Al said:
"Gee thanks TH, for your wonderful censorship. That's 5 comment's I've left now over a period of about a month (on 5 different stories), and NONE g..." [read]
stevejust said:
"I really didn't know it was possible to hate someone more the Bob Novak. But Bob Novak has shown me it is actually possible to hate him more than ..." [read]
Jeremy said:
"I haven't been able to find a route in this city where selecting this option gives a result any different from the avoid highways checkbox. I also ..." [read]
surfndano said:
"Imagine, for a second, that he didn't have enough free flier miles......." [read]
P said:
"I just filled up my Prius today, and a man stopped me and teased me about how Prii don't get the 52-60 advertised. My response: 1)mine does 2)his c..." [read]
Pays to live green said:
"This is going to be a great addition for Google Maps. Hopefully this will encourage people to walk or use bikes more often as they can now find th..." [read]
Infrastructure & Standards for Plug-In Vehicles
While making an infrastructure to charge plug-in vehicles (plug-in hybrids and battery electric cars) is a lot easier than making an infrastructure for hydrogen-powered vehicles (like the Honda FCX Clarity), it still requires some planning and coordination. You don't want each player to create its own standard that isn't compatible with the others, making it impossible for electric car owners to plug in their cars for a charge or to use advanced features.
That's why GM, along with the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and 30+ electric utilities from 37 US states and from Canada have formed a coalition to address these issues.
Got directions but want to walk the distance instead of driving? Well, we’re glad to see that Google Maps has now added a new walking option for directions, thanks to popular demand. Similar to getting driving directions, after entering your origin and destination, click “Walking” at the top left panel. You can see an example of this in action here. You can also drag the purple line around if you want to go by another specific route. Done, and done. (But maybe they will add a bicycling option soon.)
Google's RechargeIT Invests $2.75 Million
Google's philanthropic arm, via its RechargeIT program, has just bet $2.75 million on two companies trying to make plug-in hybrids and electric cars a reality: Aptera Motors, maker of the three-wheeled two-seater Typ-1 (we wrote about their prototype here), and ActaCell, a spinoff from the University of Texas at Austin that is working on lithium-ion battery technology with "substantially longer cycle life at low cost while maintaining safety". We don't know what share of the $2.75 went to which company, but we know that ActaCell raised a total of $5.8 million in a recent Series A round, including Google's money.
What is striking about the projects are the diversity of ideas how to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Kitakyushu is an industrial city in south western Japan that used to be known as a very polluted place to live. That started to change in the late 1970s when a group of housewives formed an environmental group and lobbied the city to combat pollution from the factories. Amazing what a bunch of dedicated people can do sometimes.
Driving The Highway Budget Myth: The "Last Bastion Of Socialism In America"
For over 5 decades, US transportation projects have been budgeted based on a pair of myths: that public transit funding is an increasing drain on Federal and state highway budgets; and, a corollary, that fuel taxes cover the costs of highways and bridges. These mistaken beliefs feed hostility toward bicyclists and pedestrians who transgress on 'something we drivers pay for.' (Never mind that bicyclists and pedestrians often drive cars and trucks.) Via::Streetsblog, Highway Funding: The Last Bastion of Socialism in America . AND Delucchi Study Finds That U.S. Motorists Do Not Pay Their Way
There are no hard data yet, but lots more people are out on bikes this summer, and lots more novice cyclists are ending up in hospital. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Cycling advocates say this could be the Summer of Splat on local roads. Take the area's dearth of bike paths, add aggressive Atlanta motorists, then toss in bikers who haven't been on the roads for decades. Presto — the buns are busting all over town. "We're seeing more people getting hit" by cars, said Dr. John Xerogeanes, chief of sports medicine at Emory's Orthopedic and Spine Center. "There are people crashing and people having trouble because they're starting to ride their bike in the city."
The always useful Bike Commute Tips Blog has some excellent suggestions for introducing yourself to a bicycle:
If I had a nickel for every prospective parent I know who changed their lifestyle for the better when they knew they were expecting I’d be a wealthy man indeed. But they just may be a bit late to the party. No pun intended.
