The majority of car makers the world over think that for the next five years, electric cars will remain too expensive to stand a chance in the mass market. Their saving grace must be government subsidies. Without government money, EVs are priced out of the market. Read More >

GM has invested $5 million in the Powermat wireless charging start-up, and they want to use the technology “to charge its soon-to-be-launched Chevy Volt hybrid electric car,” Businessgreen reports. They report from the UK, so they shall be forgiven the “soon-to-be-launched” this one time only. But to charge a Chevy Volt? Read More >

We are picking up more and more signs of an impending revival  of  assumed dead fuel cell technology.

Here is another one:  The Nikkei [sub] says that the Japanese government is supporting an initiative to draw a hydrogen from a surprising source: Oil refining. And they need to be ready by 2015. Read More >

London Mayor Boris Johnson finally fulfilled his campaign promise to cut 230,000 residents out of the area where the UK capital’s congestion tax is imposed. The last £8 (US $12.40) toll imposed on motorists driving through the boroughs of Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster during business hours was collected Friday at 6pm. These areas were part of the so-called Western Extension Zone added by former Mayor Ken Livingstone, just before voters threw him out of office in 2008.

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“You have about 5 percent of the market that is green and committed to fuel efficiency,” said Mike Jackson, the chief executive of AutoNation, the largest auto retailer in the country. “But the other 95 percent will give up an extra 5 mpg in fuel economy for a better cup holder.”

Quote brought to you by the Washington Post

EU car owners will get a new kind of gasoline – whether they want it, or not. Most don’t want it. They get it anyway. While US-automakers sue to stop ethanol blends, an edict handed down from Brussels demands that Super has to contain 10 percent of ethanol. An alliance from Germany’s ADAC autoclub to Greenpeace says the new gasoline is a work of the devil, it is liable to ruin cars, and the environment. Read More >

Beijing is serious about clearing the air. According to China Daily, the city is planning to require adherence to the Euro 5 standard for all vehicles by 2012. Read More >

The AP [via The Freep] reports:

Denis Baupin, an environmental official in the mayor’s office, said Wednesday that sport utility vehicles and old diesel cars are likely to be targeted in upcoming test restrictions.

To any Parisian who drives an SUV, Baupin’s advice is: “Sell it and buy a vehicle that’s compatible with city life.

“I’m sorry, but having a sport utility vehicle in a city makes no sense,”

Five French cities are eying bans on inefficient classes of automobiles as they become “ZAPA”s, or Priority Zones for Action against Air Pollution. These areas include Paris, Lyon, Grenoble and Aix-en-Provence. France’s cities are some of the most congested and polluted in Europe, and older diesels as well as 4×4 vehicles are blamed for a disproportionate contribution to the problem. We simply hope that vintage Mustangs don’t get caught up in the Parisian guzzler ban.

“This could be Toyota’s iPod,” said UK’s Fifth Gear. The iQ is Toyota’s (some say much smarter) answer to Daimler’s Smart. But the trouble is: The iQ is only available in Japan and Europe. Its impending arrival in the U.S.A. has been announced many times. More on that later. While in Japan, I wanted to test-drive the smallest car of the world’s largest automaker. But first, there were huge obstacles to overcome.

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Good thing it’s the kind of contaminated garbage that heals the wounds of a planet and nation, yes? GM insists that contaminated oil booms used in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill cleanup wouldn’t have been recycled by anyone else and that, according to John Bradburn, manager of GM’s waste-reduction efforts

This was purely a matter of helping out. If sent to a landfill, these materials would have taken hundreds of years to begin to break down, and we didn’t want to see the spill further impact the environment. We knew we could identify a beneficial reuse of this material given our experience.

Possibly even more importantly, all that bad British Petroleum PR would have just sat there bumming people out about the impacts of oil dependence. Thank goodness GM’s PR team had the experience to break it down, clean it off and transform it into good PR about the semi-petroleum-independent Chevy Volt.
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Currently, the only commercially available plug-in on the European market is the Mitsubishi i-Miev. You can also have it as Peugeot iOn, or as Citroen C-Zero. Not much is known about their sales success. Launched in Japan in 2009, the i-Miev last month celebrated its 5000^th car rolling off the Japanese production lines. Which earned the i-Miev the title “best selling pure EV” – the numbers are that big. The numbers will soon get much bigger – if all goes according to plan. Read More >

We have covered the Governator wooing not-so-gloriously-doing BYD to come to California, well, at least with a headquarter building. We were also interested to hear that BYD “is in talks with officials in Los Angeles to supply all-electric battery buses in the city.”

The Wall Street Journal revisited old investigative reporting glory and did some thorough digging into the matter. And here is what transpired, all as per the WSJ: Read More >

Unimpressed by BYD’s aborting of the pure plug-in EV, Nissan is betting the farm on us plugging in instead of gassing up. A few days ago, Nissan officially introduced the Leaf, the world’s first mass-produced EV in the standard passenger class, seating five. It won’t totally replace the internal combustion engine, at least not at the plant where it is made. Read More >

It was supposed the car that changes the game. The BYD F3e was touted as an EV with a range of 300km (186 miles). It was supposed to have a miracle battery with a recharge-time (to 70 percent) of only ten minutes. At the same time, it promised a top speed of 150km/h (93 mph) and a 0 to 60 mph time of less than 13.5seconds. What’s less, the car was supposed to cost no more than $22,400. And the government was willing to grant generous subsidies. How can you go wrong with something like that? You can: That car will not see the light and is being aborted by its Chinese parents. Why? Read More >

The ethanol industry might have enjoyed a small popularity bump when NASCAR switched to E15 (15% ethnol blend) gas, but it’s facing one of its biggest tests yet, as the so-called “blender’s credit” draws within a month of its expiration date. And the signs aren’t looking good for the most important subsidy in the ethanol playbook. Bloomberg reports that 17 Senators from both parties are pushing to end the 45 cent-per-gallon tax credit for ethanol blenders (and 54 cent-per-gallon import duty), and they’re opposed by only 13 Senators openly pushing for renewal. Plus, they’ve got a pretty strong argument:

If the current subsidy is extended for five years, the Federal Treasury would pay oil companies at least $31 billion to use 69 billion gallons of corn ethanol that the Federal Renewable Fuels Standard already requires them to use. We cannot afford to pay industry for following the law

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