Sat.Jul 02, 2011 - Fri.Jul 08, 2011

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UN report finds world needs incremental $1.9 trillion invested in green technologies to avert planetary catastrophe; global per capita cap on primary energy consumption of 70 GJ/yr may be required

Green Car Congress

Humanity is close to breaching the sustainability of Earth, and needs a technological revolution greater and faster than the industrial revolution to avoid “ a major planetary catastrophe ,” according to a new United Nations report. The reports estimates that incremental green investment of about 3% of world gross product (WGP) (about $1.9 trillion in 2010) would be required to overcome poverty; increase food production to eradicate hunger without degrading land and water resources; and avert th

Global 338
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Electric Golf Cart Community in the News Again!

Electric Cars are for Girls

Remember Peachtree City, Georgia , the land of a thousand golf carts ? Now Panasonic Automotive and AT&T are teaming up to test "connected car" technology, using that community as a model.

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2012 Fiat 500 Cabrios, Manuals More Popular Than Projected

Green Car Reports

Launching the 2012 Fiat 500 minicar in the U.S. market was a gamble to begin with. But it's one that is paying off in some unexpected ways. Fiat's top North American executive, Laura Soave, told trade journal Ward's Auto that the Cabrio model with the roll-back cloth roof is proving far more popular than the 10 percent of sales that the company.

2012 152
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Transmission Losses: Exxon-Mobil oil pipeline breaks, Yellowstone River fouled

Plugs and Cars

Tiny compared to the Gulf spill (remember that?,) it warrants only page A-9 of the SF Chronicle. An ExxonMobil pipeline that runs under the Yellowstone River ruptured and leaked hundreds of barrels of oil into the waterway, causing a 25-mile plume that fouled the riverbank and forced municipalities and irrigation districts downstream to close intakes, officials said Saturday.

Oil 100
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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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Study links PM2.5 exposure to learning and memory problems, depression

Green Car Congress

Long-term exposure to air pollution can lead to physical changes in the brain, as well as learning and memory problems and even depression, new research in mice suggests. While other studies have shown the damaging effects of polluted air on the heart and lungs, this is one of the first long-term studies to show the negative impact on the brain, said Laura Fonken, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in neuroscience at Ohio State University.

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Electric Car Sharing

Electric Cars are for Girls

Marc Geller mentioned a few minutes ago on Twitter that he rented his electric vehicle to a Canadian through a peer-to-peer car sharing service called Getaround. I love this idea for getting people into electric cars! Might not be available for sale in your neighborhood, but if you happen to be visiting San Francisco you can rent one for a while, and see how you like it.

More Trending

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Toyota's Electric-Car Hat Trick: Three New EVs for 2012

All Cars Electric

It’s official: next year Toyota will launch not one, but three plug-in vehicles in the year ahead. Announced at Toyota’s Annual National Dealer meeting in Las Vegas, the trio of vehicles will consist of one plug-in hybrid and two pure electric vehicles to the U.S. market by the end of 2012. While each vehicle will be an electric.

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Turkey-based BD Otomotiv in talks to rescue THINK brand from bankruptcy

Green Car Congress

Sustainable transport group BD Otomotiv (BD OTO AS) said it is in advanced negotiations with the Norwegian court-appointed Trustee of THINK Global to rescue the electric vehicle brand from bankruptcy. BD Otomotiv is a Turkey-based investment group which in recent years has focused on electric transportation. The group owns and operates production facilities in Turkey and Italy for the conversion of light commercial vehicles into electric vehicles (EVs), automotive battery pack assembly, and a ne

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Toyota Scion IQ Electric Car - 2012

Electric Cars are for Girls

Toyota's in the electric car game , if a little late. And no, it's not a hybrid, either!

Toyota 229
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Did U.S. Senate Cut Deal To End Ethanol Subsidies After All?

Green Car Reports

Almost three weeks ago, the U.S. Senate voted to end subsidies for production of ethanol, the alternative fuel that is largely refined from domestically-grown corn. At the time, conventional wisdom had it that this was a safe move. Because the subsidies were attached to a stalled economic development bill, they weren't likely to go anywhere. But.

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

Brief

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Coda Automotive declares July 4, 2011 as End Dependence Day

National Green Transportation

Coda Automotive released a video declaring today, July 4, 2011, as End Dependence Day. It's a soft sell asking us to consider things we're dependent upon, but with a focus on oil dependency, and the.