And that’s because a controversial idea, called epigenetics, indicates those late nights in smoke filled rooms, that stress filled entry level job, or that apartment you rented next to that major, pollution-spewing roadway when you were young and broke may just be exacting their toll on the DNA of your child today.
In 1921 Edmund Rumpler wowed the Berlin Auto Show with the Teardrop. The engine components were enclosed in a tub underneath, and from the top it had a teardrop shape. The public thought it was ugly, it was hard to steer, there was no trunk space and it evidently was "outrageously expensive." Thinking it looked futuristic, Fritz Lang bought then at deep discount and blew them all up in his movie Metropolis.
In 1979, Volkswagen took one of the two remaining cars and put it in its wind tunnel. They found that it had a drag coefficent (CD value) of only 0.28, better than any car on the market at the time. Today it is still better than most of the cars on the market. ::Club of Pioneers
Honda OSM Concept: Such a Tease!
Honda has unveiled the OSM (Open Study Model) roadster concept car at the British International Motor Show, and it claims that it is a green "low emission" prototype. But Honda is playing it very close to the vest, so that's all we know.
Is it hybrid? Plug-in hybrid? Fully electric (maybe they liked Tesla Motors' strategy of introducing electric cars upmarket first)? Your guess is as good as ours. You can read the press release if you are curious, but it's not that interesting without details on the drivetrain (we also want details on the drivetrain of Honda's upcoming hybrid). In the meantime, enjoy the photos (more below)....
50 Million More Battery Units per Month
With the progressive electrification of transportation (from hybrids to plug-in hybrids to electric cars), one thing the world will need more of is batteries. Matsushita, who owns the Panasonic brand and has a partnership with Toyota for the development of automotive technologies, has decided to invest 100 billion Yen ($951 million) into a new litium-ion manufacturing plant in Osaka. It will be one of the biggest in the world, allowing the company to triple its output an increase of 50 million battery units per month.
Thankfully, most modern lithium-ion batteries used in vehicles are non-toxic and recyclable, and over the life of a car, they can help save enormous quantities of non-renewable fossil fuels and reduce smog-forming emissions substantially. Not perfect, but better than what we have now....
Honey, Guess What I Just Bought on eBay!
There's a classic eBay scam that goes something like this: You sell the box, or the manual of something that is very valuable or in high-demand, and you do it in such a way that it is possible to mistake it for the real thing. A good way to add credibility is to have a very high starting price. We've seen this with Playstation 3 boxes and iPhone boxes being sold for the price of the real thing, and now we have this beautiful 1997 EV1 electric car... manual on sale for $100,000.
The seller is obviously hoping that a very rich person will forget to put on his glasses and make a bid. While it's good to see that there's enough demand for electric cars (see 17 Electric Cars that You Must Know About) for this to happen, we hope that nobody will be fooled. Here's the eBay Auction for the EV1 Manual. Via eBay scam of the day: EV1 owner's manual for $100,000...
IPCC Scientist Encourages Video Conferencing
We know that telecommuting is green, and we also know that emissions from the airline industry are growing. At the same time, high fuel prices are prompting the airlines to raise ticket prices, charge for checked bags, cut back on flights, and in any number of other ways make flying even less pleasant. It was with all this in mind that, "at a meeting in the UK this past week, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, a climate scientist with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), strongly urged businesses to cut employee travel, and to fill the void with video conferencing."...
Former Tesla CEO Gets his Roadster
We recently reported that Tesla Roadsters had started shipping, and now we learn that Martin Eberhard, co-founder and former CEO of Tesla Motors, just got his electric Roadster. He blogged about the experience and posted a few photos (more below). It seems to have been an almost religious experience for him:
"The sun had just come over the trees, and its distinct orange stripes lit up the yard. The matching orange panels in the seats screamed Sit Here! Drive me, Baby! Who am I to refuse such an offer?"
100% Powered by the Sun
Trivia: Martin's house is equipped with a 5.2kW solar panel system. This means that he'll be driving around on the sun's power, with some left over to power his house....
