The MEV HUMMER HX is the only proportionally correct licensed resort vehicle currently on the market. Its design matches the infamous Humvee and includes the characteristic louver grille, custom wheels, door sills, styled seats, and floor mats.

MEV, or My Electric Vehicle, was formed in 2006; initially trading as Mini Hummer Europe and achieved year on year growth because of its introduction of luxury golf cars manufactured by others to the European market. As a result of poor growth and lack of sales from third party suppliers, a decision was made in 2009 for the company to design and develop their own products.

The greatest thing about this new Hummer is that it is not a gas guzzler like its predecessors. This Hummer is electric and can be charged from a 12V charging point. Despite the fact that General Moters closed the Hummer automotive plant in 2010, it is believed that the little HX model could have saved the brand.

Just before closing the factory, MEV managed to sign the worldwide exclusive rights to manufacture the HUMMER HX as a mini electric vehicle.

Source: My Electric Vehicle

While GM planned on closing the Orion plant, it decided to manufacture the Sonic there as part of a labor agreement with the United Auto Workers (UAW). When workers were laid off in fall 2009, the plant was retooled as GM invested $145 million to make the plant more efficient and prepare for its manufacturing of the Sonic.

Now, the plant contains an upgraded lighting system, which saves over 5,988 megawatts (MW) of electricity a year and $430,000 and 3,676 metric tons of CO2. Plant workers will be provided with software to track energy use.

The paint shop within the plant was also upgraded, and is heated by natural and landfill gas. The new paint shop uses half the energy per vehicle that the old one consumed. A press release also commented on the reworking of the production lines at the plant, “creating more space to house material onsite that once took up space in other buildings.”

Eric Stevens, GM vice president of Global Manufacturing Engineering, said, “As we converted the facility to support the small car program, we took every opportunity to engineer in flexibility and lean manufacturing concepts.”

The Orion plant received a Neighborhood Environmental Partners Program Award for its commitment to community environmental projects. The plant has been noted for testing water quality around the plant and taking environmental education measures. The plant works with local students to monitor its water quality. The plant has also received the Clean Corporate Citizen design by the State of Michigan.

Janice Frias, a graduate student who earned her doctorate this past January, discovered how to use a protein to transform fatty acids produced by the bacteria into ketones, which can be cracked to make hydrocarbon fuels.

The research was published in the April 1st issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Frias’ advisor, Larry Wackett, a Distinguished McKnight Professor of Biochemistry, is the lead author of the publishing.

Aditya Bhan and Lanny Schmidt, chemical engineering professors in the College of Science and Engineering, are turning the ketones into diesel fuel by using a catalytic technology which they developed. This ability to produce ketones allows the researches to make petroleum-like hydrocarbon fuels using only bacteria, sunlight, and carbon dioxinde.

Wackett says, “There is enormous interest in using carbon dioxide to make hydrocarbon fuels. Co2 is the major greenhouse gas mediating global climate change, so removing it from the atmosphere is good for the environment. It’s also free. And we can use the same infrastructure to process nd transport his new hydrocarbon fuel that we use for fossil fuels.”

The research is funded by a $2.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-energy program, created to stimulate American leadership in renewable energy technology.

The researchers use Synechococcus, a bacterium that fixes carbon dioxide in sunlight and converts CO2 into sugars. These sugars are then fed to Shewanella, a bacterium that produces hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons (made form carbon and hydrogen) are the main component of fossil fuels. It has taken hundreds of millions of years of heat and compression to produce fossil fuels, which many experts believe will be largely depleted within the next 50 years.

The Blue2-also known as “Blue Squared”-is driven by the hydrogen technology to produce only water and heat as by-products. Plus, the hydrogen fuel stack produces 90kW (1.65 kW/L of power, and the hybrid is able to get 34.9 kilometers per liter- the equivalent of 82 mpg.

The Blue2 uses low-resistant tires and allow wheels to increase its aerodynamics. The car also includes LED screen panels located on both the front and rear of the car, acting as license plates. On top of having an automatic door opening system, the Blue2 has side cameras which replace conventional side mirrors.

