July 2008

With all the hullaballoo about tailpipe emissions, carbon gases, and miles per gallon, the materials used in automotive interiors have been getting passed by. Not anymore, thanks to a report released at HealthyCar.org, which ranks the toxic chemicals in more than 200 models built from 2006-2009.

The report was reserarched by the non-profit Ecology Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and also includes toxic test results for children’s car seats. The test focused on bromine, chlorine, lead, and heavy metals.

All three versions of the U.S. Smart ForTwo made the top ten least-toxic cars list, but the number one cleanest interior honors went to the Acura RDX, an SUV. The most toxic interior belonged to the Mitsubishi Eclipse Spider GT, but the other nine slots were evenly divided among a variety of car makers, including VW, Suzuki, and Lincoln. Here’s the rest of the top and bottom ten, from HealthyCar.org:

Us Portlanders who follow these things knew this was coming, but it’s still exciting when it actually happens. Portland General Electric officially unveiled its first shiny, new curbside charging station, one of several to be installed over the next couple of months in Portland and Salem.

PGE partnered with local company Shorepower Technologies to build the charging stations, which for now offer free fill-ups to EVs and plug-in hybrids, like the Toyota Prius that happened to be in town this week for a green conference at the art museum.

The chargers have a 220-volt plug tucked inside a nozzle like you’d find at a gasoline filling station, earning the designers points for cleverness. Though there are fewer than 300 electric vehicles registered in Oregon, there are nearly 30,000 regular Priuses. PGE and its partners take Portland’s Prius love to mean that we’re likely to see a surge in EVs and PHEVs in the next decade, and they want to be ready with the infrastructure when it happens.

We were, after all, ranked third in a national listing of “greenest” drivers, after Seattle and Burlington, Vermont. Not to rub it in or anything.

Plug-In Supply in Petaluma, California, is selling plug-in conversion kits for the Toyota Prius for the low, low price of $4,995. How can they sell it so cheap? First, that’s the price of the kit only, no shipping or installation included; second, they’re using CalCars Open Source Prius+ Technology as the basis of the conversion.

For you do-it-yourselfers and engineers out there, the kit includes lead-acid batteries and the box to hold them, charger, and wire harness. There’s also a switch you can flip to operate your Prius on battery power up to 52 mph — 10 mph higher than an unmodfied Prius. The converted PHEV can then run 10-15 miles on electricity before the gasoline engine kicks in, giving you 100+ mpg. Plug-In Supply even designed the kit to be upgraded to lithium-iron-phosphate batteries for longer range, when they become available.

There are currently only a handful of dealers where you can buy the kit and lug it home, but Plug-In Supply is looking for more. Those nine dealers already on board stretch from California to Florida and New Jersey, though, so you might be able to find one not too far from home.

It had to happen sometime, but did anyone think it would be so soon? Jet Black Tesla #6 was involved in a fender-bender in San Francisco, with its nose under a Mercedes-Benz and it’s rear snuggled up to a Toyota Camry. The company thinks the car is repairable, according to Darryl Siry, Tesla’s marketing VP.

Read all about it, and see the pics taken at the scene 10 minutes after the accident, on Wired’s blog.

Automakers have dreamed up a new all-green event to coincide with the wildly popular Woodward Dream Cruise. They call it NextCruise, and it will debut in Pleasant Ridge, Michigan, with a public preview Friday, August 15 and activities Saturday, August 16.

Nine automakers have signed up — General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and Volkswagen — plus Bridgestone and the the IndyCar and American Le Mans racing series. All the participants aim to prove that green technology is clean, comfy, and cruise-worthy with displays and free 15-minute test drives.

Hybrids and clean diesels will make up the bulk of the event, in contrast to the cars rolling along Woodward Avenue at the14th annual Woodward Dream Cruise. Classic and muscle cars both pristine and hot-rodded will cruise from Ferndale, Michigan, to Pontiac in one of the largest vintage car cruises in the country. If anybody needs to be convinced of the fun to be had in low-emissions vehicles, it’s these guys.

Now that Mini is going electric, everybody wants a piece of the action. Smart has a test EV running around in Europe right now, and while Tata has long had plans to introduce an electric car, they’re going ahead with a diesel this year.

The electric Smart ForTwo, known as the Smart ed, has a 41-hp electric motor and sodium-nickel-chloride batteries. It gets about 70 miles per charge, and has a maximum speed of 70 mph, which makes it a reasonable commuter EV, even if your commute involves highways. Price and market haven’t been announced, but they do expect it to go on sale in 2010. Cross your fingers that it comes your way — and you can afford it.

While we may have to wait a while for the EV version of the Tata Nano, the diesel version will hit the Indian market in October. The hatchback will go a rocking 50 mph from its little 33-hp, 2-cylinder diesel engine, but it gets 52 mpg city, 61 highway. The added efficiency will drive up the regular Nano’s price of $2,500 to about $4,200.

Say you take the plunge and buy an electric vehicle, be it a neighborhood EV like the Zap Xebra or a supercar like the Tesla Roadster. You tool around all day, and you plug your car in at night to recharge. It only takes a couple hours to fully top up the batteries, though, even when they’re nearly depleted. Soon, you and your electric car can put those idle cycles to work while you sleep.

