollout?

For at least one of the 26 partners that the Renault-Nissan Alliance has lined up so far — utility San Diego Gas & Electric — the vision for how to support plug-in vehicles at even a pilot scale is just beginning to take shape. In an interview last week, SDG&E’s Clean Transportation manager, Bill Zobel, gave us a glimpse of what the utility has accomplished so far, and what it has in the works.

At this point, Zobel said, the company is still in the process of assembling its internal team for the project. When that group is fully established next month, it will help develop milestones and oversee outreach to customers and “integration across the broader utility.” By September, SDG&E aims to have commitments from fleet operators in the San Diego area to trial at least 100 electric cars coming from Nissan next year. Zobel said the University of California, San Diego is “ecstatic” about the program. The city and county of San Diego, several nearby cities and the U.S. military may also sign up to try the vehicles. SDG&E plans to have at least 15 of the cars in its own fleet.

(Source: Autobloggreen) & HyNor)

As the US government is cutting down its funding and research/deployment interest in Hydrogen-based transportation systens, Norway is thinking the exact opposite.  In an all out push, Norway is moving ahead with the deployment of a 580 kilometer highway peppered with hydrogen fueling stations.  One of the biggest questions surrounding hydrogen-powered vehicles right now is where to find an appropriate hydrogen pump, and looks like Norway has moved to answer that question by opening it up its first hydrogen highway.

This hydrogen highway is part of Norway’s HyNor project and stretches for 580 kilometers from Oslo on the eastern coast to Stavanger on the western North Sea coast. So far, the route consists of 12 hydrogen pumps, which is apparently sufficient to allow the Mazdas to be refueled along the way.

It is worth something and appropriate to mention a recent New York Times article titled “Norway Thrives by Going against the tide“, which articulates how Norway’s investment decisions for its future saved its economy from going bust, while the recession monster is shaking up the financial foundations of many Western economies, including those of US and UK.  The article points out “With a quirky contrariness as deeply etched in the national character as the fjords carved into its rugged landscape, Norway has thrived by going its own way. When others splurged, it saved. When others sought to limit the role of government, Norway strengthened its cradle-to-grave welfare state. And in the midst of the worst global downturn since the Depression, Norway’s economy grew last year by just under 3 percent. The government enjoys a budget surplus of 11 percent and its ledger is entirely free of debt.”

If the above mentioned investment decision is a good indicator to go by, Norways decision to invest in a hydrogen based transportation future seems foretelling and something worth noting, especially for the United States which just dealt a blow to hydrogen research by cutting down the investment.   The HyNor website notes the following: The HyNor Partnership and StatoilHydro are pleased to announce the official opening of the Norwegian hydrogen highway, HyNor, on 11 May 2009 at StatoilHydro’s new hydrogen station at Økern in Oslo. HyNor was opened by Norway’s Minister of Transport and Communications, Liv Signe Navarsete. H.R.H. Crown Prince Haakon of Norway joined the first stage of the EVS Viking Rally, from Oslo to Lier, together with internationally renowned race car driver Henning Solberg. The governing mayor of Oslo, Erling Lae, opened StatoilHydro’s new hydrogen service station at Økern, and Navarsete opened the hydrogen station at StatoilHydro’s service station in Lier.

The first hydrogen station was opened at Forus in Stavanger in 2006, the second in Porsgrunn in 2007, and now the two new stations are open in Oslo and Lier. HyNor has some 50 partners and manages a fleet of more than 50 hydrogen vehicles made by Mazda, Toyota and Think.

“We are very pleased to open up this hydrogen infrastructure for testing and demonstrating hydrogen cars. By doing this, we nurture our ambition to help implement hydrogen as a fuel in the transport sector,” says Anne Marit Hansen, Chairman of the board in HyNor. 

The EVS Viking Rally vehicles are the first to drive the Norwegian hydrogen highway. The rally commences with H.R.H. Crown Prince Haakon racing together with the famous Norwegian race car star Henning Solberg. 14 hydrogen vehicles, two plug in hybrid cars and 14 battery electric vehicles are starting in Oslo and will reach the beginning of the EVS (Electrical Vehicle Symposium) 24 in Stavanger on 13 May. Events will take place along the way in Porsgrunn, Grimstad, Arendal, Kristiansand, Lyngdal and Egersund. Another 10 battery electric vehicles will join the rally in Egersund. 