2011 92
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Nissan begins global proving tests for NV200-based EVs for compact commercial market

Green Car Congress

Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. will begin global proving tests this month of an electric vehicle (EV) based on the compact commercial vehicle NV200. For the first phase, the Japan Post Service Co. Ltd. will carry out a test in Japan. The NV200 was recently chosen as the next generation New York taxi ( earlier post ), with the prospects for an electric version beginning in 2017.

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Nissan Leaf With No Range Anxiety

Electric Cars are for Girls

Do electric car drivers have different views on the Nissan Leaf and range anxiety than the automotive magazine folks? Turns out they do.

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Pedestrian Alert Noises Coming To Hybrid And Electric Cars, Needed Or Not

Green Car Reports

If you like the idea of hybrid or electric cars that whir silently down the road without the noise of an engine exploding gasoline thousands of times each minute, you'd better act fast. The U.S. government is moving inexorably toward a rule requiring all hybrid and electric cars to make noise whenever their engine isn't running. The National.

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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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2012 Mitsubishi i Gets Official Ratings From EPA, Gets 112 MPGe

All Cars Electric

It’s official: Mitsubishi’s compact four seat electric car, the 2012 Mitsubishi i, is more fuel efficient than the 2011 Nissan Leaf. Rated by the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) for both fuel economy and range per charge, the Mitsubishi achieved a combined fuel economy of 112 miles per gallon equivalent, beating the 2011 Nissan.

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Australian government forming Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA); initially to manage A$3.2B in funding

Green Car Congress

The Australian government will form the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), which will be a “ one-stop shop in the Federal Government for renewable energy ”, Green senator Christine Milne announced. ARENA will manage some A$3.2 billion (US$3.44 billion) to support renewable energy development. ARENA will fund development in a range of renewable areas, including solar energy, geothermal and biofuels technology.

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Sierra Club wants you to show why you want Freedom From Oil

National Green Transportation

It's Independence Day in the U.S. and of course a lot of themed advertising is floating around the interwebs. The Sierra Club has joined the trend today with a call for action in their Go60 campaign.

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New Mercedes-Benz B-Class Getting Five Different Powerplants

Green Car Reports

Mercedes-Benz is working on a brand new version of its B-Class hatchback that’s destined to go on sale in the U.S. late next year alongside a new A-Class hatchback, BLS four-door coupe and BLK compact crossover. This family of small cars from the German luxury brand will all ride on a new front-wheel drive platform codenamed MFA (Mercedes.

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Five Ways to Increase Your Electric Car's Range Overnight

All Cars Electric

If you’re an electric car owner who finds that the range you can get from a full charge isn’t anywhere near the distance the dealer claimed, you’re not alone. Rushing to work, carrying excess weight, poor maintenance, inadequate planning and even drive distractions while driving can cause havoc with the number of miles your car.

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Graphene-sulfur composite as stable high energy capacity cathodes for Li-ion batteries

Green Car Congress

Schematic of the synthesis steps for a graphene-sulfur composite material, with a proposed schematic structure of the composite. Credit: ACS, Wang et al. Click to enlarge. Researchers at Stanford University led by Drs. Yi Cui and Hongjie Dai report the synthesis of a graphene–wrapped sulfur composite material that shows high and stable specific capacities of up to 600 mAh/g over more than 100 cycles.

Li-ion 239
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US Dept of Energy announces 6 new companies joining the Clean Fleets Partnership

National Green Transportation

The National Clean Fleets Partnership, launched in April, is a public-private partnership helping large companies reduce diesel and gasoline use in their fleets. Today the Dept of Energy announced six new corporate members of the partnership, Coca.

Clean 75
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Will Euro-Squabbles Cripple Cross-Border Electric Car Charging?

Green Car Reports

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, said the philosopher Santayana. And there seems to be a very real chance that Europe is heading toward a variety of multiple and incompatible electric-car charging standards. That's a path the U.S. rejected a decade ago. And it's one that would inconvenience all European buyers of.

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Electric Car Navigation Gets Smart With Pioneering New GPS

All Cars Electric

Practically every car on the market today ships with the option of a built-in GPS unit, letting the driver go anywhere without supposedly getting lost. But while satellite navigation systems have got a whole lot smarter in recent years, they are designed to be used in a gasoline car - not an electric one. That may not seem like a problem at first.

