u.s. department of energy

Tesla Motors and Electric Power Research Institute join U.S. Department of Energy, automaker research teams and energy companies to accelerate the development of new energy-efficient technologies for cars and light trucks and the infrastructure needed to support them.

According to the DOE, the collaborative effort formerly known as FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership, is now U.S. DRIVE--Driving Research and Innovation for Vehicle efficiency and Energy sustainability. The goal is to beef up research and development of not only new vehicle technologies, but to also work on a broad range of energy infrastructure technologies.

"Government-industry partnerships like U.… Read more

GENEVA--Fisker Automotive plans to use its recently acquired plant in Delaware in part to build vehicles for other automakers.

The start-up automaker plans to use only one-third of an installed 300,000 units of capacity at a former General Motors plant in Wilmington, Del., for its vehicles, which will be built there in late 2012.

"We want to offer this manufacturing capacity to other OEMs," Fisker COO Bernhard Koehler told Automotive News on the sidelines of the Geneva auto show.

Fisker is spending $120 million on the Delaware plant and, within the next two years, will expand its … Read more

Students from Mississippi State University placed first in the 2010 EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge finals in San Diego Friday after designing and building a biodiesel extended-range electric vehicle (EREV).

Teams from 16 universities competed in the Year Two Finals of the three-year competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors. The competition challenges engineering students to re-engineer a GM-donated vehicle to minimize the vehicle's fuel consumption and emissions, while maintaining its utility, safety, and performance. The teams have been preparing for the final testing and inspection of the competition for the past week.

"This … Read more

For the next five days, 100 college engineering students from universities across North America will be making last-minute preparations on their eco cars before the vehicles are judged.

This is the end of the second year of the EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge, hosted at the General Motors Desert Proving Ground in Yuma, Ariz. EcoCAR is a three-year competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and GM that challenges each team to re-engineer a GM-donated vehicle using a range of alternative technologies and integrating them together to make their own unique architecture.

"The students spent two years designing … Read more

Ford Motor Co. today announced that it's expanding the range of its plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) research program Progress Energy expands its role by adding a Ford Escape PHEV to its Florida operations.

Ford and Progress Energy will work together advance the commercialization of electric vehicles under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy. Progress Energy is already road-testing Ford Escape PHEV in Raleigh, N.C. The new agreement will expand these efforts into Florida.

In Florida, Progress Energy will road-test a 2010 Escape PHEV equipped with one of the industry's first vehicle-to-electric "… Read more

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, in conjunction with the Department of Energy, this week released six maps that could help determine the location of the next big push in solar energy.

The BLM maps cover areas within the six U.S. states most suitable for solar energy generation and transmission as judged by the U.S. government: Arizona (PDF and below), California (PDF), Colorado (PDF), Nevada (PDF), New Mexico (PDF) and Utah (PDF).

"Only lands with excellent solar resources, suitable slope, proximity to roads and transmission lines or designated corridors, and containing at least 2,000 acres … Read more