This is reportedly the first integrated network of hydrogen pumps in the world, and it’s a creation of Norway’s StatoilHydro, the company that installed the underlying structure as well. Future plans call for the highway to extend into the rest of Scandinavia, as shown in the map to the right. Afterward, the alliance intends to extend into Germany. For your information, Mazda has shipped the first Hydrogen RX8 REs to Norway, indicator of a strong response to the government’s interest in Hydrogen vehicles.  

Note:  A related article from NY Times articulates how California’s efforts to build a similar Hydrogen Highway has fallen behind. One of the leading investors in Hydrogen fuel research was the State of California.  Soon after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) took office in 2003, he set in motion a campaign promise to build, by 2010, a “hydrogen highway” composed of 150 to 200 fueling stations spaced every 20 miles along California’s major highways.  In spite of the great interest, the hydrogen infrastructure has not expanded much since its inception.   the program has fallen short of expectations. With less than 10 months until the end of the decade, 24 hydrogen fueling stations are operating in California, most of them near Los Angeles.State officials say all this is part of what they now view, in the words of ARB spokesman Dimitri Stanich, as a “retooled” hydrogen highway.

“It’s very much alive,” Stanich said of the program. “This vision is still there. It’s just being groomed.”

(Source: BBC)

The need for speed is not normally a selling point for commuters who buy electric vehicles. But it could be.

And you better believe it – this bike moves.

“You can accelerate faster than any car,” says Neal Saiki, who invented the electric motorcycle.

“You’ve got all kinds of power, and it is totally quiet. I think it is a lot like flying.”

Image Courtesy: The Motor Report

A gentle turn of the throttle and the force of the lithium-ion battery pack is transferred directly to the back wheel, sending the bike rocketing down London’s Kings Road.

The experience is vastly different from the ride of a conventional bike. There is no clutch and no need to change gears. Turning the throttle instantly delivers powerful torque, along with just enough chain rattle to remind you that this is still a motorcycle.

Change the software settings, explains Mr Saiki, founder and chief technology officer of Zero Motorcycles, and the bike will deliver zero to 50mph in just five seconds.  While still at college in California, he designed the world’s first helicopter powered by a human.

The invention eventually helped him become a designer of “high altitude research vehicles” for US space agency Nasa, a job he left to start building motorcycles.

“What we’ve done here is to combine the world’s smallest, lightest battery pack with a revolutionary 28 pound (12 kilogramme) frame,” says Mr Saiki, who invented the battery himself and designed the frame from aircraft grade aluminium.

Enough, perhaps, to convince thrill-seeking commuters, though at an expected price of some £8,000 in the UK and a maximum range of 60 miles per charge, the bike may struggle to attract people away from established motorcycle communities.

Zero Motorcycles is pitching the bike as an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional motorcycles.

In terms of fuel economy, there is probably not that much in it, since motorcycles tend not to be all that thirsty in the first place.

But when it comes to emissions it is a clear winner, the company insists, even in countries with coal-fired power stations.

“Although there is some pollution associated with the production of electricity, a Zero motorcycle produces less than an eighth of the CO2 pollution per mile at the power plant than a petrol-powered motorcycle,” Zero declares.  In the video below, you can hear about the Zero S from Neal Saiki himself as he walks through various aspects of its innovative  design & cutting edge technology.  

 It is a claim the conventional bike makers will find hard to refute, not least since they tend not to publish any CO2 figures at all.

Many commuters will be more interested in data on battery charging times, though.

Zero says a four-hour charge using an ordinary household socket will cost six pence and deliver 60 miles of motoring, and Mr Saiki insists the battery pack should be able to deliver such performance for about five years.

“You charge it in the morning and it’ll be ready for lunch,” he says.

“It would cost you $30 (£20) to go from California to New York,” observes Zero’s PR man.