While it is uncertain whether the Blue2 will make it to the streets, this kind of future-forward technology will most likely be available to the public within the coming years.

Hyundai via Green Optimistic

One major critic of electric cars is the lack of locations to charge the vehicle. However, with the i MiEV, the vehicle can use an on-board charger to be charged with a 100V or 200V power source in the home. Furthermore, quick-chargers are being developed by power companies, and if these come into use, it will be possible to charge the vehicle in a short amount of time. And because the vehicle uses an electric motor free engine, it runs extremely quietly, especially compared with the vertical vibration associated with gasoline engines.

Mitsubishi’s i MiEV can seat up to 4 and reaches a top speed of nearly 82 mph. The car’s power is 63 hp and goes from 0-60 time in less than 9 seconds. The strong acceleration is achieved through a compact and highly efficient permanent magnet synchronous motor which is able to generate high torque from a low speed. The i Miev’s range is between 70-100 miles. The car, which is already available in Japan, will be available in the U.S. in 2011 for $30,000.

Of New Deli’s 5000 auto-rickshaws with two-stroke engines–a common form of transportation in Asia and Africa—the study saw that CNG produced only minor reductions in the emissions that cause air pollution. The study also found that there was an increase in the emissions produced that negatively impact climate change.

Researchers believe that New Delhi’s program could have achieved greater emission reductions at a lower price by simply upgrading their two-stroke models to the cleaner and more fuel0efficient four-stroke variety. The study provided data to illustrate how as much as one third of the CNG is not properly burned in two-stroke engines, resulting in high emissions of methane, a major greenhouse gas linked to climate change. CNG also produced a high amount of emissions of high particulate matter from the unburned lubricating oil, which can appear as blue smoke.

Researchers believe that these findings show the importance of strong scientific data for policymakers and also the need to look into smaller vehicles such as the auto-rickshaw in emission reduction programs. Several Asian cities have more two-stroke auto-rickshaws than New Delhi.

University of British Columbia.

So, does it make sense for the world’s largest economy to be heavily dependent for oil in a region where disruption is always a possibility? No, it doesn’t. Yet America has been reliant on the Middle East for oil for most of the automobile age. Only recently has there been any effort to switch to alternative fuels and lower America’s dependence on imported oil.

Even though the U.S. has increased domestic drilling, they wouldn’t be able to pump its daily consumption of 18.7 million barrels per day without the imported fuel to make up the difference. In November 2010 alone, the country imported an average of 8.25 million barrels per day. Nearly 2 million of these came from the Middle Eastern oil producers, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration data.

What then is the solution to becoming less dependent on foreign oil? Many believe that the answer could be in domestic natural gas.

HOME GROWN FUEL

The only domestic energy source that has the potential to end the country’s dependence on oil for transportation fuel in the U.S. is natural gas. Natural gas is abundant, competitively priced, clean, and available domestically.

Of all of its good qualities, abundance is the most appealing advantage. The Potential Gas Committee (PGC) has estimated that the U.S. had 1,836 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of recoverable natural gas as of 2008, out of a total future natural gas resource base of 2,074 Tcf. This would meet the nation’s natural gas demand for about 100 years, based on the nation’s current consumption rate.

Of the 22.8 Tcf of natural gas consumed in the U.S. in 2009, 90% was produced domestically. Furthermore, most imports of dry natural gas came from a reliable trading partner: Canada.

Natural gas has become a highly used energy source for industrial, commercial, and residential uses. However, it has yet to play a larger role in transportation fuel, aside from use in bus fleets and other industrial fleets.

WHY SIZE MATTERS

Two factors make the use of natural gas unappealing to consumers. The first is its lack of compactness. Large vehicles, such as buses and vans, are able to accommodate the large tanks that natural gas requires. However, smaller cars and modest-size SUVs cannot accommodate the large tanks without displacing volume from features that car buyers find appealing: trunk and cargo space.

The second issue stems from the lack of natural-gas filling stations. Even with more stations being added each month, there are only around 1,100 stations throughout the entire U.S. Compare this number to the more than 160,000 gasoline stations and it is obvious why it is more convenient and appealing to have vehicles which use gasoline.

