Author: Nick Chambers

Just before the New York Auto Show, Nissan officially announced the incredibly affordable price of the Nissan LEAF, which will go on sale this December. At $32,780 — or a $349/month lease after Nissan claims a $7,500 federal tax credit per car — Nissan surprised the world. The LEAF will be the first truly affordable, mass-market, fully capable 100% electric car the world has ever seen.

But along with the excitement over the price came many questions, one of the biggest of which was “how am I going to charge it?”

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Following on the heels of their ‘Electrification Roadmap‘ — a comprehensive document written in conjunction with global consulting group PRTM that details how to best shift our transportation sector to plug-in vehicles over the next couple of decades — the Electrification Coalition has just completed an analysis that finds huge benefits to the US economy would result from implementing most of the policies and strategies outlined in the document.

Chief among these benefits would be a strengthening and broadening of high paying manufacturing, travel, tourism, and professional jobs… to the tune of an additional 1.9 million of them by 2030. And now we can all add just one more reason why switching to a high-tech, innovation-based, green jobs focus in this country would do us a world of good.

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In a bid to try and win some hybrid market share from Toyota and beat back the hybrid gains of Ford, Honda has adopted the stance that dominating the sports hybrid realm is the place to be. The recently released Honda CR-Z — a throwback to the cultish glory days of the beloved CRX — is the first sports hybrid offering from Honda… but it has been met with only mediocre fanfare.

Complaints that it is both underpowered AND doesn’t get as good mileage as it should for such a small hybrid have relegated it to the “meh” list of many industry pundits and green car enthusiasts alike. But, with sales surging in Japan and a higher interest among the public than we all thought possible, it may just be the comeback star Honda was looking for.

And now Motor Trend is reporting on a rumor that Honda is busy prepping a sports hybrid the size of the Accord coupe that will “dwarf the CR-Z in performance.” Add this rumor to the one that Honda is also prepping a revved up Type-R version of the CR-Z and a picture is starting to emerge of where Honda wants to take all of this.

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While the recent fluctuation in the price of crude oil is being driven alternately by irrational hope followed by despair, the U.S. Energy Information Agency (the EIA, yep, it’s all bean counters there) is predicting that 2010 will bring enough economic growth that global CO2 emissions will increase by a modest 2.1% and that crude oil prices per barrel will average $81 through 2010 and $85 by the end of 2011.

This follows a 6.6% decline in CO2 emissions from fossil fuels in 2009, but will still be lower than the annual emissions from 1999-2008 when we were spending, growing and buying things on credit as if there was no tomorrow.

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We’ve written about Paul Scott many times on these pages. In fact, just a couple of days ago he was featured prominently in a piece about treating electric cars fairly in the new fuel economy and emissions rules recently enacted by the federal government. Personally, I’ve met him and his wife, Zan Dubin Scott, a few times and they are just two of nicest people you’ll ever meet.

As the Vice President of leading EV advocacy group, Plug In America, Paul has been a tireless supporter of shifting away from our conventionally-powered transportation sector in favor of plug ins. You may recognize his name from the movie “Who Killed the Electric Car?”, in which he was featured as a driver of one of the original RAV4 EVs.

So it makes me happy to learn that Paul Scott and his organization have been given a $25,000 grant from Nissan to expand their work in getting Americans ready for the coming onslaught of EVs and speed their mass adoption.

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The scale of the mountain pine beetle’s destruction of Western North American forests is almost unimaginable. Already more than half of the 5 million acres of lodgepole pine forests in Colorado have been destroyed, and 10’s of millions more acres across the Western U.S. and Canada are affected — with an estimated 40 million acres of lodgepole pine devastation in British Columbia alone.

While this is a sad state of affairs — we could be witnessing the end of the western lodgepole pine forest as we know it — the huge amounts of dead wood left in the beetle’s path of destruction are finding a happy end as a source for renewable fuel.

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Yesterday I brought you rumors of an impending tie-up announcement by Renault-Nissan and Daimler. Surprise, surprise. The companies have today made it official… and provided some more tidbits about what the cooperation actually means.

Chief interesting bits among them: technology sharing on upcoming fully electric versions of the Renault Twingo (very popular in Europe) and the Smart ForTwo as well as diesel engine sharing for both models.

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Lithium-air batteries are one of those technologies that could be truly revolutionary. With a theoretical maximum energy storage capacity 10 times greater than your garden variety lithium-ion battery, lithium-air batteries could be much smaller and lighter but still provide a huge range. How’s 500-700 miles per charge for you?

Unfortunately, as is usually the case with these sorts of things, the lithium-air revolution has hurdles aplenty. But fortunately, lithium-air batteries have some big guns doing research on them. For instance, IBM has been doing research on lithium-air batteries for the better part of a decade.

And just this week, scientists at MIT have announced that when they substituted gold and platinum for the standard carbon electrodes in lithium-air cells, they were able to obtain much higher efficiencies. The find was significant enough for MIT to claim that their research could lead to lithium-air batteries with 3 times the energy density of lithium-ion. That alone would be a big step forward.

