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

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NREL study concludes aggressive action on vehicle miles travelled, fuel economy and fuel carbon intensity will all be required to meet US GHG reduction goals

Green Car Congress

Contribution of each metric to the FCI Success and VMT-FE Success scenarios. Credit: ACS, Melaina and Webster. Click to enlarge. Aggressive near-term actions are necessary in three areas—vehicle miles traveled (VMT), vehicle fuel economy (FE), and fuel carbon intensity (FCI)—in order to achieve a “fair share” reduction within the light-duty-vehicle sector toward meeting US goals of an 83% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2050, according to a new study by a t

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CicLaVia is Back This Sunday & We’ll Be Rolling Against Coal!

Creative Greenius

How’d you like to enjoy 7-and-a-half miles of L.A. streets free of motorized vehicles and open only to bicyclists and pedestrians? Stroll, play, talk, celebrate -do whatever you want on the public street without sucking up gas fumes or fearing for your life from drunk drivers, texting drivers, drivers eating or putting on makeup or just plain dangerous behind the wheel lunatics.

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"Transmission Losses" - The Cost of Bio-fuels

Plugs and Cars

The Times has story of the consequences of crop production for bio-fuels: higher food prices and tragic irony.last year, 98 percent of cassava chips exported from Thailand, the world’s largest cassava exporter , went to just one place and almost all for one purpose: to China to make biofuel.It can be tricky predicting how new demand from the biofuel sector will affect the supply and price of food.

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Chevy Volt Outsells Nissan Leaf Again: March Electric Car Sales

Green Car Reports

The 2011 Chevy Volt continues to outsell the 2011 Nissan Leaf, but during March, the Japanese battery electric car at last started to move noticeable numbers of cars--almost five times as many as it sold in February. The two major-manufacturer plug-ins currently on the market sold a total of 906 cars, split between 608 Volts and 298 Leafs. That's.

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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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Siemens introducing new 22 kW fast charging station for plug-ins

Green Car Congress

Siemens has launched a new electric-vehicle charging station on the market that can fully recharge a battery within one hour. By doubling the output to 22 kW, the charging station cuts charging times in half. The station is also protected against vandalism, with a doubly secured charging cable and the option of connecting the device to a remote surveillance system so that it can be used as part of a smart grid.

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Free Earth Day Movie Friday, April 22, in Manhattan Beach

Creative Greenius

From my great friends, Carolyn Miller and Transition South Bay L.A. and Sona Kalapura and the green city of Manhattan Beach. If you don’t know how damaging plastics are to our environment here are two free showings on Earth Day 2011 – Friday, April 22 – of the movie BAG IT that will enlighten you and make you angry. Angry is good when it comes to more petroleum based products that we have shoved down our throats until they choke our landfills and oceans.

More Trending

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Ford Boosting Mileage With Lightweight Construction Inspired By Chocolate Bar

Green Car Reports

Tightening fuel efficiency and emissions regulations all around the world are pushing automakers to find any way they can to make their cars greener, downsizing engines, reducing internal friction and improving aerodynamics. Another area, and one of the most beneficial as it not only improves fuel economy but also boosts handling and reduces wear.

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Siemens developing inductive charging system for plug-in vehicles with BMW; testing in Berlin in June 2011

Green Car Congress

At Hannover Messe 2011, Siemens presented a development project for inductive charging (“Contactless Charging of Battery-Electric Vehicles”), developed in cooperation with BMW. In June 2011, the capabilities of this non-contact charging system will be tested in a project funded by the German Environment Ministry and involving several vehicles in Berlin.

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Free Earth Day Movie Friday, April 22, in Manhattan Beach

Creative Greenius

From my great friends, Carolyn Miller and Transition South Bay L.A. and Sona Kalapura and the green city of Manhattan Beach. If you don’t know how damaging plastics are to our environment here are two free showings on Earth Day 2011 – Friday, April 22 – of the movie BAG IT that will enlighten you and make you angry. Angry is good when it comes to more petroleum based products that we have shoved down our throats until they choke our landfills and oceans.

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2011 Nissan Leaf One Week In: Five Things We Like

All Cars Electric

As you may have seen earlier this week, I’ve been a proud owner of a 2011 Nissan Leaf since late last month. Today marks ten days since we took delivery. We’ve already shared the five things that we hate about the 2011 Leaf, so now it’s time to share the things we really like. Level 3 Fast Charging Is a Game-Changer Remember the.

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

Brief

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Electric-Car Range Extender Engines: OK Now, Can Do Better

Green Car Reports

Electric cars like the 2011 Chevrolet Volt and 2011 Fisker Karma get around the problem of range anxiety the old-fashioned way: They use gasoline engines. They do it because the battery systems of pure electric vehicles are large, heavy, and expensive, but the range they produce is still.limited. A series hybrid, like the Volt or Karma, makes.

