If a $2,500 car from India isn't enough for automakers to worry about, Tata Motors now says it will develop an all-electric vehicle to compete in the upcoming automotive X-Prize competition.

The contest, underwritten by Progressive Insurance, is offering a $10 million purse to contestants who can come up with a new car that is suitable for mass production and can achieve fuel economy equivalent to 100 miles per gallon or better. Entrants also have to have a business plan for making and marketing their vehicle.

Organizers hope the competition will showcase viable alternatives to the internal combustion engine as well as technologies that improve ICE performance and reduce emissions.

Tata, best known for the four-seat Nano "people's car" that it introduced at the New Dehli auto show earlier this year and has said will sell for the equivalent of $2,500, actually plans to enter two vehicles in the Progressive Insurance Automotive X-Prize competition, the Santa Monica-based X-Prize Foundation said this morning.

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As if melting polar icecaps and species extinctions weren't enough, a new study warns that tailpipe emissions threaten our legs, too.

The study, published Tuesday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, says that even modest rises in particulate air pollution (think burning fossil fuels, especially diesel) increase the risk of developing blood clots in leg veins.

The researchers found that just a 10-micrometer-per-cubic-meter increase in particulates -- about the difference between Pittsburgh air and cleaner Anchorage air -- can raise the risk by 70 percent.

Scientists have long advised against exercising on smoggy days, and this study doesn't change that advice. Americans check air quality on a county-by-county basis via the Environmental Protection Agency's AirCompare website.

Scott Doggett, Contributor

Gorton Vallely stands with his company's prototype battery-electric, medium-duty truck at Alternative Fuel Vehicles show.

LAS VEGAS, Nevada --The Detroit Auto Show this year had a herd of diesel concepts, a few hybrids and a host of muscle cars, typical fare these days for a mainstream auto show.

Absent was much of anything to do about other "today" alternatives to gasoline, leading people who are concerned about the auto, the energy sector and the environment to wonder what the automakers are up to and why they aren't moving faster to throw off the yolk of demon oil.

Can't answer that question. If I could I'd be out making millions as a highly paid consultant and seer instead of sitting in front of my computer in a 'Vegas hotel room overlooking the scenic roof of the power plant that keeps the casino chilled.

But I can suggest that for every innovation we don't see coming from our mass market automakers there's a small business out there somewhere hoping to offer up a solution.

Many of them are serving the fleet business – the trucking, bus and taxi companies that buy lots of relatively expensive equipment, are subject to strenuous emissions regulation in most states and bleed profits every time the price of gasoline or diesel goes up even a penny a gallon.

Walk around the showroom floor at the annual Alternative Fuel Vehicles national conference here this week and you see that can do spirit everywhere.

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By Robert E. Calem, Contributor

General Motors Corp. says it has achieved a new milestone in the development of an experimental fuel combustion technology called homogenous charge compression ignition, and can now operate an HCCI engine at much lower speeds than previously possible.

HCCI technology mimics a diesel engine, igniting a mixture of fuel and air by compressing it in the cylinder, but it works with gasoline like a traditional spark ignition engine.

And unlike either of those other engine technologies, HCCI burns the fuel at a low temperature and throughout the entire combustion chamber – yielding the power of a gasoline engine and the torque of a diesel with greater fuel economy and lower carbon dioxide emissions than either.

GM, which previously was unable to operate an experimental engine in HCCI mode at speeds below 15 miles per hour,  demonstrated operation in the fuel-saving mode at idle this week in a specially modified Saturn Aura test vehicle.

Demonstrations in Washington, D. C. and White Plains, N.Y., also marked the first time journalists were permitted to drive a vehicle with an HCCI engine on public streets.

The prototype engine operates in both HCCI and regular spark-ignition modes, but did not operate in HCCI mode at idle when initially demonstrated to the press last August at a GM test track.

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By Scott Doggett, Contributor

If a seven-man contingent representing the biggest automakers thought they could talk California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger into terminating his campaign to force them to meet California's stringent fuel-efficiency standards, they were sadly mistaken.
 
Following a private, 45-minute meeting Thursday  with executives from Toyota, General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and BMW, the governor has released a statement that reads, in part:
 
“... I made it clear to the automakers that California will not back down in the fight to protect our own environment by regulating pollution that causes global warming. We will continue to press the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to grant our request for a waiver, and we will use legal remedies if they fail to do so.
 
“Hiding behind the federal government's proposed CAFE standards won't work, and it won't effectively reduce the pollution that causes global warming. In fact, I believe the federal government should adopt California's model; with 13 other states on board, we are heading in the right direction,” Schwarzenegger said.
 
Schwarzenegger referred to the EPA's denial of a waiver that would allow California to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from vehicles sold in the state – regulations that are more stringent than the federal government's.

 If California receives the waiver – and the three major presidential candidates have all said they support the request, which the Bush Administration sat on for two years before denying – at least 13 other states would adopt or are considering adopting California's tailpipe-emissions rules.
 
