Green Car Advisor

Green Car Advisor http://blogs.edmunds.com/GreenCarAdvisor/  1995-2008 Edmunds.com, Inc. The contents of this feed are for non-commercial use only. Wed, 21 May 2008 22:05:05 GMT Web Crossing(r) Unix-v6.0 built May 6 2008 01:30:43 (source:1029 2008-05-05 23:05:11 -0700)/Unix-6.0 (http://webcrossing.com/) http://backend.userland.com/rss Mississippi State Wins Challenge X Competition Wed, 21 May 2008 22:05:01 GMT http://blogs.edmunds.com/GreenCarAdvisor/.eea77df http://blogs.edmunds.com/GreenCarAdvisor/.eea77df Scott Doggett <gotzip@gmail.com> Students from Mississippi State on Wednesday won the multiyear <A href="http://www.challengex.org">Challenge X competition</A>, topping a field of 17 university engineering teams selected to convert a small herd of Chevrolet Equinox SUVs into fuel-efficient vehicles equipped with unconventional powertrains. The engineering competition, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors, which makes the crossover SUV, sought to give students real-world engineering experience to better prepare them for careers in automotive engineering. It concluded Wednesday with an awards ceremony held at the end of a 350-mile road rally from Manhattan to Washington, D.C. More than 30 factors played a role in determining the winning team, but a premium was placed on improvements to fuel efficiency and tailpipe emissions. The Mississippi State team designed a through-the-road parallel hybrid diesel-electric vehicle powered by a 1.9-liter GM direct-injection turbo diesel engine fueled by B20 bio diesel. (A "through-the-road" is the most simple of parallel hybrids, whereby propulsion from an internal combustion engine drives one set of wheels and an electric motor drives the other.) The MSU Equinox achieved a 38 percent increase in fuel economy over the stock vehicle while the amount of its greenhouse-gas emissions decreased by 44 percent. The MSU vehicle managed to do this while improving its 0-60 miles per hour time by 1.6 seconds. University of Wisconsin students took second place with a similarly configured vehicle, and a team from Ohio State University was awarded third place for its power-split diesel-electric hybrid using the 1.9-liter GM engine. Challenge X launched in 2004 as a four-year program involving 17 student teams from accredited universities across North America... http://blogs.edmunds.com/.eea77df#cm Honda FCX Clarity Leasing To Begin In July Wed, 21 May 2008 19:05:34 GMT http://blogs.edmunds.com/GreenCarAdvisor/267 http://blogs.edmunds.com/GreenCarAdvisor/267 John O'Dell <jodell@edmunds.com> Honda FXC Clarity Honda Fuel Cell Electric Car Clarity Leasing Fuel Cell Fuel Economy Electric Car Clarity <img src="http://blogs.edmunds.com/.eea77b3/cmd.233/enclosure..eea77b4" align="texttop" height="271" width="430"> By John O'Dell,Senior Editor After keeping us guessing for months, Honda Motor Co. said today that it will begin leasing its much-anticipated FCX Clarity fuel-cell electric car in July. The company also said it will build an deliver about 200 of the futuristic cars during the "first three years" of production signaling that there will be more to come. Most of the cars are slated for the U.S., and all of those will be allocated in three regions of Southern California. American Honda said it has a list of more than 50,000 people who've asked to be considered for the rare leases, and has narrowed that to 500 peple who actually live in the designated regions. That makes the odds of getting one about 1 in 2 紡 whole lot better than the lottery. Slow to Roll Rollout looks to be rather slow though: The company said it will be leasing "several dozen" of the cars in the U.S. and Japan in each of the three years of the program. That works out to an average of 63 a year, although there's been no indication that leases will be that evenly spaced... http://blogs.edmunds.com/.eea77b9#cm New Honda Hybrids, More Fuel Efficiency Choices Wed, 21 May 2008 17:05:45 GMT http://blogs.edmunds.com/GreenCarAdvisor/265 