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New diesel Ford Focus ECOnetic to debut at Amsterdam Motor Show; 67 mpg US

Green Car Congress

Ford Motor Company will stage the debut of the new Focus ECOnetic next week at the Amsterdam Motor Show. The new diesel ECOnetic, which will go on sale early next year, leverages a number of advanced technologies that Ford expects will make it more fuel efficient than any other compact vehicle on the road today in Europe, including conventional diesel-, gasoline- and hybrid-powered vehicles.

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CicLaVia is Back This Sunday & We’ll Be Rolling Against Coal!

Creative Greenius

How’d you like to enjoy 7-and-a-half miles of L.A. streets free of motorized vehicles and open only to bicyclists and pedestrians? Stroll, play, talk, celebrate -do whatever you want on the public street without sucking up gas fumes or fearing for your life from drunk drivers, texting drivers, drivers eating or putting on makeup or just plain dangerous behind the wheel lunatics.

Coal 150
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The 2011 Chevrolet Volt: More Electric Than Car?

All Cars Electric

Despite what GM wanted you to think when it first launched its brand new 2011 Chevrolet Volt, its four-seat extended range electric car or plug-in hybrid does consume gasoline. But it turns out that despite the protestations of dyed-in-the-wool electric vehicle advocates, the 2011 Chevrolet Volt isn’t just another gas-guzzler. According to.

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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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Want To Clean Up The Planet? Spay Your Pet, THEN Buy a Prius

Green Car Reports

Cutting carbon emissions is complex. And there are a lot of myths and misinformation out there. The effective impact of some actions--reusing your grocery bags, for instance--is relatively low. Other methods, things that many people never even consider, are considerably more effective. For instance, did you know that over its lifetime, a.

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Self-cooling observed in graphene electronics

Green Car Congress

With the first observation of thermoelectric effects at graphene contacts, University of Illinois researchers found that graphene transistors have a nanoscale cooling effect that reduces their temperature. A paper on their findings is published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. All electronics dissipate heat as a result of the electrons in the current colliding with the device material, a phenomenon called resistive heating.

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First Drive: Nissan LEAF

Green Cars News

As the 19th century French novelist Jean-Baptiste Karr once wrote "plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose" usually translated as "the more things change, the more they stay the same", the same sentiment can be levelled at the car industry today. The winds of change might be sweeping through the world’s great car makers, [.].

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LG Finishes Electric Car Battery Factory, Leads Battery War

All Cars Electric

South Korean electronics giant LG has just finished what it claims is the world’s largest lithium-ion battery plant for electric vehicle traction batteries. Capable of producing enough lithium ion batteries to put 100,000 electric cars on the road LG’s chemical devision LG Chem is keen to become the market leader for electric car.

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2012 Toyota RAV4 EV Prototype: First Drive

Green Car Reports

Just a year ago, seeing the 'RAV4, Powered by Tesla' startup greeting would have been almost unthinkable. Yet last May, Toyota and Tesla inked a deal that took the industry by surprise—and left a lot of observers scratching their heads. And nearly eleven months since that deal—and nine months since it was announced that Tesla would be.

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GE study finds 5% of worlds natural gas production wasted per year by flaring

Green Car Congress

Gas-flaring countries and trends. Click to enlarge. A newly released GE study — Flare Gas Reduction: Recent Global Trends and Policy Considerations —estimates that 5% of the world’s natural gas production is wasted by burning or “flaring” unused gas each year, despite some progress on the flaring issue. This is an amount equivalent to 30% of consumption in the European Union and 23% in the United States.

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BMW brings Brilliance to plug-in hybrid cars

Green Cars News

BMW has teamed up with its Chinese joint venture partner Brilliance China Automotive to present a concept plug-in hybrid saloon car. The vehicle is based on the long wheelbase version of the BMW 5 Series saloon car and was developed exclusively for the Chinese automobile market with series production expected to begin in 2013. It [.].

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Nissan: Electric Car Goal Only Possible With Governmental Help

All Cars Electric

President Obama’s goal of 1 million hybrid and electric vehicles on the roads of the U.S. by 2015 may sound like a tall order given the slow sales rollout of plug-in cars for the first few months of 2012, but as we’ve discovered before, it isn’t impossible. Now Nissan, makers of the 2011 Nissan Leaf have joined the debate. Its.

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Is Obama's Goal of 1 Million Plug-In Cars By 2015 Feasible?

