Hybrids and green

ANNAPOLIS, Md.--Hybrid cars may be on every environmentalist-cum-trend setter's hot list, but their surging popularity is raising alarms among the blind and their advocates, who fear the near-silent vehicles could endanger lives.

In recent months, the National Federation of the Blind has launched what is becoming an international lobbying campaign for legislation that encourages--or flat-out requires--automakers to install noisemaking technology to address those potential perils.

Top NFB leaders focused their efforts Tuesday on this quaint state capital on the Chesapeake Bay, where legislation creating a state "Quiet Vehicles and Pedestrian Safety Task Force" is pending. If … Read more

If you've got a fancy job in the Bay Area, you're probably going to get the sales call from Sass Somekh.

Somekh, the former president of equipment maker Novellus and an alum of Applied Materials, has started OurPower.org as a way to promote plug-in hybrid conversions. Converting a regular Prius to a plug-in isn't cheap. The price runs about $10,000. Even if gas rises to $4 a gallon, it would still take nearly 100,000 miles of driving before you broke even. (OurPower.org is working with A123 Systems, the lithium-ion battery maker, to perform … Read more

At last week's Systems, Cities, and Sustainable Mobility summit in Pasadena, Calif., Raul-David Poblano of MIT announced that the RoboScooter is moving toward commercial production. The RoboScooter, developed by the MIT Media Laboratory, Sanyang Motors, and Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute, is an electric scooter designed for cities. The goal of the program is to provide clean transportation for congested urban areas. RoboScooters would sit in charging racks at key points in cities. Users could swipe a credit card, get a scooter, and ride it across town, bringing it to another rack. Once the RoboScooter is put back … Read more

INDIAN WELLS, Calif.--Tesla Motors is contemplating selling the drivetrains and software components necessary to build electric cars to other companies.

The company will probably come out with an announcement on this initiative in the second quarter of this year, and parts and software from Tesla could start shipping to other carmakers by 2010 or earlier, said Tesla Chairman Elon Musk during an interview at the Clean Tech Investor Summit taking place this week in Indian Wells, near Palm Springs. Of course, any third-party deals will depend on Tesla's success in getting its own cars on the road. The … Read more

On one hand, we've heard proponents tout the benefits of biodiesel, and seen lines of diesel cars at a local biodiesel station. On the other, we've heard manufacturers of diesel cars, such as Mercedes-Benz, say that because of the unregulated nature of biodiesel, using anything greater than B5 (five percent biodiesel/95 percent petroleum diesel) will void the vehicle's warranty. Mercedes-Benz thinks that if you buy something, such as Uncle Frank's own biodiesel blend, impurities in the fuel could clog the injectors. Paradigm Sensors is working on a technological solution to this problem and announced the … Read more

If Fred Flintstone were somehow transported forward from the stone age, he probably wouldn't know what to make of our internal combustion engines, direct injection, variable-valve timing, fuel-cells, and plug-in electric hybrids. He might however, feel at home in the Imagine Neighborhood Electric Vehicle. Designed by the aptly-named HumanCar. The Imagine is described by its creators as a "human-electric hybrid," meaning that it can be powered either by its two onboard electric motors or by "variable human power input" (i.e. pedaling). The four-passenger Imagine has an exoskeletal safety cage chassis and comes with a … Read more

Many in the auto industry are touting ethanol as the solution to the challenge of post-petroleum transportation. Major carmakers advertise many new cars can run on E85--a mixture of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline--and they trumpet the fuels environmental benefits relative to gasoline. But the ethanol story is not as straightforward as it sounds. Aside from the lack of infrastructure--only around 1,400 out of 170,000 U.S. filling stations have ethanol available--the production of ethanol from corn has drawn criticism for its cost (in terms of food-stocks and land usage) and the relative inefficiency of the … Read more

When you think of the words "hydrogen highway," your mind tends to conjure up images of silent cars whizzing down the road in an environmentally friendly manner.

You don't think about trying to squeeze into a seat between a 300-pound man and a woman with 18 grocery bags. But this scenario might be more realistic.

CalStart, an alternative-transportation advocacy group, has signed five contracts with bus companies to develop and study fuel cells, as well as other components for making hydrogen buses. The $24 million project is partly underwritten by federal grants.

The SunLine Transit Agency in … Read more

The engineers at Tesla Motors have designed a new single-speed transmission for its sports car that will let it hit the promised zero to 60 mph in four seconds.

The transmission won't come out on the first Tesla Roadsters coming off the line, the company said in a press release. Those early production cars will have a two-speed transmission that will only let the car get to 60 mph in 5.7 seconds. Problems with the transmission were part of the reason the company delayed the cars from the middle of last year until now. Some modifications to the … Read more