Sat.Jul 30, 2011 - Fri.Aug 05, 2011

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Mazdas new SKYACTIV gasoline and diesel engines are steps on the road to its Ideal Engine; focus on compression ratio

Green Car Congress

Mazda’s roadmap to the ideal internal combustion engine. Click to enlarge. Mazda Motor Corporation’s SKYACTIV next-generation technologies—including engines, transmissions, vehicle bodies and chassis, launched in 2010 ( earlier post )—represent the first key building blocks for the company in achieving its “Sustainable Zoom-Zoom” strategy, which initially calls for a 30% increase in fuel efficiency (compared to 2008 levels) for all Mazda vehicles offered worldwide by 2015

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Chevy Confirms Smallest-Ever Spark Minicar For U.S. In 2012

Green Car Reports

The 2012 Chevrolet Sonic subcompact just going into production this month is the smallest car sold by Chevrolet in the U.S., but the bowtie brand isn't finished downsizing yet. Today, General Motors confirmed that the Chevrolet Spark minicar will be sold in the U.S. GM's executive director of North American product communications, Jason Laird.

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Nissan: ?Leaf's Battery Pack Should Last As Long As The Car?

All Cars Electric

Nissan’s all-electric Leaf isn’t having a great time of it this week in the mainstream media. Firstly, Nissan had to defend itself against popular British motoring entertainment program Top Gear after it showed the electric hatchback in a less-than favorable light, quoting a battery expert who said the Leaf’s 24 kilowatt hour.

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Nissan and City Ventures building homes pre-wired for EV charging in Southern CA

National Green Transportation

City Ventures, a southern California eco-friendly affordable home builder, and Nissan announced today a partnership on the concept of pre-wiring homes for electric vehicle charging. An issue today with building out EV charging infrastructure is.

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How serious is Norway about climate change? So much that its streetlights self-dim

emissions global warming Norway climate change carbon dioxide youtube lighting

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University of Michigan and Ford researchers see plentiful lithium resources for electric vehicles

Green Car Congress

Researchers from the University of Michigan and Ford Motor Co. report in Journal of Industrial Ecology that even with a rapid and widespread adoption of electric vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries, lithium resources are sufficient to support demand until at least the end of this century. For their study, they assessed the global availability of lithium and compared it to the potential demand from large-scale global use of electric vehicles.

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2014 BMW i3 Moves Us Closer To Autonomous Driving In Cities

Green Car Reports

Driving is often a pain, particularly in dense, congested urban cores. Start and stop, brake suddenly, stay carefully in your lane, drive defensively, then park in tight spaces. What if the car could do all that for you? Last week, BMW showed off its new BMW i3 Concept, which points the way toward the 2014 BMW i3 battery-electric car that it will.

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More Trending

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Study by Siemens says electric cars are suitable for everyday use

National Green Transportation

Yesterday the German electronics giant Siemens released results of two studies of electric car drivers, concluding that overwhelmingly they prefer electric cars, finding them suitable for every-day use.

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New catalyst for the direct conversion of ethanol to isobutene

Green Car Congress

The right balance of zinc and zirconium oxides in this catalyst (purple block) converts ethanol to isobutene with low amounts of unwanted byproducts such as acetone and ethylene. Source: PNNL. Click to enlarge. Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Washington State University (WSU) have developed a new nanosized Zn x Zr y O z mixed oxide catalyst for the direct and high-yield (83%) conversion of bio-ethanol to isobutene, a widely used in

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Today's Eco-Friendly Tires Offer Better MPG And Better Grip

Green Car Reports

Low rolling resistance tires have been around for a few decades now, and early versions required you to trade-off cornering and braking ability for a modest gain in fuel economy. For drivers of fuel-economy-centric cars like the Honda Insight or Toyota Prius, this compromise was acceptable. Drivers of luxury sedans and sports cars, on the other.

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Nissan North America Releases Android App for Leaf Electric Car

All Cars Electric

Ever since the launch of the 2011 Nissan Leaf, owners have been able to remotely access information about their car’s state of charge, estimated range and even pre-heat or cool the cabin using Nissan’s built-in telematics service - Carwings. But unless you happened to own an iPhone in addition to your Nissan Leaf, the only way you.

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Faurecia and Accenture partner on products and services for connected and autonomous vehicles

Brief

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Tesla/Toyota RAV4 EV to be built in Ontario alongside gasser RAV4's

National Green Transportation

Toyota announced today that the RAV4 EV they jointly developed with Tesla will be assembled at their Woodstock Ontario factory. Tesla will manufacture drive train components in California, shipping the components to Ontario for assembly.“The.

