Credit: Photos courtesy of Al & Ed's Autosound
The all-electric Tesla Roadster is a green car without the dinky green look (Sorry Toyota Prius).
Some audiophiles at
Al & Ed's Autosound in West Hollywood, California, decided the Tesla needed a non-dinky radio system, too.
So they've have revamped the $100,000 Roadster, refurbishing the interior and installing a new sound system. ...
Trabi photo Rick Dikeman via Wikicommons.
Ask almost any German what comes to mind when you mention the word 'Trabant' and they'll probably respond something like "East," "East German," and "clunker." But Trabants, with their smelly two-stroke engines, squat piggy bodies formed from plastic and cotton waste fiberglass, and tiny gas tanks that required lifting the hood and mixing both gas and oil together at each fill up, have gotten a 21st century electric makeover. Photo of the updated model after the jump.
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Can't We All Just Get Along?
In his new tour of the world by folding bicycle,
Bicycle Diaries, David Byrne acknowledges that few cities have blazed a bicycle path
quite like his hometown of New York. At a Barnes and Noble event last night, someone asked how the city might fix New Yorkers' aggressive attitudes towards bikers - particularly those of surly delivery truck drivers. Other talking heads present, Bicycle advocate Paul Steely White of
Transportation Alternatives and the city's bold transportation commissioner
Janette Sadik-Khan, had been describing how a continued increase in bike lanes and bikers would help shift the culture.
But the white-haired bike-rocker had another upbeat take on the likelihood that New York's famously fast and furious drivers, pedestrians and bikers could get along -- and the chances that anyone might make lifestyle changes that benefit others....
Photos: Delcio G.P. Filho and Matthew Maaskant.
Do you want more proof that encouraging car use in a city is only going to lead you to traffic hell? Take a look at Sao Paulo: the city of ridiculous car jams, where
there are more privately held helicopters than anywhere else in the world.
The thing is, not even the air has solved the traffic problem, and the
new highways that are being planned for the city won't solve it either. It seems so obvious that the right way to go is to discourage the use of cars (like
Bogota or
Curitiba did),
but now we have proof (a great treat for
World Car Free Day).
A group of cyclists have put up a test and had 18 different combinations of transport travel a distance of about 10 kilometers (over 6 miles) during rush hour. Guess what? Two of the cyclists turned out to get to destination faster than the helicopter, and all the cyclists, a runner, the bus and, ¡a skater! took less time than the car. This last one took a nerve-racking 82 minutes to cover that distance.
More details in the extended....
It all started with slow food, a preoccupation with where food comes from and how it tastes. It turned into a movement and spawned
slow design,
slow cities,
slow fashion,
slow travel and
more. We proposed
slow cars, "a radical lowering of the speed limit so that the private car can survive in an era of peak oil and global warming, simply by being smaller and slower."
Dutch designers
Jurgen Bey and Studio Makkink have gone further yet, and designed the slow car.
Harry at Mocoloco writes that it is "a vehicle design that flies in the face of conventional car design by shunning the desire for speed and instead promoting the benefits of moving at a snail's pace"
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Image from Daily Mail
On the eve of the
Frankfurt Motor Show, we present the Flying Carrot. A.k.a.the WorldFirst, it won't be at the world-famous auto show, but it will be very environmental. Built partly from vegetables and powered by chocolate, it may be the greenest car ever.
And it is expected to reach a top speed of 135mph and can accelerate from 0 to 60 in less than 2.5 seconds. It is hoped that it will reach 150mph when it hits the track at
Brands Hatch. The 250 horsepower, one-seater racing car has been built by researchers at the
University of Warwick to show people that 'green' motoring doesn't mean dull. ...
Image credit: REVA India
Reva, the Indian electric car maker marketed as the
G Wiz in the UK, announced last week that it was launching
two new electric cars - a four-seat, three-door hatchback family car , and a sporty two seater. Inevitably, when we write about electric cars, we get asked about embodied energy in batteries, and about the source that the electricity comes from. Reva are now taking measures to fix at least of of these issues - working on ensuring a second life for the batteries in their cars. ...
photo: Ford
Regardless of your opinions regarding the American auto industry, we can all agree that it's been a rough ride for American manufacturing. Nevertheless, some good news is coming from
Ford this week. The company has just finalized a deal to bring renewable energy manufacturing, and 4,000 green collar jobs, to Michigan. ...
Image credit: ibuyeco Parking Day
Parking Day has been going since 2005, and TreeHugger has always been excited about this way to temporarily reclaim space from cars and use it for the common good. Others were less impressed, calling
Parking Day Activists "enviro-nuts", and even describing them as
"so punchable". Now we'll see how the Brits take to the practice of paying for parking space, only to use it for recreation - Parking Day is coming to Britain. ...