http://blogs.edmunds.com/GreenCarAdvisor/265 John O'Dell <jodell@edmunds.com> Honda Compact Hybrid New Honda Hybrids FCX Clarity Fuel Efficiency Honda CR-Z Honda Toyota Prius By Scott Doggett and John O'Dell Expanding on an ambitious hybrid plan that has been <a href="http://blogs.edmunds.com/GreenCarAdvisor/173">openly talked about</a> for nearly a year now, Honda Motor Co.'s chief executive has confirmed that the company will introduce a new and affordable compact hybrid car early next year and will follow it with at least two other new hybrid models and an improved version of the <a href="http://automobiles.honda.com/civic-hybrid/">Civic Hybrid</a>. <img src="http://blogs.edmunds.com/.eea7785/cmd.233/enclosure..eea7786" align="left" height="110" width="215">One of the new Honda hybrids will be a sporty model based on the <a href="http://blogs.edmunds.com/Straightline/3619">CR-Z concept </a>(left) that the company showed in Tokyo last year. The other will be a hybrid version of the subcompact <a href="http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Drives/FirstDrives/articleId=122688">Fit,</a> already a popular gas-sipping member of the Honda lineup as a conventionally powered car. The company's plans will help broaden the U.S. hybrid market and provide additional fuel-efficient transportation choices for consumers as fuel prices continue climbing and political and economic pressure to reduce oil use grows. The first of the new hybrids will be, as Honda has long said, a new model that will be sold as a hybrid only -- echoing Toyota Motor Co.'s successful strategy that has helped make the <a href="http://www.toyota.com/prius-hybrid/">Prius </a>the world's best-selling hybrid. "It's very clear to see the Prius is a hybrid," Honda CEO and President Takeo Fukui said, complimenting Toyota for its marketing acumen. (Read Inside Line's Honda hybrids piece <a href="http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=126385">here</a>.) <img src="http://blogs.edmunds.com/.eea7781/cmd.233/enclosure..eea7782" align="left" height="144" width="215">The new Honda compact hybrid, as yet unnamed, will be a 5-passenger, 5-door (or hatchback) compact with styling derived from the company's <a href="http://blogs.edmunds.com/.eea0966">FCX Clarity </a>fuel-cell electric car (left), Fukui said at Honda's mid-term business meeting in Tokyo. Some auto critics have suggested that the distinctively styled Clarity borrows a few design cues from the Prius... http://blogs.edmunds.com/.eea7787#cm Toyota Plans 18 Low-Emissions Cars for Europe Wed, 21 May 2008 17:05:06 GMT http://blogs.edmunds.com/GreenCarAdvisor/225 http://blogs.edmunds.com/GreenCarAdvisor/225 Scott Doggett <gotzip@gmail.com> Toyota hybrids Europe Arashima Toyota Motor Corp. will offer 18 new or upgraded low-emissions models in Europe by the end of next year, a company executive said. The models to be launched include Toyota and premium Lexus brands as well as two hybrids, Tadashi Arashima, president and chief executive of Toyota's European operations, said Tuesday evening at an automotive congress in Turin, Italy. Arashima declined to give a precise sales forecast for the coming years. In 2007, the Japanese automaker's sales volume in Europe rose 10 percent to 1.2 million units, giving it a 5.6 percent share of the market. It has 15 models on European roads, including the gas-stingy Auris and Yaris small cars and the Prius gasoline-electric hybrid. Since Toyota launched the Prius a decade ago, it has sold more than 1 million, 100,000 of them in Europe. Scott Doggett, Contributor http://blogs.edmunds.com/.eea777d#cm Imagine: A Street-Legal, Human-Powered Car Wed, 21 May 2008 10:05:02 GMT http://blogs.edmunds.com/GreenCarAdvisor/191 http://blogs.edmunds.com/GreenCarAdvisor/191 John O'Dell <jodell@edmunds.com> Human-Electric Hybrid Human-Powered Car Chuck Greenwood Imagine LMV Street Legal HumanCar <IMG height=257 src="http://blogs.edmunds.com/.eea774a/cmd.233/enclosure..eea774b" width=430 align=textTop> Artist's rendering of