For all the hype about hybrids and electric cars, the best way to reduce our carbon footprint is to invent the cars we’re already driving more efficient. But switching a vehicle to alternative fuels or getting a plug-in hybrid conversion is expensive, and the IRS, foolishly, doesn’t...

Not a heck of a lot of knowledge is available yet on the Zero Rally Africa, but since there’s about 14 months to go before the thing kicks off, that isn’t really a problem. What we do know about the rally is that it’s a 4,000 km, ten-day jaunt up from Cape Town through South Africa,...

Third Planet Energy’s booth at the Santa Monica Alt Car Expo caught my eye. Which is precisely what the folks there intended. In fact, Third Planet Energy’s whole goal is to allow you to catch other people’s eyes, through the use of chrome emblems that will upgrade your car’s...

With all the talk about CAFE standards and gas taxes these days, many society wonder what a government could do to help bring the sale of gasoline powered cars down. How about a total ban? Would that work? Sounds a little drastic, but Norway is considering doing just such a thing, and they are attempting...

New Zealand has bold plans for greening its automobile transportation. In the “Energy Strategy to 2050″ report, presented by New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, there are calls for major changes such as: 5 percent of cars to be plug-ins by 2020, rising to 60 percent by 2040. 25 percent...

Last night’s NBC Republican presidential debate took an unexpected turn to the green. For nearly half an hour, the candidates talked about alternatives to oil and ethanol. Senator Sam Brownback even talked about a flex-fuel, plug-in hybrid car. Sam went into specifics saying he would like to see...

Click on the Loremo for a high-res gallery After the success of the original Ansari X-Prize, the X-Prize Foundation started creating new X-prizes in areas like medicine and cars. The Automotive X-Prize was announced in 2006 and in April of that year, the organizers released the first draft of the rules...

The video above is of an Electrathon racer on display at AltWheels Boston 2007. Electrathon racers travel 50 miles in an hour using a kilowatt/hour of electricity: That’s the equivalent of 1,500 MPG at highway speeds on the capability of a hair dryer. The next stop for that Electrathon racer is...

As we mentioned final week, Chrysler is getting into the hybrid and electric car game through Envi, a semi-independent unit committed to electric drive vehicles. Pro-automobile Michigan residents (that’s almost a redundant phrase there) can be proud that Chrysler has announced that ENVI will be...

A basic principal of economics is that of supply and demand. whether demand for a commodity rises and the supply does not, the price increases. With demand for electricity in the US expected to increase by fifty percent by the next three decades and expansion of generating capacity in a holding sample...

I talked to Joe Lado about his Pontiac Fiero that he’s converted to run on electricity at a Washington event for electric cars that week. You can see the golf cart batteries and solar panels in the front and back of the car in a video below the fold. Joe talked about the many advantages of owning...

We wrote about Fairfax County’s converted Prius before. I got a look at their converted Prius at an electric car event in Washington. The county converted a Prius to PHEV status in November of final year with a kit from Hymotion. Fairfax plans to replace that older battery with the new batteries...

Our friend Ray from Jalopnik happened to be in Southern California the other day when he got sit in with a bunch of bloggers having a chat with “Maximum” Bob Lutz. The ever quotable Mr. Lutz expounded on a variety of topics including the ongoing development of a car that debuted as a concept...

The video above is a tour, at a Washington event, of a plug-in lithium-ion Prius with Alan Shedd of Jackson electric coop. The Jackson coop and CRN converted the Prius in February ‘07 and has logged months of driving documents. Below the fold is another YouTube video all about the car’s...