EnviroHop - A Greener Commuting News and Information Portal.

In what has been a delicate dance over the last 9 months, Fisker has been getting closer and closer to actually finalizing the deal to purchase an old GM car manufacturing facility in Delaware. Today, Fisker sealed the deal and reached an agreement with Motors Liquidation Company, the holding company for old GM assets that were not sold to the new GM through during its bankruptcy reorganization.

Fisker plans on building their 2012 “Project Nina” vehicle—a more reasonably priced $48,000 “family” sedan and sister car to Fisker’s flagship $87,000 Karma—at the plant.

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Earlier this week I pounced on the news that Nissan may be working on a sports car version of the Nissan LEAF. I speculated that it could be based on the 370Z platform, as the current LEAF will be based on a modified Versa platform. Reader green racer posted a link in the comments section to an electric sports car Renault is working on, called the DeZir. Could this be the basis for a Nissan LEAF sports car instead?

I’ve never much cared for Renaults… but the DeZir really shakes things up. I’m actually starting to get my hopes up about this.

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As of late, Ford has been peppering the Internet with teaser images of the all-new 2011 Ford Explorer. Unlike the previous iteration, this SUV will be a unibody (no more body-on-frame truck knockoffs). The new Explorer will also be getting a range of new engines. One likely candidate is the 3.7 liter V6 found in the Ford Mustang.

Ford recently confirmed that the new Explorer will also get a 2.0 liter EcoBoost four-cylinder engine. This engine, Ford says, will get 30% better gas mileage than the current V6. That is a big jump in fuel economy, but will it also mean a big jump in price?

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This week, the news was how Honda planned to scrap its work on clean diesels to focus more intensely on making hybrids. It was kind of a downer, as everybody and their mother seems to be jumping on the hybrid band wagon while work on other alternatives gets less press. Today, Honda made an officially official announcement regarding their plans.

By 2012, Honda says they will not only be selling a plug-in hybrid car, but also a 100% electric vehicle as well. So much for clean diesels and hydrogen, eh?

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Chances are, if you’re a green car blogs reader, you’ve heard of the Automotive X-Prize. I know I’ve been hearing about it for what seems like forever, as teams entered or dropped out of this contest to achieve a feasible 100 mpg car. The ultimate prize? $5 million. That is a lot of scratch. The field of contestants has been whittle down over the years, from over 100 entries down to just two left in the mainstream class.

Both entries are from the Edison2 team, differing versions of their Very Light Car. They have survived slaloms, high speed tests, and a slew of other obstacles to get this far. They still have a long way to go to get 100 mpg as the final slew of tests for the Automotive X-Prize kick into gear this week.

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Holland, Michigan is poised to be the western anchor for a web of advanced energy storage (aka battery) manufacturing facilities that will serve the surging electric vehicle market.  In ten years, the new plants are expected to bring 62,000 new jobs to the middle chunk of the state -  a welcome relief for cities like Holland, which is currently experiencing about 15% unemployment.

A considerable amount of federal support is going into the effort.  As reported by The Detroit News, in a recent visit to the Rust Belt town, President Obama attended the groundbreaking for one of the new plants, a 650,000 square foot behemoth for Compact Power, Inc., a subsidiary of the South Korea based company LG Chem.  The plant is being funded by a $151 million American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant, matched by Compact.  In an interesting twist, one of the plant’s new customers, Eaton Corporation, will apply its energy efficiency know-how to optimize energy use at the new facility.
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The Nissan LEAF is coming, and it could be the catalyst that makes electric cars more than just a pipe dream. Nissan says orders have already exceeded expectations and the hype around this little electric car is poppin’ (to use the vernacular of our times). Reality may dampen some expectations though; the 100 mile range is under the best of conditions, and I doubt the LEAF will be a very fun car to drive in terms of speed and handling… though I’ve been wrong before [Ed. Note: Having driven one, I can say it is a fun drive].

That could all change though, as Edmunds Inside Line reports that Nissan is working on a sport car based on the LEAF. This could get interesting.

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For whatever reason, diesel engines get a bad rap in America. Even at their worst, they were never that bad (at least in my opinion). Torque, good gas mileage, and never a line at the gas station (just 5% of American cars are diesels). Plus, they last forever. Even so, the tide of public opinion still seems against diesel engines, and the major manufacturers are noticing.

