You’ve seen pictures of the Chevy Volt — that thing has been unavoidable for nearly two years now. And it’s always shown in that distinctive space-age silver with a slight greenish sheen. It turns out that paint color is nameless, and Chevy wants you to come up with something clever.

The prize, should your clever paint name win, is to test drive a pre-production Chevy Volt in Los Angeles. Use your coffee breaks to come up with good ideas, then submit them by November 4. Three finalists will be announced on November 16, and the good people of the Internets will vote for the winner, who will be announced on December 1.

The Mercedes BlueZERO E-CELL PLUS inches ever closer to the real world, according to the company’s latest press release. The concept appeared at the 2009 Detroit Auto Show as the electric-only BlueZERO E-CELL; engineers have been working on an extended-range version ever since.

The E-CELL PLUS combines a bank of lithium ion batteries and a gasoline-powered generator to extend the car’s range to about 375 miles. It can travel about 60 miles on electric power alone, where the electric-only E-CELL can go about 120 miles before needing a recharge.

The company said that in addition to its range of electric vehicles, it will produce a small batch of fuel cell vehicles in 2009. A small batch of the battery-only vehicles will follow in 2010. No word on when any of these cars might hit showrooms, or how much they might cost.

Image of the BlueZERO E-CELL PLUS courtesy of Daimler AG.

The New York Times Wheels blog gave the PHEV MP3’s specs:

• 125-cc gasoline engine
• lithium-ion batteries
• 140 mpg estimate
• $10,000 or so
• available Q1 2010

Piaggio CEO Paolo Timoni told FoxNews.com that the MP3 will have a 125 cc engine and an electric motor (size unspecified) that can be charged at a standard 110v outlet. It will also have regenerative braking capabilities and “several adjustable hybrid modes.” FoxNews.com says to expect the price to be in the neighborhood of the current cream of the MP3 crop, just under $10,000.

Buyers of plug-in hybrid vehicles will receive a $2500 tax credit, plus $417 per kilowatt hour for batteries greater than 4 kwh. This makes the Chevy Volt $7500 cheaper, as GM’s Volt blog was happy to point out. The credit will apply fully to the first 250,000 PHEVs sold, then will be phased out over the next year’s worth of sales after than landmark number is reached. (See Section 205 on page 186 of the bill.)

The bill also extends the 30% clean-burning fuel property tax credit to electricity, and moves the deadline for taking the credit out a year to December 2010. (See Section 207 on page 197 of the bill.)

Since that information, while useful, was dry as sand, here’s  video of a souped up Smart ForTwo beating the pants off a Ferrari in the quarter-mile (38 seconds):

GM chair Bob Lutz told Automotive News Europe that the production Volt will be the “next generation global compact architecture.” For those who don’t speak Auto Industry as a first language, that means the U.S. version of the Volt will use many of the same underpinnings as GM’s upcoming world-market offerings. For examples of this design, keep an eye out for the Opel Astra and Chevy Cruze at the Paris auto show this year.

Meanwhile, according to Motor Trend, GM and the EPA are debating whether the Volt is a hybrid or an electric vehicle. The outcome will decide how fuel-economy numbers will be calculated. The car has an electric motor with a combustion engine that acts as a range extender when the batteries run out.

GM wants the car to pass the EPA’s tests using the electric motor 85% of the time, which would give it a rating of 100 mpg or more. The EPA wants the Volt to pass the tests with its batteries near full charge at the end, which would require the gasoline-powered engine to run most of the time. This calculation would drop the fuel economy to about 48 mpg. When fuel economy is your sales tool, a Prius-like 48 mpg might hurt sales of the $40,000-plus Volt.

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.