School bus art by 4ever30something
In Rochester, New York, a lot of kids take public transit to school; the transit authority even organized its routes and service times to accommodate them, which seems logical enough. But it is not logical to the Federal Transit Administration; according to the Campaign for America's Future:
The FTA's regional administrator, Brigid Hynes-Cherin, said the authority's actions violated regulations governing federal mass transit funding because even though the routes could be used by general public, they weren't primarily for the general public. Plus, she added—and here is where we get to the real nub of the issue—public bus systems can't use federal money to provide services that compete with, or crowd out, private sector bus companies.
...
When Walk Score recently released their ranking of the ten most walkable U.S. cities there was no doubt that folks in places like San Francisco, Boston and New York City could look with satisfaction upon their city as a paradise for bipedalism. But when we took a look at the rankings it became clear that there was quite a spread between some of the most and least friendly areas for walking in which to live. In fact, it’s not so improbable to imagine that some citizens of major U.S. cities often feel like the person pictured here when compared to their counterparts in those where walking is a way of life.
But the question is, does your city makes the list of our least walkable U.S. cities?
Following is the list, created by Walk Score, of the least walkable major cities in the U.S.
...
The Hy-Bird may be an interesting concept aircraft, but I wonder if placing what looks to be an out-of-scale illustration of the plane over what looks to be Bryce Canyon might be coming in a bit too high.
photo: Trina Solar
I feel a bit weird posting on this topic, considering the product launch/test flight is well over a year away and so much could change between now and the end of 2009, but since Trina Solar has announced that it will be supplying nearly 300 solar PV cells for LISA Airplanes' Hy-Bird aircraft, a progress report is warranted. No, that’s not a typo. It’s called the Hy-Bird.
...
London Shells Out Money to Promote Cycling
As part of the $975 million USD London plans to spend on walking and cycling programs over the next decade, London Mayor Boris Johnson has launched the 'Summer of Cycling' with the simple but important aim of getting more Londoners to ride their bikes. A press release announced that:
The Mayor and Transport for London (TfL) will be promoting cycling throughout the coming months, through innovative events and the ongoing “You’re better off by bike” campaign. The aims of this campaign are to encourage existing cyclists to use their bikes more regularly, and promote cycling to the estimated 1.1 million Londoners who have access to bikes but don’t use them.
Two weeks before the start of the Olympics, Beijing has debuted what will be one of the Games most significant legacies, bigger than all the impressive architecture and the beautification campaigns: three new subways that expand the city's track length by twenty five percent.
As US urban and commuter rail is just barely chugging along, the new lines are stand-outs: fast, gorgeous and frequent, arriving every two and a half minutes at rush hour -- things that cannot easily be said about most American subways. The ticket price hasn't gone up either: it's still 2 RMB or about 30 cents (the new airport line costs about $3.50 per ride).
Just how important these new lines are to this crowded, sprawling city, often plagued by smog and snarling traffic, was made clear today, when a crush of passengers caused a rare shut-down on an older line. But the skies were all blue and white....
Image Credit: Rebecca Cook, Reuters
McCain Takes a Look at the Chevy Volt
Fresh off his proposal for a $300 million government-sponsored prize for the development of better battery technology, presidential candidate John McCain, along with "GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner and other company executives. . .examined and got into a model of a Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid-electric car GM says it plans to have on the market by 2010." During the visit Senator McCain tried to burnish his green and national security credentials by saying that "the key, integral, vital part of our ability to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil will be directly related to that sign over there," referring to the Chevy Volt. There's much to dislike about the Senator, but he does understand the importance of electrifying our transportation system (too bad he wants to power it with nuclear plants)....
This is the first in a series of video blog posts about biking across America to raise awareness about how to stop global warming.