HumanCar's people-powered Imagine LMV By Carol Moody, Contributor There's no debating gas prices are on the rise, obesity rates are bulging and the environment is suffering, what is debatable is whether a small car company with a unique human approach can do anything about it. Meet <A href="http://www.humancar.com">HumanCar</A>, an environmentally and health conscious car company you've probably never heard of -- although it's been around for 30 years A little background: HumanCar is an Oregon-based technology firm founded by the aptly named Charles Samuel Greenwood, whose roots are in automotive racing and design. He is the inventor and engineer of what he claims to be the world's first human-electric, plug-in hybrid automobile. His son, Chuck Greenwood, is the company's chief executive officer. HumanCar has three models: The FM4 "Troublemaker", a prototype, low-cost, street legal, "Low Speed Vehicle" the company hope to have in production by 2012; the Rod, a $95,500 hybrid-electric race car whose internal combustion engine is fueled by ethanol' and -- the one we're concerned with -- the Imagine LMV, or Low Mass Vehicle Imagine is the company's newest, and greenest, alternative vehicle. It's a four-seat, 400 pound human-electric hybrid requiring no fuel, except sweat, and little maintenance. Power comes from a pair of electric motors that run on juice generated from passengers "rowing" back and forth on T-shaped handles. That's how it rolls, literally... http://blogs.edmunds.com/.eea7751#cm Fuel Economy Forcing Pickup Market Shakeup Tue, 20 May 2008 20:05:07 GMT http://blogs.edmunds.com/GreenCarAdvisor/157 http://blogs.edmunds.com/GreenCarAdvisor/157 John O'Dell <jodell@edmunds.com> Pickup Truck Sales Full Size Pickup Compact Pickup Fuel Economy Gas Prices Ecoboost <IMG height=287 src="http://blogs.edmunds.com/.eea76ec/cmd.233/embedded..eea7701" width=430 align=textTop> Rising gas costs are moving market from pickups like this Ford F-150... <IMG height=273 src="http://blogs.edmunds.com/.eea76ec/cmd.233/embedded..eea7703" width=430 align=textTop> ...to compacts such as this Mahindra diesel from India, coming in 2009. By John O'Dell, Senior Editor What a difference a few bucks make. The full-size pickup truck, once the cash cow of the domestic auto industry, seems to be on the way, well, not out, but certainly down. They've become victim of soaring gas prices – although perhaps it would be more accurate to say they've been penalized by their own, inherent, fuel inefficiency. To help cope, Ford Motor Co., whose F-Series has been the best-selling line of full-size trucks for years, is considering a downsized version of its F-150, according to reports in the <A href="http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080520/AUTO01/805200362/1148 ">Detroit News</A> and the industry journal Automotive News. And General Motors Corp. is reconsidering the future of the big pickup n a market study aimed at forecasting demand for full-size pickups and SUVs four years from now. The study will help GM's product planners decide whether to continue pursuing the present shift toward fuel-efficient smaller vehicles and away from big trucks. Falling Fast Sales of full-size pickups in the U.S. are down almost 40 percent since 2005. While full-size trucks once were purchased mainly as work vehicles, they gained ascendancy in the late 1980s and throughout the '90s as an alternative to the family car or van for many. Ford, GM and Chrysler controlled the market it wasn't until the Nissan Titan debuted in 2003 that there was a significant import brand challenge and were able to rake in big profits as sales rose because they had long since amortized the cost of their trucks. Analysts estimated that, at the peak of market demand, when $35,000 and $40,000 pickups with navigation systems, leather upholstery and other luxury touches were selling as fast as the factories could roll them out, the Big Three automakers' averaged a $9,000 per truck profit... http://blogs.edmunds.com/.eea76ec#cm