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DOE offers conditional commitment for a $105M Loan Guarantee for Project Liberty cellulosic biorefinery

Green Car Congress

The US Department of Energy (DOE) is offering a conditional commitment for a $105- million loan guarantee to support the development of a commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant. Project LIBERTY, sponsored by POET, LLC, will produce up to 25 million gallons of ethanol per year and will be located in Emmetsburg, Iowa. ( Earlier post.). Project LIBERTY will use corncobs, leaves and husks.

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Project to develop affordable fuel cell vehicle gets underway

Green Cars News

Developer of the T.27 dubbed ‘greenest car in the world’ (see story), Gordon Murray Design is hitting the headlines again this week as it partners with ACAL Energy to takes the first steps towards designing an affordable fuel cell vehicle. Part of a 12 month feasibility study, supported by the Technology Strategy Board, Gordon Murray [.].

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First A Diesel, Now GM To Work On Natural-Gas Cars For U.S. (Report)

Green Car Reports

General Motors makes a lot of vehicles globally. And despite all the publicity around its 2011 Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, most of them run on gasoline. Now, GM has agreed to develop natural-gas engines for light-duty vehicles (that means cars and crossovers bought by retail customers) with Westport Innovations, which will open a new technical.

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2014 Volkswagen Golf blue-e-motion First Drive

All Cars Electric

Volkswagen is intent on becoming the world’s leading automaker by 2018 and that means being the top dog in every segment, including hybrid and electric cars. Previously, the German auto giant announced plans to start building its own electric powertrains and even opened a battery research lab at Silicon Valley in Palo Alto, California. Since.

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Axeon awarded funding to study recycling and re-use of EV batteries

Green Car Congress

UK-based Li-ion battery system producer Axeon is one of six British companies to receive a share of nearly £500,000 (US$798,000) in funding from the Technology Strategy Board for feasibility studies into the recycling and re-use of batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles. As well as researching the recycling process, the project will look at how to determine end-of-life.

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Manchester plans electric future

Green Cars News

A new network of charge points and Pod Centres for electric vehicles will launch across Greater Manchester this autumn. As a recent beneficiary of the second round of Plugged-in Places funding, Manchester Electric Car Company (MECC) together with its partners will launch the first of 300 charge points and six larger Pod Centres to revolutionise [.].

Future 53
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2011 Chevrolet Volt: Air Dam, Display Issues Fixed By Dealers

Green Car Reports

The first 2011 Chevy Volt was delivered in December 2010, and GM’s rollout of this engineering achievement has seemed quite smooth thus far. Still, after six months, early adopters have found a couple of small problems with the vehicle, and Chevrolet has moved aggressively to correct them. The first problem quietly being addressed by General.

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Mitsubishi Adds Electric-Car Models: One's Cheaper, One Goes Further

All Cars Electric

Mitsubishi Motors has played the next move in the growing global electric car war by announcing that it will offer three different versions of its popular four-seat electric car. Much like the 2012 Tesla Model S Sedan, the only major difference between the three grades of car will be the size of the battery pack, meaning an ability for consumers.

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Updated IEA EV/PHEV roadmap finds announced production plans for electric vehicles far below sales targets set by countries

Green Car Congress

Combined government targets (line) and EV/PHEV production/sales (bars) reported by OEM. Production/sale capacity levels shown here are assumed to remain constant after year of construction. In practice, capacities may rise after plants enter service. Source: IEA. Click to enlarge. Announcements from major manufacturers in terms of future production plans for electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (EVs and PHEVs) are far below sales targets set by countries, according to a newly updated El

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UK’s first solar panel recharging points to open

Green Cars News

The UK’s first publicly available solar-powered recharging points will be revealed on Wednesday (July 6, 2011). Opening at the Centre for Engineering and Manufacturing Excellence (CEME) in Rainham, Essex, the ‘eTap’ facility provides parking and charging bays for up to six cars situated under a solar panel canopy. Designed by Harlow-based firm, Use the Sun, [.].

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British Cabbies Get Friendly, Join Social Network For Eco-Driving

Green Car Reports

Take a trip to England and at some point you’re likely to sit in the back of a London taxi cab. Just as famous as its New York counterpart, the London taxi cab is known for its tight turning circle, iconic shape and the scores of native Cockney ‘cabbies’ which pilot them. But if you’ll forgive us, most folks would not.

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