Author: Christopher DeMorro

I’m a bit of a history buff, and I’ve always found air combat to be particularly interesting. I’m talking about the old fighter jockeys who shot each other’s planes to ribbons with a hail of gunfire and flying prowess. Most fighter craft these days don’t even have machine guns… just lots of missiles and fancy doodads.

But the A-10 Thunderbolt II, perhaps better known as the Warthog because of its heavy machine cannon and armor plating, still gets up close and personal with the enemy. Yesterday an Air Force test pilot flew an A-10 on a blend of bio-mass derived and regular jet fuel… without any modifications to the engine.

Jet fighters costs millions upon millions of dollars already, and while the military is coming up with next generation war machines capable of running on alternative fuels, that doesn’t help us right now. The A-10, for example, costs upwards of $8.8 million per aircraft. To convert it to run a bio jetfuel could cost hundreds of thousands of more dollars. So it was important for the Air Force to find a renewable type of fuel that doesn’t require retrofitting its existing aircraft.

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For as long as my father can remember, he claims people have been crying and screaming about peak oil production. He doesn’t seem to believe oil is anything but an infinite resource. I disagree. Unfortunately, neither I nor he nor anyone else on this planet seems to actually know how much oil is truly left in the ground. If we did know, we’d probably have more stable gas prices.

But do we really want to spend what could be limited time trying to figure it out? Or should we just assume we’re on the fast track to emptying our oil reserves?

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The future of V8-powered cars may be coming to a sudden (if expected) end. Just 5% of cars are purchased with optional V8 engines anymore, and big strides are being made in turbocharging and small displacement engines. Ford has its line of EcoBoost engines, which it says will eventually be available in 90% of its lineup. GM is throwing its hat into the turbocharged, EcoBoost-like ring as well.

The General is said to be working on a twin-turbo version of its 3.0 liter V6 engine, which should make its debut in the upcoming Cadillac XTS. So… is it still going to be a hybrid?

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Yesterday GM unveiled a trio of people pods in Shanghai. Designed to combat urban congestion, these tiny two-wheeled electric vehicles replace some of what conventional car provides with no emissions. It is cool, though a bit awkward, but any idea that rethinks the car is all right by me.

But even though I generally prefer American cars, and I’m no fan of French cars especially… I really like these little Peugeot electric pod vehicles. Called the 1001, this little pod doesn’t have wheels, but spheres, driven by eight different electric motors. It can even spin in place 360 degrees, easily navigating the congested alleys and roadways of future cities.

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The Honda CR-Z Hybrid is turning out to be the sleeper hit of 2010… and it hasn’t even gone on sale yet.

The perky, underpowered two-seater compact goes on sale later this year, and Honda had set rather modest sales goals of selling between 40,000 and 50,000 cars between Japan, North America, and Europe. But pre-orders for the car have already gone over 10,000 cars, 10x the number Honda believed it would sell. Is it too early to call the CR-Z the comeback kid?

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In 2012 Ford will give us an all new Focus to drool over (I never thought I’d say that about a Focus). Until then though, the Focus has a lot of racing to do. Yes, the humble little hatchback is quite the prolific racer, with numerous championships and manufacturer’s titles under its belt.

While the Focus has cut its teeth on rally racing for years, it has also spread into other areas, like the British Touring Cup Championship (BTCC). Ford entered the fray last year in support of Arena Motorsports, coming in second place. This year, the Focus will be running Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) as an alternative fuel.

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Pardon the tardiness for this update from the weekend’s season opener of the American Le Mans Series. I am still recovering from Corvette Racing’s two cars running into each other, taking themselves out of the running for the win in the GT2 class.

But in the Prototype class, it was all about the diesels. In fact, the French car maker Peugeot took the 1-2 finish at American Le Mans, making it the third world class race the brand has won thus far in 2010.

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I’ve brought up the subject of idling cars a few times before on this blog. Ford says letting your car idle and warm up reduces emissions, while a county in England wants to make it illegal to leave a car idling (except in certain cases). It is a case for contention among environmentalists and automakers, though for sure idling in bumper-to-bumper traffic does nobody any good. Which makes one wonder why we don’t have more instances of stop-start engine technology here in the U.S.

Turns out we might have it fairly soon. Mazda is pledging to bring its stop-start anti-idling technology to all of its cars by 2015… despite EPA regulations that discourage such technology. Aren’t they supposed to be on our side?

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Last year, just prior to declaring bankruptcy, GM debuted its Project P.U.M.A., a Segway-like device that moves about on two wheels controlled by the body movements of the driver. But unlike the Segway, you sat in the P.U.M.A.. While it didn’t save GM from bankruptcy, the idea apparently held some weight with the designers, who have unleashed a second salvo of these odd pods.

The Jiao, Miao, and Xiao pods, unveiled in Shanghai this morning, have each been designed on a different continent. They are supposed to be a clean, efficient, high-tech alternatives for congested city travel. But would anyone actually buy one?

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2010 could go down as the year of the green supercar… prototype. Most every high-end automaker has either rolled out a hybrid concept, like the Porsche 918 and Ferrari KERS hybrid, or at least plans for some kind of more fuel-efficient supercar.