Honda is ditching its R&D into clean diesel engines to focus instead on hybrids. As we all know, hybrids are all the rage right now, and Honda is hedging its bets by focusing on building band-aid cars instead of coming up with genuine solutions. Didn’t try already try that?

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I write about cars because I love cars. I know not everyone shares my enthusiasm, and there are a great many things to hate about cars. Cost, maintenance, pollution, congestion, the list goes on. Historically though, cars have represented a sort of coming-of-age. When you can afford a car, especially a brand new one, you’ve “made it” in a sense. Car ownership, along with home ownership, has been a tenant of life in America for at least 60 years. But as people in America begin to shy away from the automobile, people in other countries are beginning to embrace it.

Like China. In 2009, for the first time ever, Chinese consumers bought more cars than Americans, and it is a trend that will see an ever-widening gap. A report over at the The Truth About Cars says that China is about to enter an automobile buying boom, and conservative reports place annual car sales at 35 million a year by 2030. The more likely figure though is that China could be buying 50 million cars. Is that a good thing?

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I’ve got a lot of respect for people who try to do things differently, especially when it comes to cars. We’ve been driving the same basic contraption for over a century now, from the engine to the suspension to even the accelerator. While I love cars, I also love the innovation and creativity I’m seeing from the alternative fuel movement from both big manufacturers and small, and some old ideas are getting a second look.

Take the rotary engine. It has fewer moving parts than a standard engine… but it also makes a lot less torque, requires precision machining, and devours oil rather quickly, making it rather useless for towing or performance. Plus, since the internal combustion engine has become so ingrained in our culture, many mechanics can’t make heads or tails of the Wankel, as it is called. But this little engine (made popular by Mazda in the 70’s and 80’s) could find a second life… as an electric vehicle range extender.

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It’s kind of crazy to think just ten years ago, the SUV craze was hitting its stride. Personally, I never bought into the whole SUV craze (I like nimble vehicles, thank you). There is, however, something to say about the utility and usefulness of a good-sized SUV though, and even today, I still see plenty of these hulking behemoths on the road. So Americans still like SUV’s.

I guess it’s a good thing then that Toyota and Tesla are working together to build an all-electric version of the RAV4. Not exactly my cup of tea as far as SUV’s go, but it’s a damn popular car. Plus, it’s size means it could carry a larger battery for longer range.

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Reliable. Dependable. Boring. That is what most people have to say about their Toyotas. Ok, maybe not the third one, but anybody who is really into cars can see where I am coming from. There isn’t anything exciting or even turbocharged in the Toyota lineup. But there was a time when Toyota actually made some pretty exciting cars, like the mid-engine MR2 and the turbocharged Supra. Hell, even the Previa minivan had a supercharger and rear-wheel drive (I’m not kidding). There is the Lexus LFA, but… that doesn’t count because it’s too expensive and rare to be meaningful to the average Joe.

So when rumor has it that Toyota is working on a supercar, I get a little excited. The rumor mill has been churning out word of a Supra successor for years now, but lately the rumor mill has changed its tone. Is Toyota working on an all-electric supercar?

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On my recent trip across country, I drove on many highways across 30 different states. Every highway was a bit different, from the two lane roads in Wyoming to the massive six-lane highways outside of LA. But all of them lacked the same thing; electric vehicle chargers. That would make any cross-country trip in an electric car difficult, if not impossible. One of the few exceptions was along Highway 101, in California.

SolarCity and Rabobank, who installed the electric vehicle chargers, have gone one step further and added 200 kW worth of solar panels to these charging stations. Clean, free energy, anyone?

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I’ve got quite a few friends with motorcycles (I prefer four wheels, thank you very much). All of them share the same need for speed, so when I try to talk to them about electric motorcycles they stop listening. The truth is though, electric motorcycles are getting better by the day, and the Killacycle is just one example of how fast these bad boys can go.

One of the early contenders in the mass-market electric motorcycle arena is Brammo. They just announced an all-new motorcycle which has two things many motorcyclists are looking for; more speed and longer range.