Hi there. We're Carson and Eric, friends and transportation consultants in Boston, where we share an office adorned by a large pirate flag. We've taken some shorter trips (Mount Washington, Death Valley, etc.), but when Carson, the endurance athlete, came up with the idea of biking across America, Eric, the planner, figured it was a good excuse for a much bigger adventure. The plan: Carson will bike the whole distance, while Eric -- who will bike some of the way -- provides support, all in the name of raising awareness about how to reduce our carbon footprint. With the nod from our bosses, and in partnership with WE ADD UP, we set out on a sunny Saturday morning from Boston, joined by many of our friends and colleagues at a cheery send-off....
The Bombardier CSeries: Marketed as a "green jet" (image from Wikipedia).
Life hasn't been easy for the airlines lately. As fuel prices wreak havoc with the industry's bottom line, carriers have responded by dumping older, less efficient jets, lowering flying speeds and carrying less weight - not to mention charging for checked bags.
This week, however, the airlines got a bit of good news when Canadian conglomerate Bombardier announced its intention to release the CSeries in 2013, a passenger jet which it claims will use 20% less fuel than its nearest competitor....
A few months ago we wrote about Ben Nelson's DIY electric motorcycle. It's really a cool bike, especially if you consider that it gets equivalent of 321 miles per gallon and only cost about $2k total. Ben has made two videos about it, the first one (above) talks about how he turned the old Kawasaki into an electric motorcycle and what his experience has been. The second video (below) is kind of a candid camera moment and shows Ben's neighbor's reaction to seeing the electric motorcycle for the first time. Keep up the good work, Ben, and same to all the other ingenious DIYers out there. Via DIY Electric Motorcycle Kicks Butt, Gets 300 eMPG...
California is 35x Less Populous than China
Truly an amazing statistic, via Wired. According to the California Energy Commission, the state with its 37 million people uses more gasoline and diesel than any other country on Earth except the US as a whole. That's more than India with its 1.1 billion people. More than China with its 1.3 billion (California is 2.8% of China's pop.). So while demand has been increasing in China and everybody's talking about that, they forget to look at absolute numbers: 20 billion gallon of gasoline and diesel are used each year in California, 6.7 billion gallons more than in 1988.
Most of that Energy is Wasted
But what's really bad about that is that when you look at efficiency numbers (see the chart here), only about 20% of the energy contained in those gallons of fossil fuels are actually doing useful work. About 80% of their energy is simply wasted as heat. That has to change. ...
Introducing the Ultimate Aero Electric Car
Shelby SuperCars makes the kind of cars that have over a 1,000 hp and can reach 250 mph. Not what you'd immediately associate with "low emissions" and "powered by clean energy", but the times they are a-changin'. Shelby's next hyper-fast car will be an electric vehicle.
Based on the SCC Aero (pictured above), the Ultimate Aero EV should break electric car speed records (as as we've seen in our overview of 17 electric cars, some of them are speed demons). "Powered by a 500 horsepower electric motor, the Ultimate Aero EV will have true supercar performance. Additionally, SSC is exploring the potential of a twin 500 horsepower electric power plant producing 1,000 horsepower in a 2 or 4 wheel drive configuration." We bet the version with 2 motors can turn you into jelly just with the acceleration G force....
Not too long ago our very own Lloyd Alter pointed out that walking matters. And that a walkable community promotes better health, a reduction in greenhouse gases, a variety of transportation options, increased social capital and stronger local businesses. And now Walk Score, devoted to helping you find more walkable places to live based on a patented algorithm that enables them to compute a walkability score based on the distance to a wide range of shops, necessities and attractions has come out with the top ten most walkable cities in which to live.
But is yours among them?
...
Electric Cars and Cell Phones
Project Better Place, the initiative founded by entrepreneur Shai Agassi to bring electric cars and charging infrastructure to countries around the world, has already partnered with several countries, including Israel and Denmark. The idea is to make electric cars sell like cell phones, and the plan works as follows: "purchasers get subsidized hardware — the car — and pay a monthly fee for expected mileage, like minutes on a cellphone plan, eliminating concerns about the fluctuating price of gasoline." Renault and Nissan are working on developing the electric cars, and Agassi's firm is developing the batteries and infrastructure.
...