Green Car Reports

Since 2008, Barack Obama has consistently promoted the goal of having 1 million advanced technology vehicles on U.S. roads by 2015. The number refers to plug-in vehicles that use grid power, stored in lithium-ion battery packs, to operate their electric traction motors. Regular hybrids like the Toyota Prius don't do that. The all-electric Nissan.

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EPA selects AVL to provide Integrated Battery Cycling System for initiative on automotive electrification standards

Green Car Congress

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has chosen AVL to provide a battery test system that includes vehicle-simulation capabilities that allow maneuver-based testing at the battery level as part of an initiative related to fuel economy and establishing electrification standards for hybrid and electric vehicles. The initiative is part of the EPA’s significant investments in new and emerging testing technologies, and will result in the creation of an Integrated Battery Cycling System (IB

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Zero Motorcycles in period of change with CEO and Founder departures

National Green Transportation

Over the last month electric motorcycle maker Zero Motorcycles has issued a series of announcements of dramatic change. The most recent, on April 5, announced the retirement of long-time CEO Gene Banman. Taken as a whole the. David Herron April 06, 2011.

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Electric Car Noise Generators Don't Work in the Real World

All Cars Electric

Earlier this year we heard that the a United Nations committee on noise levels in plug-in vehicles was about to mandate that all plug-in cars be made to emit artificial noises when traveling at low speed. But as we’ve illustrated in the past, we’re not entirely convinced that forcing electric cars to make a noise at low speed is really.

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Putin Test Drives Prokhorov's Russian Hybrid: Video

Green Car Reports

A three-mile, highly publicized test drive of Mikhail Prokhorov's ë-mobile (say, "yo-mobile") natural-gas hybrid car is the big car news out of Russia this week. Given Putin's previous spin in a Renault F1 car, hopping behind the wheel of the funky-looking economy car is a definite change of pace. Putin almost didn't give the Fatherland's.

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Microsoft and Toyota form strategic partnership on next-generation telematics; first roll-out on electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in 2012

Green Car Congress

Schema of the Windows Azure cloud computing platform. Source: Microsoft, David Chappell. Click to enlarge. Microsoft Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp. have formed a strategic partnership and plan to build a global platform for TMC’s next-generation telematics services using the Windows Azure cloud computing—i.e., Internet-based—platform. As part of the partnership, the two companies plan to participate in a 1 billion yen (approximately $12 million) investment in Toyota Media Service Co.,

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TGI’s waste cooking oil to fuel firm’s trucks

Green Cars News

Sustainable energy firm Convert2Green and food service company 3663 have secured a contract with restaurant chain TGI Friday’s to collect and turn waste cooking oil from around 50 branches in the UK into carbon savings. The waste oil will be collected by Convert2Green, refined into bio-diesel at its plant in Cheshire and will be used [.].

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In the Red: Each Fiat 500 Electric Car Loses Chrysler $10k

All Cars Electric

There is nothing a company CEO hates more than not making a profit on a product, but as Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne knows, it is sometimes a necessary evil in the evolution of a new technology. Speaking at Fiat S.p.A’s general meeting on Wednesday, Marchionne spoke frankly about his company’s involvement in electric cars.

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2012 Honda Civic: What Do You Want To Know About The Redesign?

Green Car Reports

The Honda Civic is one of the best-known and best-selling compact cars in the U.S. market. And it's just been entirely redesigned. For all the details, you'll have to wait until Wedneday, April 20, when the full line of 2012 Honda Civic models will be unveiled at the New York Auto Show. But we're headed for an advance preview and a chance to drive.

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EPRI Analysis estimates costs of fully developing US smart grid could reach $476B; benefits up to $2T

Green Car Congress

Total Smart Grid costs. Source: EPRI. Click to enlarge. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has released a broad assessment of the costs and benefits to modernize the US electricity system and deploy the smart grid. Factoring a wide range of new technologies, applications and consumer benefits the investment needed to implement a fully functional smart grid ranges from $338 billion to $476 billion and can result in benefits between $1.3 trillion and $2 trillion.

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Europeans battle over electric vehicle plug standards

Green Cars News

It seems that Europeans are split over plug standards for electric vehicles. According to a report in Euractiv, the French and Italians have misgivings over the German design that has been proposed as a common European standard with the report pointing to “industrial jealousy”. It was hoped that the first common standards for charging electric [.].

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2011 Nissan Leaf One Week In: Five Things We Hate

All Cars Electric

A week ago I took charge of my very own 2011 Nissan Leaf. The U.K. equivalent of the 2011 Nissan Leaf SL ordered by our own Marty Padgett last year, it includes a level 3 fast charge port and 12v solar panel as standard. But with over 560 miles now on the clock shared between two drivers and a variety of road experiences from fast-moving freeway.

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