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Replacing car batteries are a fact of life. It can be a real pain, depending on the type of car you’ve got, but these days batteries seem to last a good long time. So how long is long enough when your car runs exclusively on batteries?

Apparently GM thinks 8 years or 100,000 miles should be enough to allay the fears of early adopters for the Chevy Volt; they’ll be providing that warranty to all Volt buyers for their batteries—even Canadians will get the same warranty when the Volt goes on sale there in 2012. It’s a bold move that should help set a standard for other would-be EV makers.

The Chevy Volt may or may not be the salvation of General Motors. That said, GM has invested a LOT of resources into ensuring the Volt has a successful launch. They are planning to produce just 30,000 Volts in the first year, with production gradually ramping up if the car meets with commercial success. GM has conducted over 1 million miles of testing on the Volt, including crush tests, water submersion, cold, heat, and rough road testing. And they are confident enough to offer quite the warranty on the battery.

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Already one of Europe’s most popular cars, the diminutive and good-looking Fiat 500 just keeps getting better. It’s such a diverse platform—from the high performance, MINI-fighting Abarth edition to the recently released 50 mpg TwinAir Turbo, and there’s even hint of a fully electric version—that it seems hard to cram more options into it. But according to a report over at Auto Express, the 500 TwinAir is set to receive a hybrid electric drivetrain that will take it to an amazing 100 mpg fuel economy while reducing carbon emissions to a scant 70 g/km.

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Electric car participants line up on the grid. It’s almost sad to see the time trial winner starting a practice session behind a converted Scion. But passing practice is always fun.

When I heard about the Refuel event, a free track day and time trial at Laguna Seca, it was literally a dream come true. I have long been a devoted aficionado of the legendary corkscrew. Really, ever since I first circled the track on the back of a friend’s Yamaha R1, I have loved this track, and for years before that I admired it as a spectator. When I first started hearing about electric motorcycles, I thought, “Wow, all those golfers that decided it would be cool to live and play golf near a racetrack and then whine about the noise should pay EV owners to do track days there.” And voilá! Speed Ventures is paying (unless an appropriate sponsor steps in), but still, the entire day was FREE for all electric vehicles. And even a natural gas turbine car. And the Stanford solar trike… Basically, as long as it’s clean and silent, it’s free. Although the electric Barca-lounger remained a pit vehicle… (more…)

Around the world Mitsubishi has announced initial prices for fleet purchasers of their subcompact i-MiEV electric car that range from about $53,000 in Japan to as high as $59,000 in Germany. Given the fact that Nissan will start selling the LEAF EV this fall for $32,780 in the US, it’s clear that Mitsubishi will have to find a way to bring their prices down before the smaller i-MiEV goes on sale to the mass market at the end of 2011.

Apparently Mitsubishi has been thinking about these issues as well: their director of electric-vehicle operations, Joe Delello, now says that Mitsubishi is aiming for a final price tag that could bring the i-MiEV below $30,000 when it hits showrooms.

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Having just finished up a round of validation and testing of the Chevy Volt’s battery pack—including dunking the thing in water—GM is set to start full battery production at their Brownstown, MI, battery manufacturing facility.

In honor of the event, tomorrow, July 14, GM will be discussing a “major consumer initiative” and discussing the details of Volt battery testing to date. After the announcement, Gas 2.0 will be hosting a GM webchat with global electric vehicle executive Doug Parks and Volt marketing director Tony DiSalle to answer your questions live.

So stop back here at 4 PM Eastern/1 PM Pacific tomorrow and check it out. (more…)

As promised earlier this year, Fiat has officially adorned their beloved 500 with a brand new engine option: the 2-cylinder TwinAir.

The 85 HP, turbocharged 0.9 liter engine reportedly has the performance characteristics of a much larger 1.4 liter, 16-valve engine, but it consumes about 30% less fuel—resulting in a fuel economy of 57 mpg as rated on the combined Euro cycle. If it were sold in the U.S. and rated on the EPA cycle, that number would likely drop to around 50 mpg.

Unfortunately for now, there are no plans to sell the 85 HP TwinAir engine as an option on any of the Fiat 500’s that are rumored to be reaching U.S. shores by the end of this year.

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