Well now you can add McLaren to that list. The famous maker of the once world’s fastest supercar, the McLaren F1, is pledging to produce the least carbon emissions per horsepower of any other car for sale anywhere.

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Big cargo ships are some of the heaviest polluters on the planet. They might also be one of the most efficient forms of transporting goods — and a large reason why we Americans are able to purchase so much from so far away for comparatively little money.

In an effort to curb the harmful emissions spewed by these big ships along the heavily populated coastline of California, the California Air Resource Board (CARB) has required all ships coming within 24 nautical miles of the coast to use cleaner burning fuel. But rather than make the switch, many ships are simply choosing a more crowded naval route that runs through the heart of a Navy weapons testing ground.

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Electric might not seem very practical for most of the population right now, but for many companies that employ fleets of vehicles, they make all the sense on the world. Many fleet vehicles don’t wander too far from home base, and often run the same route every day. Without the cost of gas or maintaince, companies would have much more money to use to improve their business and could also lower costs.

Freightliner, a big trucking company who already has natural gas and hybrid vehicles on the road, has turned to Tesla to provide battery packs for their upcoming line of electric vans.

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I’ve never really ridden an ATV, though I always wanted to. They look fun, and driving through nature would be a nice change of pace. But ATV’s are noisy, dirty (due to largely unregulated small engines), and in the wrong hands, very destructive. While we can’t do much about people choosing to tear up a plot of land with their off-roader, there are alternatives when it comes to noise and emissions.

Last year we heard about Barefoot Motors electric ATV, and now EVS has thrown their hat in the ring with the Eco Electric ATV. It offers three times the torque of its gas-powered counterparts, giving it a towing capacity of a thousand pounds! Not bad for a little ATV eh?

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Though it may be hard for us to imagine, there was a time not that long ago when if you needed to go somewhere, you walked. If you were lucky, you rode a horse. When the bicycle came around in the 1890’s, it was a revolution for personal mobility. But when the car came along, the party was over as cyclists and pedestrians alike were shuffled aside as the car took over all consideration for transportation.

In a dramatic overturn of previous policy, the Department of Transportation has declared that the needs of walkers, cyclists, and cars are all equal. So will we see more integrated biking lanes and facilities as well as a push towards more walkable communities?

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The first use of aerial vehicles on the battlefield was balloons hoisted up into the to spy on enemy troop movements, and occasionally to drop bombs. Balloons were used in the American Civil War, and even during the French Revolution, though in recent decades emphasis has shifted towards jets, rather than balloons.

But that may be about to change. The U.S. Air Force is looking into a high-flying, solar-powered blimp to take over spy duties, and say a small demonstration prototype could be in the air by 2014.

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Ford recently threw the veil off its Taurus Police Interceptor vehicle, joining the new Chevy Caprice and Dodge Charger in a bid to serve police officers across the US. All three cars have their own advantages and disadvantages, though one thing they all share in common is that they’re derived from production-based cars, rather than being designed from the ground-up as a cop car.

The Carbon Motors E7, on the other hand, is purpose-built to serve the needs of police. This morning, Carbon Motors and BMW announced a large order for 240,000 of BMW’s twin-turbo inline six-cylinder diesel engines. Sounds like somebody is confident their car will succeed.

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Today’s public transit buses aren’t all that encouraging to ride. At least in my (very limited) experience, they tend to be crowded, uncomfortable, and generally unpleasant places to be. Plus, the bus goes where it wants to go, without any input from you. You are chained to the will of the public transportation system.

A group of students from the Netherlands aims to remedy the situation, as well as emissions, with an electric, high-speed Superbus. The students, from the Delff University of Technology, concieved of the project six years ago, and now they are building an actual, working demonstration vehicle. But can the Superbus live up to its lofty expectations?

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The 2011 Mustang hits showrooms soon, and there have already been thousands of orders placed for the pony car and its new power train. The V6 Mustang is proving especially popular despite the new 5.0 liter V8 engine. Part the of the reason is the V6 engine has over 300 horsepower, and still manages to get 31 MPG on the highway — the first production car ever to do so.

The V6 car paced the Food City 500 at the Bristol Motor Speedway yesterday, and today Ford is launching a contest to guess how many laps the V6 Mustang can do around the same track on a single tank of gas. Guess correctly, and you could win a V6 Mustang of your own.

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The Ford Fiesta is one hot hatch, with thousands of pre-orders already in place and the car soon set to launch. While it is a strong looker with impressive MPG ratings (likely around 40 mpg on the highway) it is lacking in one key area; horsepower.

With 120 horsepower on tap, it isn’t exactly the epitome of excitement. But there has been plenty of speculation about Ford dropping one of its new EcoBoost engines into the hatchback. These spy shots from Autoblog seem to indicate just such a project is under way at Ford.

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The U.S. Postal Service is undergoing a series of dramatic changes soon as the fiscal belt tightening continues. There has been a lot of talk about cancelling Saturday deliveries and switching the fleet of postal vehicles over from gas to electric or other alternative fuels.

The Canadian postal service is taking a different route. They recently secured a contract with Ford to purchase 1,175 Transit Connect vans. With substantially better gas mileage than the standard postal delivery vehicle, the switch could save millions of dollars every year for Canada. So when is the U.S. going to make the switch?

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