The Rocky Mountain Institute has published its first “Solutions” journal, which is available as a PDF. In it, they discuss the research conducted by RMI on vehicle-to-grid technology. Electric cars, with their built-in, onboard electricity storage devices (batteries, to you and me) can smooth out the power flow and provide emergency backup power:

The real benefit of electric vehicles is that they bring a new level of stability and control to the grid—including giving power back when it’s needed most (in blackouts or at times of peak demand). By some estimates, a battery-electric vehicle, with about 40 kilowatt-hours of usable energy, could power an entire residential block for over an hour if necessary.

During the 17 years that RMI conducted its V2G research, the grid in the U.S. became robust enough to handle this kind of power exchange. But RMI went further and imagined what they call a “smart grid” that can communicate with homeowners about, say, when electricity is in high demand and therefore more expensive.

There are also serious benefits, both economic and ecological, to getting more solar and wind power onto a smart grid — the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions alone would be significant. To see how all this plays out in the real world, keep an eye on the pilot project in Boulder, Colorado.

MyGallons.com promises that users can buy gas at today’s price and fill up in the future. Once the service is completely up and running (right now, you can reserve an account but not yet use it), users create an account, receive a MyGallons card, and check the web site for the current price of gas. You’ll be able to click a button to prepay for as many gallons of gas as you like.

The prices quoted on MyGallons are all regular unleaded. If you fill up with premium or diesel, the company will adjust your balance to account for that. If you’re out of town and the price of a gallon of gas is significantly lower — or higher — than your hometown price, MyGallons will adjust for that, too.

A program like MyGallons is designed to hopefully save you money — not gas. Having a prepaid fuel-only card will not improve your fuel economy. You may in fact get worse mileage out of your car if you drive like you know you paid less for that tank of gas.

Something to keep in mind: Tara Baukus Mello, lead analyst for the NADA Guides, told me in an interview that they don’t expect gas prices to rise any more this year, and they may even drop a little. Not a lot, but a little. With the price of gas in such flux, I’d check my crystal ball twice before prepaying for gas.

Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn says that Nissan has joined forces with the Tennesee Valley Authority to promote zero-emissions vehicles, including EVs. The collaborators expect to have a full-scale electric vehicle project in place by 2011.

Ghosn has previously committed Nissan to introducing zero-emissions cars of one kind or another in the U.S. by 2010 and globally by 2012. The company has made similar deals with Isreal, Denmark, and Portugal as part of its zero-emissions plan. TVA is the largest public power supplier in the U.S., and it seems to be eager to usher in the use of EVs, especially if they can charge overnight during inexpensive off-peak hours.

As a side note, Nissan will be shifting production from trucks like the Titan and Frontier to smaller, more fuel-efficient four-cylinder cars. Sound familiar, Ford? Of course it does. Nissan has a 30-day supply of passenger cars available right now, but a 6-month supply of pickups. They’re aiming to get that balance shifted ASAP.

After a disastrous second quarter, Ford announced that they’re going to build fewer trucks and SUVs and import six small cars that the company’s been selling in Europe. Consumers, and the dealers who can’t move SUVs off their lots, are chomping at the bit to get these more fuel-efficient vehicles.

The Ford Focus and Fiesta sedans and hatchbacks currently on the streets of Paris and London will be available in the U.S. in 2009-2010. At the same time, three truck plants — two in the U.S. and one in Mexico — will switch over to building the small cars that are currently in such short supply. I can’t help but think that a little bit of foresight on Ford’s part could have saved them from their worst quarter ever, which just ended with a total loss of $8.7 billion.

If we’re lucky, we Americans will get the latest Fiesta, the ECOnetic, which debuted in London July 22. It gets the best fuel economy in the company at 3.7 l/100 km, which on this side of the pond is an amazing 63.5 mpg. It also has the lowest CO2 output in its class, at 98g/km, yet it still has a top speed of 110 mph.

The government released its latest fuel economy numbers, and one company was clearly at the head of the class. Telsa Motors, builders of the all-electric Roadster, rated a corporation-wide fuel economy of 244 mpg. The federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard is currently 27.5, so Tesla left that figure in the dust.

2008 models across the board, though, only rated 26.8. In 2007, the overall rating was 26.6, so that’s not a big improvement.

Analysts say the feds need to figure out a more fair way of comparing alternative-fuel vehicles to their conventional, gasoline-powered counterparts. The numbers are pretty revealing as they are, though. Handicapping EVs and other vehicles running on more efficient fuels to make the combustion engine look better seems misleading.

Tesla isn’t worried, obviously. They plan on selling their surplus CAFE credits as soon as they’re allowed to trade them with lower-scoring auto manufactuers.

In other Tesla news, the production line is cranking out Roadsters, after a fashion. There are 27 being assembled as of July 12, with a goal of 100 a month being produced by December of this year. The company has also opened its second store, this one in the San Francisco Bay area, with another four to come in the near future.

Image courtesy of Tesla (and the car is a different color! Not red!).