Though allow for the frequent recharging, and the journey would take a long, long time.

Click here to read the entire article.

 (Source: The Infrastructurist & Reuters)

Reuters has done a lot of interesting interviews this week from its Infrastructure Summit. In thenews service’s latest dispatch, the Senate’s transportation pointperson, Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat, who will marshal the bill through the Senate, discusses her plans for the highway bill.  

Snippets of the interview that would appeal to us are here: 

• “What I think is very important is to index the gas tax to inflation, because, obviously the gas tax is falling behind,”.
• “I also don’t want to increase the gas tax, but I want it to keep up.”
• Confident the bill would pass out of the Environment and Public Works Committee that she chairs and reach the full Senate by the end of the year.
• The Senate is also considering raising the tax on diesel, changing exemptions to the gas tax given to certain groups, taking a percentage of customs duties, relying on private finance, and charging drivers fees based on Vehicle Miles Traveled (The bill’s authors, though, have rejected attaching a small device to cars to measure VMT). 
• We’re looking at options. Are there ways for people to — an honor system, when they register their vehicles — just say, ‘This is the miles I had last year, this is the miles I have this year,’?

Related article:

Fear Growing Senator Boxer Won’t Deliver Progressive Transportation Act

(Source: Streetsblog)

(Source & Image: LA Times)

Drivers are turning to alternative fuels and cutting consumption.

 

Click here to read the entire article.

 Here is the Scaled Composites’ annoucement about the test:

Yes, it can happpen to anyone!  Even if you are the Attorney General of California.  The thieves in California are probably the best of the breed in this business – sincere & hardworking; they just go about doing their jobs without any discrimination. A brazen thief swiped two wheels off Attorney General Jerry Brown‘s state-owned Toyota Camry Hybrid. Is this schadenfreude or irony?

The theft occurred while Brown was out of town at the state Democratic convention in Sacramento and the car was parked streetside in front of his Oakland Hills home. The thieves left the car up on cinder blocks, observing proper wheel theft etiquette, boldly choosing to take the two street facing wheels rather than the home-facing wheels. 

Amy Morosini, 40, a neighbor of Brown’s, said she was driving with her family to a college reunion on Saturday when she saw the car on a cinder block.

“I kind of just pointed it out to my husband and said, ‘Oh my God, look! Someone stole Jerry’s tires!’ ” Morosini said Thursday.

Th ebest part in this is the sense of humor exhibited by the AG.  Brown said in a message posted on his Facebook page:  

“Even though I am California’s ‘top cop,’ 2 of my tires were stolen. No matter. I got 2 new ones and I’m rolling again!” 

Way to go,  Mr. Brown!  Keep rollin’. BTW, Does the thief know that he stole his own money – the wheels belonged to a tax-payer owned state vehicle.  Looks like California’s  thieves are among the dumbest in business. 

(Source:  SF Gate via Jalopnik)

(Source: NY Times)

Ethanol producers reacted with dismay to California’s approval of the nation’s first low-carbon fuel standard, which will require the state’s mix of fuels to be 10 percent lower in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

In a 9-1 vote late Thursday, the state’s Air Resources Board approved the measure (seebackground here).“The drive to force the market toward greater use of alternative fuels will be a boon to the state’s economy and public health — it reduces air pollution, creates new jobs and continues California’s leadership in the fight against global warming,” said the California board’s chairman, Mary D. Nichols, in a statement.

But the ethanol industry is concerned that the regulations give a poor emissions score to their corn-based product, in some cases ranking it as a bigger emitter than petroleum.

“This was a poor decision, based on shaky science, not only for California, but for the nation,” said General Wesley Clark, who co-chairs the pro-ethanol group Growth Energy, in a statement.

The decision, he added, “puts another road block in moving away from dependence on fossil fuels and stifles development of the emerging cellulosic industry.”

Note: Late last night, TransportGooru made detailed post (shown below), immediately following the Calif. Air Resources Board announcement on the adoption of this standard. 

California adopts first-in-the-world regulation to minimize the amount of carbon in fuel