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Photo: GM From 30,000 to 45,000 Units Thanks to strong interest by the public, GM has decided to boost production of the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid by 50% in 2012. This means that instead of making 30,000, they'll make 45,000 at the Detroit-Hamtramck plant. The company is probably hoping that it can improve the economics of the Volt by reaching economies of scale faster than initially planned, and it no doubt feels Nissan breathing down its neck with its cheaper LEAF el... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Credit: Charles Williams It's the first air permit issued in almost 20 years for a new, fully-integrated battery recycling facility in the U.S., says Johnson Controls Inc. The company secured the permit from South Carolina environmental regulators. And they did it in cooperation with local and national groups including the Coastal Conservation League and League of Women Voters of South Carolina. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photos: Chinanews Too Expensive to Go Under? Go Over... What if there was a way to get most of the benefits of a subway, but without the costs of digging up all those tunnels? The Chinese company Shenzhen Hashi Future Parking Equipment Co. thinks it might be able to do just that with a concept it calls the 3D Fast Bus (which has also been called the straddling bus), and kind of giant bus/train that straddles the street and allows cars to drive right under it. This means that it isn't slowed down by traffic and it doesn't add to traffic either. Read on for more details and a video showing a... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo credit A. Streeeter. This post is part of series written by TreeHugger contributors about trading in your car for a bike for trips that are two miles or less in distance. The series is sponsored by the Clif 2-Mile Challenge. Sometimes cyclists in their eagerness to spread the gospel of biking forget a few of the basics of human nature. We tell people, even brag about, how fantastic cycling is, forgetting that nobody radically changes their lifestyle or ditches their major mode of... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Images by B. Alter It's here and it's exciting: the new London Barclays Cycle Hire is open for business. Everywhere there are stands of shiny new bicycles just waiting to be ridden. And there are perplexed looking tourists and Londoners wondering how on earth they can get one. It's easy if you live here: for now only people with a registered address can become a member (membership has its privileges) the rest of the world will have to wait until later in the season. The only drawback is that when all is said and done, you are still riding on the streets of Lo... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Sanyo showing off its solar panels. Photo: Sanyo That's a Lot of Batteries Sanyo has announced the completion of its brand-spanking-new battery factory in Kasai city, Hyogo prefecture, Japan. There it will make lithium-ion batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles, bringing Sanyo closer to its goal being a dominant player in the EV market. "The factory will start with a production capacity of 1 million cells per month, with the aim to expand the production scale depending on demand." The company's current partners when it comes to li-ion batteries are the Volkswagen group an... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo: Flickr, CC From Here to There The catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was only the latest in a long list of reasons why we should transition away from oil as rapidly as we can. It's a monumental task, but we should not be intimidated, for all the longest journeys began with a single step... So what is that step and how can we get our cars off oil? Many people's reflex would be to say "Just stop driving!", but I think things are a bit more... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: Green Car Site The new UK Government may have axed a 3rd Heathrow runway, but its green credentials are not going unquestioned. And while London EV retailer GoingGreen slammed the UK's ambitious electric car grant scheme when it was first announced, I doubt anyone, apart from the oil companies, will be celebrating at claims that that the scheme—originally slated to be worth ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Helicopter delivered 2011 Ford Explorer. Image credit:Advanced Autozone. This says a lot about how far the "green" movement is from where the private, profitable transportation business is headed. A Ford Explorer, featuring inflatable seat belts, was recently copter-delivered before a large air show audience - at the Experimental Aircraft Association's Read the full story on TreeHugger

The Chevy Volt will soon be launched commercially, and so GM is intensifying its campaign to convince potential buyers. Here are only some of the recent Volt news items to hit the wire: a Read the full story on TreeHugger

Making a slow boat look fast... photo: Neal McQ via flickr. Having assessed the overall picture of how our patterns of global shipping and global aviation use tons of fuel, leave a high environmental footprint, and how technological changes can help but perhaps not fully solve the problem, let's move on to how we can change ourselves and our habits. Remember, we want to keep as much of the benefits of gl... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo: Michael Graham Richard The Little Car that Could The Toyota Prius hybrid has been sold in the U.S. for 10 years (even longer in Japan, where it was first introduced in 1997), and during that decade this car went from a small niche player considered 'weird' by most people (I remember back when the #1 question was "do you have to plug it in?") to a best-seller halo car whose technology has found its way in many other models, including vehicles made by Toyota's competitors. During that decade in the U.S., Toyota has sold about 900,000 Prius hybrids there, and about 1.8 million w... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Container ship photo: Daniel Ramirez; airliner photo: Bob MacInnes Two things which I think are worth keeping front and center when discussing how we wean ourselves off our petroleum addiction: Travel between nations is good; trade between nations is good. It's easy to point out specific incidences where less-than-savory outcomes r... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image from londoncyclist Today is the big day: London's new bicycle rental system is being launched. Called Barclays Cycle Hire, after the bank which is a corporate sponsor to the tune of £25M, the system is high in Canadian content. Modelled after Montreal's Bixi, the 6,000 bicycles have been built at Devinci Cycles in Batgotville Quebec. Many have bemoaned the... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Nissan Leaf battery. Photo: Nissan Matching the Chevy Volt As predicted here, Nissan has decided to match GM and offer a 8-year/100k miles warranty on the battery pack of its LEAF electric car. It will be great for early adopters who will have one less thing to worry about (at least for the first 8 years or 100k miles), and it will be great for the transition to electrified transportation.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Pavemart.com John previously wrote about how rural roads are going back to the stone age because of the cost of asphalt. The sticky black liquid was the bottom of the barrel in the oil industry, often sold at a loss, to be mixed with aggregates and used for paving. (5% asphalt to 95% aggregate, the asphalt is the glue that holds it together). ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

It will be another two years before Ashton Stark can get his driver's license, but that's not stopping the 14-year-old from looking to the future -- and in more ways than one. With a keen sense of green and a little engineering savvy, Ashton succeeded in transforming his grandfather's 1972 Volkswagen Beetle into a cleaning running, all-electric eco-vehicle. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Slightly more than a quarter the existing taxi fleet is made up of hybrid vehicles already. Photo: Brian Snelson via flickr. A quick (and hopefully not final) update in the ongoing legal saga around New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to convert the city's taxi fleet over to hybrid vehicles. As the New York Times reports, ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

There are plenty of reasons that America's transportation infrastructure needs retooling -- one of them is that highways are increasingly seeing a wide range of problems, from congestion to falling into disrepair. But there are even more blunt problems with highways -- they're killing pedestrians, often at higher rates than ever before. This great video details how Atlanta's Buford highway has become more and more deadly as more of the surrounding residents have increasingly relied on walking as a form of transportation. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photos: Paseo a Ciegas Facebook page. In a very interesting initiative that began last January, a group of three non governmental organizations from Mexico City are organizing bike rides for the blind and visually impaired. The rides are guided by volunteers on tandem bikes, and are offered on Sunday mornings, when a few streets in the historical center of the city are closed for pedestrians and human powered vehicles. What does this do for these people? More than you would think. Find out in... Read the full story on TreeHugger