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ABB wins $1B order for offshore wind power connection

Green Car Congress

ABB has won an order worth around $1 billion from the Dutch-German transmission grid operator TenneT to supply a power link connecting offshore North Sea wind farms to the German mainland grid. This is the largest power transmission order in ABB’s history. It will deploy the world’s largest offshore HVDC (high-voltage direct current) system with a rating of more than 900 megawatts (MW), keeping electrical losses to less than 1% per converter station.

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ALTe To Test Extended-Range Electric Retrofit In Ford F-150 Pickup Truck

Green Car Reports

Electric vehicles of various sorts are just now showing up in dealer showrooms. But that leaves a quarter of a billion gasoline vehicles running around U.S. roads. What to do to clean them up? Various entities have proposed to retrofit existing vehicles with various types of electric powertrains. One is ALTe (pronounced "alt-eee"), which announced.

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2012 Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid: Five Things We Like

All Cars Electric

We’ve now had four chances to put the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid through its paces, covering everything from fast-moving freeways and inner city streets through to mountain passes and trips to the local Costco. In the end we concluded that for some drivers, Toyota’s 13 mile-per-charge plug-in hybrid could represent a better buy.

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ExxonMobil announces 6th oil discovery offshore Guyana with Ranger-1; Guyana may move from non-producer to regional powerhouse

Oil

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PA Consulting launches low CO2 salary exchange scheme

Green Cars News

PA Consulting, a leading IT and technology firm, is the latest company to sign up to Zenith Provecta’s salary exchange scheme. The scheme allows staff to sacrifice a proportion of their salary in order to drive a low emission car. CO2 emissions are restricted to a maximum of 160g/km, although as all the cars on [.].

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Researchers castigate planning bodies for ill-conceived Jatropha programs

Green Car Congress

The results of massive plantings of Jatropha worldwide for use as a biofuel feedstock—some 12.8 million ha (49,421 square miles) are expected to be planted by 2015—are “ anything but encouraging ”, according to Promode Kant from the Institute of Green Economy in India and Shuirong Wu of the Chinese Academy of Forestry. In a Viewpoint published in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology , Kant and Wu suggest that what they call the “ extraordinary coll

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Nissan Envisions A Green Utopia In 'Planet Zero' Game: Video

Green Car Reports

Have a few minutes to kill this Friday? Enjoy online games? Then you might like a walkthrough of Nissan's newest project, a "game-style promotion website" called "The Planet Zero". Nissan's website envisions a planet where everything runs on electricity generated by the sun and wind, and thus, there are no emissions generated from fossil fuels.

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Tesla Releases Trio Test-Track Fun Model S Teaser Video

All Cars Electric

If Tesla’s Model S all-electric seven-seat sedan were in high school, it would be the kind of girl every heterosexual boy would lust after and every teenage girl would want to be. At least, that’s certainly the line being taken by Tesla in its latest teasing track-test video, in which not one but three of its Model S Alpha-build cars.

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Final race in TTXGP's 2011 North American series to be held at Miller Motorsport

National Green Transportation

A few weeks ago the TTXGP 2011 North American series was thrown akilter when the AMA pulled out of the August 15 weekend at VIRginia International Raceway. The TTXGP North American championship was to have been held at VIR.

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Auto industry survey finds need for materials innovation to meet 2025 CAFE; greatest change seen in powertrain systems

Green Car Congress

49% of respondents thought that powertrains would see the greatest percentage of material changes as a result of proposed 2025 CAFE standards. Click to enlarge. The auto industry’s current materials portfolio will need to be augmented to meet new 2025 fuel economy standards, according to a WardsAuto and DuPont Automotive survey conducted in late July.

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Audi's Latest Engine Blends Performance With Fuel Economy

Green Car Reports

Until recently, drivers had to choose between performance and fuel economy when buying a new car. One always seemed to come at the expense of the other, so compromise was usually called for when car shopping. Later, explanations of “I know it’s slow, but it gets good fuel mileage,” or “I know it drinks gas, but it puts a.

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2012 Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid: Everything to Everyone?

All Cars Electric

The iconic Toyota Prius was the car which started the hybrid revolution. Offering fuel economy that very few other gasoline cars could hope to achieve, it has been loved by politicians, movie stars and wannabe greenies for over ten years. Although Toyota improved its hybrid drivetrain for the 2010-11 Toyota Prius to give even better gas mileage.

