One day, back in 2009, while driving my ’99 Chevy Malibu home from classes in Marleboro College’s MBA in Managing for Sustainability, I set a target for my next car that it would get over 45 Miles Per Gallon. That basically means a hybrid like the Ford CMax (Edmunds / Ford) pictured above or one of the uber-efficient Volkswagon TDI Clean Diesel (news / autoblog / VW).
In March of 2011, Keith Barry, writing on the Autopia blog at Wired.com, reported that a Massachusetts-based company was retrofitting Lincoln Towncars as hybrids, pitching the upgrade to fleet owners primarily as a way of cutting fuel costs:
XL Hybrids, a startup in Somerville, Massachusetts, has created a low-cost battery-powered electric motor that installs on a Lincoln Town Car in under six hours, boosting power by 20 horsepower and reducing fuel consumption 15 to 30 percent.
Given that real-world fuel economy in a Town Car seeing hardcore urban duty is 13 or 14 mpg, the hybrid conversion can pay for itself in fuel savings within 24 months, says co-founder Justin Ashton. No word yet on the per-unit cost, but expect payback time to shorten as fuel prices rise.
Ford sold over 10,000 Town Cars last year, with many of them going to livery operators who are not only struggling with fuel costs, but mandates from customers and city governments to go green.
According to Ashton, the project was designed with fleets in mind. “Before settling on an architecture, we got real-world data from fleets,” he said. ”Due to the extreme nature of their driving, their fuel bills are astronomical.”
Though there are myriad reasons for greening a fleet of vehicles, XL pitched their technology straight at the wallet. “We want to reduce fuel consumption, but we know the only way to do that is by saving people money,” Ashton said.
Excerpted from Hybrid Town Car Conversion Cuts CO2, Costs
Now Ford is mass-producing hybrid Towncars.
We wouldn’t hazard a guess as to how much fuel and money will be saved, but we suspect we’ll be seeing a lot of fleet hybrid Towncars as fleet operators hedge their bets against fuel increases. Progress in these matters often comes in small steady increments, and this is one.
Charis Michelsen, writing on GAS 2.0, reports that the Offenburg University of Applied Sciences (Germany) has broken the distance record for electric vehicles:
Electric vehicles records are dropping like flies these days, as more and more vehicles push the boundaries of what’s possible for electric cars, boats, and planes. The latest to fall: the record for longest drive ever in a battery-powered vehicle (no recharge) was broken last weekend by a new, experimental electric vehicle called “Schluckspecht” (“heavy drinker” in colloquial German).
Developed at the University of Applied Sciences in Offenburg, the car – which is not pretty – does a solid Energizer bunny routine, going and going and going for 1631.5km (1013.77 miles) without needing to recharge the battery.
The test drive took place in Boxberg at the Bosch corporate test track, where a team of four drivers made the record run alongside a camera-equipped pace car. The 36 hour and 12 minute drive (which didn’t exactly break any EV speed records) was also monitored by European testing agents from TÜV Süd.
This world record follows the team’s successful participation in the South-African Solar Challenge 2010, in which the Schluckspecht drove 626.6km (389.35 miles) on public roads – farther (at the time) than any other electric vehicle.
The Schluckspecht boasts little in the way of creature comforts, a fact which helped reduce overall weight and was no doubt helpful during its record-setting drive. However, the engineering behind its design also played a large part in its success, as the Schluckspecht was built from the ground up specifically to chase battery-powered vehicle records in a lab belonging to Ms. Sunmin Lee from Pforzheim University. The body was shaped with “pure aerodynamics” in mind, and – since the vehicle makes use of two wheel-mounted hub-motors – without the need to accommodate an internal engine or transmission.
Source: Gas 2.0 (http://s.tt/132cX)
NRG Energy
Tweet Will moving to the new energy future – deploying Solar, Wind and other sustainable alternatives create 2.7 Million New Jobs?
At “How Cities and Companies Can Work Together to Operate in the New Energy-Constrained Economy” a panel discussion (press release), Bruce Katz, Vice President and Director of the Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings Institution, said “2.7 million new jobs” will be created in moving to the clean energy / low carbon economy.
Mr. Katz also noted that two out of three Americans – 200 million people – live in the 100 biggest metropolitan areas, and those 200 million people are responsible for 75% of our GDP. High carbon energy is no longer cheap. The people in those metropolitan areas, and elsewhere, therefore, must act. Continue reading
Brian Heater at Engadget reports (here) a $1,000 (USD) drop in the list price of the electric plug-in Chevrolet Volt. It’s roughly a two to three percent drop. What’s more likely to get 
sales going, economies of scale working, and prices down are large private and government fleet orders – or sharp increases in petroleum prices, or accurate news and information. We, at Popular Logistics think higher gasoline prices are inevitable.
“Chevy wants to know what it can do to get you into one of its plug-in hybrids today. A $1,000 price drop? You got it. The carmaker announced this week that the 2012 Volt base price will come in a grand lower than its predecessor, thanks to the sorts of additional configurations that come with increased availability.
The 2011 version was available in seven states and the District of Columbia and came in three configurations — 2012’s Volt is available nationwide in seven different packages, ranging from $39,995 to $46,265. And keep in mind that those prices don’t factor in potential tax credits. The latest version of the plug-in vehicle is available now for order and offers up features like MyLink media streaming, OnStar driving directions, and passive locking though the new base model does strip away a couple of features found in its predecessor. Also there’s the whole lessening your dependence on gasoline, if you’re into that sort of thing.”
via Engadget.
We think this is something that someone on every block ought to know how to do. If this were a distributed skill, it would entirely change, for the better, outcomes in grid failures. At Wired’s How-To.,– from Richard Factor, who we’ve read about before, on priups.com
Via the Autopia blog on Wired.com – “MIT Unveils 90 MPH Solar Race Car“, by Chuck Squatriglia:
MIT’s latest solar race car might look like a funky Ikea table with a hump, but don’t laugh. It’ll do 90 mph and is packed with technology that may end up in the hybrids and EVs the rest of us will soon be driving.
MIT Solar Team with “Eleanor”
The university’s Solar Electric Vehicle Team, the oldest such team in the country, unveiled the $243,000 carbon-fiber racer dubbed Eleanor on Friday and is shaking the car down to prepare for its inaugural race later this year. “It drives beautifully,” said George Hansel, a freshman physics major at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the team. “It’s fun to drive and quite a spectacle.”
Eleanor is slated to compete in the tenth World Solar Challenge, a seven-day race across nearly 2,000 miles of Australian outback.
See also Mr. Squatriglia’s 10 Best Songs About Cars.
A fun visual reminder that electric vehicles, clearly an element of our clean energy future, are already a mature technology, both for those designed as electric vehicles – and also for retrofits. Here’s a very small (and unreperesentative) sample grabbed from EVAlbum.com, which also has Classified ads , , FAQs and a generous set of categorized links – if you’re thinking about going electric, EVAlbum is a good place to start.
Following General Motors announcement of the Volt, Ford Motor Company has just announced two new hybrids for 2010: (Only 7 years after the first Priuses hit the streets!) The Ford Fusion Hybrid and the Mercury Milan Hybird. They will get 39 to 47 mpg, better than the Toyota Camry Hybrid and can operate in battery only mode. The world is changing.