Naturalkinds on Flickr
Ten years ago I was working on a condo in downtown Toronto when one of my clients had his expensive bike stolen out of the garage. As I handed over the security tapes the cop said "oh, it will turn up at Igor's in a day or two."
Ten years ago, the stretch of Toronto's Queen Street where Igor had his operation was grotty and not very pleasant. Now the schmatta shop has become a bookstore and the junk store has become a high end fish and chips resto and the entire block has been upgraded to Toronto Trendy.
Except for Igor. I have often been critical of Toronto's love/hate relationship with bicycles and the Police department's lack of interest in keeping bike lanes clear or finding stolen bikes, but they do have a lot of bigger fish to fry. However, they finally got around to cleaning up this last little eyesore.
But is it cynical of me to suggest that closing down Igor, an open secret forever, has more to do with real estate values and getting rid of a noxious use than it does with concern about bikes? ::BikingToronto...
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the weekly archive if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.
TreeHugger breaks it down for you in a series of in depth how-to articles that will help you green your life. No time like the present!
![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.treehugger.com/nav-commenters.gif)
Honda OSM Concept: Such a Tease!
Honda has unveiled the OSM (Open Study Model) roadster concept car at the British International Motor Show, and it claims that it is a green "low emission" prototype. But Honda is playing it very close to the vest, so that's all we know.
Is it hybrid? Plug-in hybrid? Fully electric (maybe they liked 
50 Million More Battery Units per Month
With the progressive electrification of transportation (from 
Honey, Guess What I Just Bought on eBay!
There's a classic eBay scam that goes something like this: You sell the box, or the manual of something that is very valuable or in high-demand, and you do it in such a way that it is possible to mistake it for the real thing. A good way to add credibility is to have a very high starting price. We've seen this with Playstation 3 boxes and iPhone boxes being sold for the price of the real thing, and now we have this beautiful 1997 EV1 electric car... manual on sale for $100,000.
The seller is obviously hoping that a very rich person will forget to put on his glasses and make a bid. While it's good to see that there's enough demand for electric cars (see 
IPCC Scientist Encourages Video Conferencing
We know that 
The X-Prize for Aviation
The 
Former Tesla CEO Gets his Roadster
We recently reported that 
School bus art by 
When 
The Hy-Bird may be an interesting concept aircraft, but I wonder if placing what looks to be an out-of-scale illustration of the plane over what looks to be Bryce Canyon might be coming in a bit too high.
photo: Trina Solar
I feel a bit weird posting on this topic, considering the product launch/test flight is well over a year away and so much could change between now and the end of 2009, but since 
London Shells Out Money to Promote Cycling
As part of the 
Two weeks before the start of the Olympics, Beijing has debuted what will be one of the Games most significant legacies, bigger than all the impressive architecture and the beautification campaigns: 
Image Credit: Rebecca Cook, Reuters
McCain Takes a Look at the Chevy Volt
Fresh off his 
The Bombardier CSeries: Marketed as a "green jet" (image from 
California is 35x Less Populous than China
Truly an amazing statistic, 
Introducing the Ultimate Aero Electric Car
Shelby SuperCars makes the kind of cars that have over a 1,000 hp and can reach 250 mph. Not what you'd immediately associate with "low emissions" and "powered by clean energy", but the times they are a-changin'. Shelby's next hyper-fast car will be an electric vehicle.
Based on the SCC Aero (pictured above), the Ultimate Aero EV should break electric car speed records (as as we've seen in our 
Not too long ago our very own Lloyd Alter pointed out that walking matters. And that a walkable community promotes better health, a reduction in greenhouse gases, a variety of transportation options, increased social capital and stronger local businesses. And now Walk Score, devoted to helping you find more walkable places to live based on a patented algorithm that enables them to compute a walkability score based on the distance to a wide range of shops, necessities and attractions has come out with the top ten most walkable cities in which to live.
But is yours among them?
...
Electric Cars and Cell Phones
Project Better Place, the initiative founded by entrepreneur Shai Agassi to bring electric cars and charging infrastructure to countries around the world, has already partnered with several countries, 