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BMW unveils their i3 electric and i8 plug-in hybrid concept cars

National Green Transportation

On Friday last week BMW held a press conference unveiling the their BMW.i concept vehicles. These are the i3, all electric sedan meant for urban use, and the i8, plug-in hybrid sports car meant for longer trips.

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NIST finds that ethanol-loving bacteria accelerate cracking of pipeline steels

Green Car Congress

Micrograph of crack in X52 steel after the sample was subjected to mechanical forces for several days in an ethanol solution containing acid-producing bacteria, Acetobacter aceti. Source: NIST. Click to enlarge. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) caution that ethanol, and especially the bacteria sometimes found in it, can dramatically degrade pipelines.

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New Study Links Diesel Particulates And Heart Disease

Green Car Reports

It’s no secret that diesel fumes from trucks, buses and older diesel automobiles can be linked to health issues. Those with asthma or other respiratory conditions are often advised to limit time outdoors on days with poor air quality, so the public has come to associate pollution with breathing difficulties. Now a team of researchers from.

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2012 Toyota RAV4 EV To Be Built In Toyota Plant, Not By Tesla

All Cars Electric

This much we know already: Tesla Motors will build battery packs and electric drive systems for the upcoming 2012 Toyota RAV4 EV electric crossover. What we didn't know was where that car would be assembled. Would it be the Canadian factory that builds standard gasoline RAV4s for North America, or the cavernous Tesla Motors plant in Fremont.

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Tesla showing strong growth, huge losses, amid best quarter in their history

National Green Transportation

Today, in a shareholders conference call, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk declared that Q2 2011 was the best quarter in Tesla's history, so far. The company disclosed their Q2 financial status, in a shareholders letter today, showing.

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Audi reduces fuel consumption 21% in new direct injection 1.8L TFSI; indirect injection in part-load range

Green Car Congress

Audi A5 1.8 liter TFSI engine. Click to enlarge. Audi’s base gasoline engine in the updated A5 family—the 1.8 liter TFSI—incorporates new solutions in fuel injection and other technologies to deliver its 125 kW (170 hp) and 320 N·m (236 lb-ft) torque, with 5.7 liters per 100 km fuel consumption (41 mpg US), corresponding to 134 grams of CO 2 /km (215.65 g/mile).

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China Builds And Tests Its Own Robot Car

Green Car Reports

The select global fleet of self-driving cars has a new Chinese addition, and the developers claim the intellectual property behind it was created entirely at a Chinese university. After gaining early publicity five years ago, the robot-driven vehicle made the trip between the interior Chinese metropolises of Changsha and Wuhan in three hours and.

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2012 Ford Focus Gives Letterman a Late Show Test-Drive

All Cars Electric

You’re the CEO of a global automaker who has just been invited to appear as a guest on the internationally renowned Late Show With David Letterman to talk about your new electric car. But rather than just talk about it, why not bring the car along too? And then let the show’s host drive it across his set. That’s the way Ford CEO.

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Balqon debuts new medium duty electric truck, the Mule M100

National Green Transportation

Electric vehicles don't have to be tiny boring golf carts. They can be big trucks hauling significant cargo loads, with the potential to significantly reduce diesel exhaust concentrations around ports facilities. Balqon, the Los Angeles based.

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Version 2.0 of Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid with flywheel energy storage to start at Laguna Seca

Green Car Congress

Porsche Motorsport announced the entry of the 911 GT3 R Hybrid Version 2.0 ( earlier post ) in the ModSpace American Le Mans Series Monterey presented by Patrón. The six-hour race on 17 September at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca is the eighth round of the 2011 American Le Mans Series presented by Tequila Patrón. Components of the hybrid system are tinted in red.

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Electric Car Sales: Leaf Trounces Volt, But Don't Take It Seriously

Green Car Reports

It was a slow month for electric-car sales, with just over 1,000 Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt vehicles together delivered during July. Nissan delivered 931 Leaf battery-electric cars, a decline from June's 1,708, and Chevrolet--which is suffering from a now-ended four-week summer shutdown for retooling at its Detroit-Hamtramck plant--sold a mere.

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Top Gear On Electric Cars: ?We Are Allowed To Put Into A Film What We Want To?

All Cars Electric

Uh-ho. Those crafty chaps known as the BBC Top Gear team may have thought they got away with their recent review of the 2011 Nissan Leaf and 2011 Peugeot iOn (a rebadged predecessor to the 2012 Mitsubishi i) - but they would be wrong. The fur started flying yesterday, when Nissan Senior Vice President Andy Palmer gave an interview to The Times.

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