Calls placed to the Michigan and Sacramento offices of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which sent representatives to the meeting, went unanswered.
 
The following industry representatives attended the meeting: Troy Clarke, president of General Motors North America and chairman of the Alliance; James Lentz, president of Toyota Motor Sales, USA; James Press, vice chairman and president of Chrysler; Jim O’Donnell, president and chief operating officer, BMW North America; Ziad Ojakli, vice president of government and community relations, Ford Motor Company; David Geanacopoulos, vice president and general counsel, Volkswagen of America; and Dave McCurdy, president and chief executive officer of the Alliance.
 
Schwarzenegger's entire statement can be read at the governor's website. 

By John O'Dell, Senior Editor

The idea of spending less on gas seems to be driving far more people into the green car ranks than the idea that you are doing something good for the planet and those who occupy it.

We can see this pretty clearly in the astonishing growth of small car sales in the U.S. – hardly anyone was buying them a few years ago and last month they accounted for a record 22.6 percent of the new car market, according to Edmunds.com's market analysts.

Meantime, large trucks' market share plunged to just 11 percent, down from a high three years ago of 19 percent.

Small used to mean cheap. Now it means fuel efficient (although not all small cars are particularly miserly with gas). And as compacts and subcompacts continue to capture market share, look for automakers to start piling high-margin luxury goodies into their small cars as they seek ways to replace the profits they used to book from truck sales.

Hybrids Rising Too

We can also see concern about fuel prices in the steady rise of hybrid sales – they accounted for a record 3.2 percent of the market in April, with Toyota's Prius the month's 10th best-selling model of any type.

That hybrids are increasing their market penetration even though they cost more than comparably equipped conventional versions of the same models (except the Toyota Prius, which has no conventional counterpart) is testimony to people's desire to pare their fuel bills.

Just a year or so ago, the Prius was the only hybrid with a reasonable chance of providing sufficient fuel savings to pay back the so-called hybrid premium – the price a hybrid purchaser pays to get a car or SUV with two powertrains and enough complex electronics to make a NASA engineer jealous.

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Ford Motor Co. said Wednesday that it plans to double by the end of next year the number of fuel-saving six-speed automatic transmissions it is putting in its vehicles.

The new front-wheel-drive 6-speed transmission offers 4 percent to 6 percent better fuel economy, improved acceleration and smoother shifting than four- and five-speed automatics, Ford said in a statement on its website.

The Dearborn-based automaker said the new transmissions will debut early next year in the 2009-model Ford Escape and Mercury Mariner crossover SUVs, their sibling '09 Mazda Tribute, and two unidentified vehicles.

Ford said it plans to use the advanced transmission, which will be made at its Sterling Heights, Mich., plant, in 98 percent of its North American vehicles by 2012.

Ford Vice President Barb Samardzich, head of the company's North American transmission operations, said the new transmissions are key to Ford's plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions form its vehicles by 30 percent by 2020.

The announcement comes five months after Ford unveiled a direct-injection technology it calls EcoBoost that will enable the gasoline-powered cars and trucks that use it to deliver up to 20 percent better fuel economy with 15 percent fewer carbon-dioxide emissions than versions equipped with standard fuel-injected engines of similar output.

Scott Doggett, Contributor

Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the governor's office, easily overlooked while overlooking and overhearing all.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who last year told the Big 3 automakers to "Get off your butt" and meet the state's tailpipe emissions regulations, is scheduled to sit down with representatives from Ford, General Motors, Chrysler and Toyota at the state Capitol in Sacramento Thursday.

The meeting, at the automakers' request, comes just two weeks after 12 governors, led by Schwarzenegger, threatened legal action against the Bush administration for trying to prohibit states from setting automotive emissions limits.

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German auto parts giant Continental Corp. says it has developed a new piezo-electric fuel injector system for diesels that can help lower fuel consumption and reduce emissions of the nitrogen oxides that now require expensive exhaust treatment.

"When considering the overall cost of engine production, the new injector offers further potential savings by simplifying other emissions-related components such as sensors and control algorithms," said Wendelin Klügl, Continental's senior vice president for powertrain systems and technology.

"Even vehicles in higher weight categories will now meet the Euro 6 emissions standard without nitrogen oxide after-treatment," he said.  The Euro 6 standard permits almost twice the nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions from diesels than does the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Tier II emissions standard, which is to be fully implemented next year.

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In a move with national implications, carpool lanes on some of Los Angeles County's busiest freeways will be converted into toll lanes if a pilot program aimed at boosting speeds on sluggish freeways and improving the county's public bus service receives a green light from state lawmakers and transportation officials.

The plan, which would convert up to 85 miles of carpool lanes into toll lanes by the end of 2010, is eligible for $213 million in federal congestion reduction grants, U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said today at a press conference in Los Angeles.

The tolls are designed to enforce congestion pricing, a strategy intended to make freeways more expensive during peak traffic times so commuters will share rides and noncommuters will stay off the roads during rush hour. Studies have shown that up to 70 percent of commuters in L.A. County drive solo to work.

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