To combat these two issues, public policy would have to heavily encourage natural gas fuel use in order to increase its role as a transportation fuel. U.S. drivers will not be likely to leave behind their gasoline habits, even if gasoline becomes more on a per mile basis than natural gas.

PRICING

Critics of natural-gas point out that the current price of natural gas would likely go up if drivers shifted in large numbers to natural gas. Of the nearly 12 million natural-gas vehicles in use globally, only 110,000 are found in the U.S.

A counterargument to the critics’ point is to simply ask: What is going to happen to the price of gasoline in the upcoming years? The International Energy Agency predicts that global oil demand will rise in 2011-2012 due to economic expansions worldwide. This prediction could be wrong and the demand could always drop.

Currently the price of oil is about $91 per barrel. However, given the rising demand in emerging-market economies for oil, how likely is it for the price of oil to stay the same? As global demand accelerates, it has been predicted that oil may top $100 per barrel in 2011.

FOREIGN OIL DEPENDENCY

As history has shown, events in the Middle East are subject to periods of interruption. Whether or not the price of gasoline remains stable or declines, it will not eliminate the liability of U.S. oil consumption.

Clearly oil will remain an essential fuel in the upcoming years; however, the U.S. needs to see that the energy future will be reliant not only on the price, but also on the reliability of the energy sources.  Natural gas could provide the U.S. with the necessary solution to the uncertain international energy dependence.

DailyFinance

In a recent announcement, Shell Oil has stated that it will no longer pursue algae biodiesel. Shell claims that algae biodiesel doesn’t have sufficient commercial viability. Algae biodiesel showed so much potential that the U.S. Department of Energy gave $9 million to Cellana, a joint research project between Shell Oil and HR Biopetroleum. Cellana was to specifically look into alternative energy source’s prospects. Due to Shell’s withdrawal from the project, HR Biopetroleum cannot continue the project on its own.

This is sure to be a huge hit in the search for alternative fuel sources. Many believed that the high growth rate of algae offered the potential to produce biodeisel with much greater efficiency than corn or other crops. With the exit of Shell, it is pretty unlikely that a startup company will be able to pick up the slack and turn algae biodiesel into a real option.

This certainly means you cannot expect to see algae fuel cars on the road in the next decade.

Engadget

In 14 independent studies, scientists have found that Agave yields greatly exceed the yields of other biofuel feedstocks, such as corn, soybean, sorghum, and wheat. Furthermore, scientists have noted that there are various other species of Agave in existences that have not yet been evaluated.

Sarah Davis, a bioenergy analyst, states, “We need bioenergy crops that have a low risk of unintended land use change. Biomass from Agave can be harvested as a co-product of tequila production without additional land demands. Also, abandoned Agave plantations in Mexico and Africa that previously supported the natural fiber market could be reclaimed as bioenergy cropland. More research on Agave species is warranted to determine the tolerance ranges of the highest yielding varieties that would be most viable for bioenergy production in semi-arid regions of the world.”

The economical and environmental sustainability of Agave could greatly stimulate the economies in Africa, Australia, and Mexico, where large amounts of land are unused due to the arid climate.

ScienceDaily

No one likes sitting in a car and staring at a red streetlight, waiting for it to change colors. All you can do is stare as the time slowly passes. You become frustrated and impatience, wondering if somehow the light has broken and is never going to change. And then, when it finally turns green, the person in front of you continues to sit idly because he or she wasn’t paying attention. The Eko Stoplight  removes the uncertainty by letting you know just home much longer you have to wait.

Designed by Damjan Stanković, the Eko Stoplight features an outer ring of red lights that countdown the remaining time until the signal changes. That means that while you don’t know the light’s duration in terms of seconds, but you do know when the change is approaching. Stanković created the traffic system with environmental benefits in mind. As people sit at a red light, they let their engine idle because they need to be ready to move whenever the light turns green. This wastes gas as the engine idles but doesn’t move anywhere. With the Eko Stoplight, the driver can shut off the engine as they wait and start up again a few moments before the light changes. This design could definitely reduce the waste of cars simple sitting in front of long lights with no idea when they will actually be able to drive through.

Source: Yanko