Dear Pablo: I have read time and again that an all-electric vehicle can use as little as one dollar's worth of electricity to travel 100 miles. How can this be? Electric Power Plants are burning oill to create electricity, and oil is expensive. How do Power Plants convert oil to electricity at a rate that is five times more efficient than a
2010 Prius?
Over half of US electricity comes from coal (50.2% in 2004) while only 3% comes from oil. It is true that oil is expensive, which is why many oil-fired power plants have switched to natural gas, which produces 17.4% of our electricity. On the other hand most US automobiles are powered by gasoline which is a petroleum distillate, meaning that it is distilled from crude oil. The process of extracting and transporting foreign oil as well as processing and distributing the gasoline adds to its cost while coal is mostly extracted domestically and requires little processing.
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Image credit: REVA Electric Car Company
REVA Electric Car Company, the Indian outfit known for its affordable yet somewhat limited urban electric vehicles, is taking a step into more serious automotive territory. REVA's main vehicle, which is
marketed as the G-Wiz in the UK, has undoubtedly become somewhat of a success on the streets of London and other cities. But it has also been
trashed by the BBC's Jeremy Clarkson, and the
G-Wiz's crash test performance leaves a lot to be desired (classified by the authorities as a quadricycle in the UK, it is currently exempt from crash test regulations for cars). So it will be interesting to see what the world makes of the REVA NXR and NXG - two real electric cars that, apparently, even include a "virtual" charging device that the makers claim will mean you never get stuck without charge again - though it's unclear what that actually means. ...
Photo credit: stevendamrom @ Flickr
Getting
stuck in traffic sucks. While traffic jams have an uncomplicated cause -- too many dang cars -- the solution isn't quite so simple; there's no getting away from them completely in the foreseeable future. While we wait for
high-speed rail to come to the U.S., there's some good news that can help cut back on time wasted in traffic jams and carbon emissions. According to
a new study, cars equipped with GPS navigation systems with real-time traffic info can save American drivers a hefty four days -- and 21 percent of their cars' carbon emissions -- a year. ...
Apartment Therapy's Unpluggd shows a lovely office-in-a-steamer trunk designed by London's Timothy Oulton and sold at
Restoration Hardware (for 4 grand).
Gregory Han concludes his post with "What we'd really hope is for a stylish DIY version out there." And TreeHugger is always there to help....
Image credit: Zero Carbonista
I hardly dare even use the term "wind-powered car" any more. From the early days of
Dale Vince's prototype electric car to the day that
the "Nemesis" finally hit the road, naysayers have been complaining that it is just another flashy sports car, or that it's not really "wind-powered". Others have been cheering on from the sidelines - applauding the Nemesis team's innovation and transparency. With the Vlog about the cars' development reaching episode 11 of 6, the saga continues. Scroll on to carry on the debate, or to see the Nemesis as it is finally delivered to an impatient Dale.
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Sascha Simon is responsible for strategic planning of product management for Mercedes Benz USA. Bascially, that means that he ensures that future Mercedes products give consumers what they want how they want it while Mercedes continues to produce automobiles that embodies the company's core values. He uses on market research and trend data while working with product designers in Stuttgart, Germany and Palo Alto, California to envision a better vehicle. Treehugger had a chance to talk to him about Mercedes future of green cars, the hurdles to overcome and how their cars will perform with green technologies.
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Image:
BMW
Ahead of the Frankfurt Auto Show starting 14 September, BMW is drumming up buzz for a completely new concept car, the Vision EfficientDynamics. BMW today released a video (over the fold) promising all the sporty driving fun of the BMW M3 in a plug-in full hybrid with a completely new look.
BMW Senior Vice President Jan-Christiaan Koenders says this "demonstrates that we are planning to be a leader in sustainability, and this mostly by doing it the typical BMW way, namely with passion." But is it hype or hope for a hungry automotive industry? ...
Image credit: Audubon NC
I've never really understood the attraction of "off roading" - in fact, until I started brewing biodiesel with some Off Road Vehicle (ORV) enthusiasts, I didn't even really know what it was. I am, for the most part, a believer in personal freedom but, like Lloyd's take on
ATV's and the environment, I find it hard to see how off roading can be done without significant ecological damage (I'm sure my biodiesel buddies will disagree!). Whether or not "sustainable off roading" is even possible, it seems obvious that off roading in ecologically sensitive areas should be a no-no. The trouble is, nobody seems to have explained this to North Carolina legislators.
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We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the
if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.
on 10.29.09
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