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After more than a year of wrangling, the new fuel economy and emissions standards that have emerged from the coordinated efforts of the US Environmental Protection Agency, the US National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, all of the major automakers, environmental organizations, and dozens of various other stakeholders are truly an amazing accomplishment. As my fellow Gas 2.0 contributor, Chris Demorro, said, it’s been a long time since we’ve made any changes to these CAFE regulations… and it’s long overdue.

But are electric cars being treated fairly in all of this?

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As we come out the other end of this global recession, automakers are struggling to adapt to a new world in which fuel economy standards are getting increasingly tighter and environmental regulations are taking center stage. One way for carmakers to quickly do that is by sharing what they know with other companies so that all the research and development can be pooled and the cost spread out among several players.

Towards that end, a few weeks ago I reported on a rumor that Renault, Nissan and Daimler were in talks to cooperate and form some sort of mega-alliance in which they would save greatly on research and development costs by swapping technologies that each company is specialized in but that the others may be lacking.

It now appears that a tie-up announcement between the three companies will be coming as soon as tomorrow.

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In the quest to secure the raw materials that are required to build next generation automobile batteries and motors, Japan seems to have grasped the importance of locking down supplies now.

A report in the Japanese Nikkei newspaper (subs req’d) says that Japan will loan tens of billions of yen to Bolivia this summer to help them build modern power plants and put solar panels on a hospital. In exchange, Japan will get guaranteed access to Bolivia’s vast supplies of lithium. Sometimes the difference between “bribery” and “help” can be so blurry.

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A new report by Oregon’s Portland Metro has found that emissions from driving cars and providing energy only account for about half of the GHGs emitted in the northwest Oregon region. The other half is a direct result of the consumption habits of the region’s inhabitants.

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It’s hard to believe how much difference a couple of years makes. I remember when those of us that were banging our gongs to the European automakers to bring diesels back to the US were dismissively waved away as “not understanding the American market” or “not in touch with reality.” How wrong the high paid salesmen, marketers and bean counters can be sometimes, no?

VW has just released its March sales figures, and their TDI clean diesel models are doing amazingly well. Just as an example, of the 2,000 Jetta wagons sold fully 85% of them were diesels. Yeah, Americans will never take to diesels. Sure.

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Although luxury hybrids will never really make a dent in the changes we need to solve our problems, they are a part of the solution too — no matter how small. Plus, they create a lot of high profile attention for the green car industry. And if you are well-off and concerned about our global environmental, security, and economic issues — any of them — luxury hybrids make it possible for you to buy what you’re, ahem, accustomed to, while still towing the line.

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THINK has had a rough road in its long history. Having been on the brink of collapse several times, this little Norwegian company just can’t be kept down it seems. Scrabbling back from the nearly dead, THINK now has plans to start selling its itty bitty City EV in New York and a few other “select markets” later this year.

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They may be small cars, but them’s some big, shiny, golden cahones! VW picked up a brand new pair at the 2010 New York Auto Show, winning both the 2010 World Car of the Year Award for the VW Polo and the 2010 World Green Car of the Year award for their entire BlueMotion lineup —the Polo, Passat and Golf.

There’s just a slight problem though… one ball is bigger than the other. Oh potty humor, you never seem to get old. (more…)

MINI used the big stage at the 2010 New York Auto Show to show off the Countryman 4WD small crossover in the US for the first time. As far as I know, the Countryman will be the world’s smallest crossover when it hits showrooms early next year. It’s so small, in fact, that it essentially qualifies as a new market segment… I’ll take a shot at naming it right now: how’s “minicross” for you?

No official word on mileage yet from MINI, but they say it will offer the best fuel economy in the crossover segment. Which likely means higher than 30 mpg, as that’s what the upcoming Ford Edge with Ecoboost is expected to get on the highway. But there are many ways manufacturers can represent their numbers to claim “best fuel economy” in a particular segment, so we’ll just have to wait on that one.

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Having just announced that they will be licensing hybrid technology from Toyota, it is clear that Mazda has never had any real desire to develop its own hybrid platform. But Mazda has always been good at engine development, and regardless of what our distant future looks like, nearly everyone agrees that the combustion engine will be with us for a long time… and there is still a lot of improvement to be made to them.

Enter Mazda stage left. At the New York Auto Show, Mazda unveiled two new engines and a transmission it claims will increase the fuel efficiency and lower the emissions of its cars dramatically by 2015. Not only that, Mazda says they will introduce a diesel engine to the US in 2012.

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Kia is having a stellar year, and with the new products in their pipeline it’s starting to look all nice and rosey over in the glow of their campfire. At the New York Auto Show today, among other high profile unveils including a great looking new Sportage, Kia took the wraps off its brand new Optima sedan… and spilled the beans that a hybrid version of it will be introduced in 2011.

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First rumored more than a year ago, the much-anticipated US debut of the Toyota iQ is finally upon us… but it’s been badged as a Scion and the expected fuel economy numbers are not really all that impressive when you consider just how tiny this vehicle is. Scion says the car will eek out mileage “in the high 30s.”

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