Green Car Advisor
Surveys
October 13, 2009
Volvo officials didn't have much to say about U.S. plans when they showed off their new C30-based electric car concept and a prototype plug-in, diesel-electric hybrid (right) in Sweden last month.
But the head of the automaker's U.S. operation confirmed in a recent interview what we've long suspected, that Volvo does plan to bring plug-in hybrids and diesels to this market at some point.
The big questions are when, and what about that EV? Both went unanswered in Volvo Cars North America CEO Doug Speck's interview with Automotive News.
Fuel prices, consumer interest and government support of the various advanced automotive technologies will drive Volvo's efforts, Speck said.
He repeated what Volvo told us last month - that the company's first pug-in hybrid would hit the market in Europe in 2012. He added that it will come to the U.S. sometime after that, and that Volvo diesels also would be sold here at some point.
It all makes sense - as does our suspicion that a Volvo EV won't be withheld from this market for too long once the company gives the go-ahead to a production project.
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Volvo showed off this C30 hatchback-based battery-electric prototype in Sweden last month.
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The U.S., after all, accounts for nearly a quarter of Volvo's sales and the company can't afford to withhold its newest and most advanced vehicles for very long.
Add to that the demands of the new U.S. CAFE rules which require average fleet fuel efficiency to hit 35 mph by 2020 and you can build a pretty good case for Volvo hybrids, diesels and EVs being sold here.
John O'Dell, Senior Editor
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- John O'Dell October 13, 2009, 11:30 AM
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- Diesel, Hybrid, Plug-ins and Electric, Surveys, Volvo
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July 30, 2009
Slated to last three months, it may have burned through its $1 billion budget in just one week.
By Scott Doggett, Contributor
The government plans to suspend its popular "cash for clunkers" program at midnight tonight - a full two months early and only one week into it - amid concerns the program could quickly use up the $1 billion in rebates alloted for new car purchases if it hasn't already.
U.S. Transportation Department representatives called lawmakers' offices earlier today to alert them to the decision to suspend the program at midnight, a congressional source said.
The Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) program offers owners of old cars and trucks $3,500 or $4,500 toward a new, more fuel-efficient vehicle. It is intended to boost auto sales and put safer, cleaner and more fuel-efficient vehicles on the nation's roadways.
The program, which Congress approved last month, kicked off last Friday and was heavily publicized by car companies and auto dealers.
As of tonight, the CARS Website showed that of the $1 billion allocated to the program, an estimated $779 million remained in the kitty. The remaining $221 million represented transactions that dealers had submitted for government reimbursement.
But dealers have raised concerns about large backlogs in the processing of the deals in the government system. Those concerns reportedly triggered the program's suspension.
According to an Associated Press story, a survey of 2,000 dealers by the National Automobile Dealers Association found about 25,000 deals had not yet approved by the government, or nearly 13 trades per store.
With about 23,000 dealers taking part in the program, auto dealers may already have surpassed the 250,000 vehicle sales funded by the $1 billion program.
So, is the program over already? Yes, if there indeed is no money in the till - or unless Congress decides to put more money in it.
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- Scott Doggett July 30, 2009, 7:03 PM
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- Emissions, Fuel Economy, Legislation, Surveys, Tax Incentives
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, Cash fort Clunkers, Congress, Department of Transportation, Fuel Economy, Fuel Efficient Cars
May 20, 2009
The Website AgricultureOnline is reporting that House Ag Committee Chair Collin Peterson is angry that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a framework for assessing the greenhouse-gas footprint of ethanol.
The Minnesota Democrat (left) has vowed to use his clout to crush the historic Waxman-Markey climate-change bill - unless Congress passes a bill that would revoke the EPA's proposed rules.
Last Thursday, the committee introduced a bill that prevents the EPA from holding U.S. ethanol and biodiesel responsible for deforestation of tropical jungles. The EPA has thrown so-called indirect land use into its first estimates of the carbon footprint of fuels.
That would make corn ethanol from new plants and much of the nation's soy-based biodiesel no longer eligible for federal mandates that require oil companies to use biofuels. The mandates, called the Renewable Fuel Standard in the 2007 Energy Bill, require the nation to use 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022.
The next day, Peterson told AgricultureOnline that he will work to defeat any climate-change legislation on the floor of the House of Representatives until his "Renewable Fuel Standard Improvement Act" becomes law. And he has let the House leadership know how he feels.
"I've told them I want this passed. I want it signed by the president before I'll support anything else," he told the Website Friday.
The Democrat has threatened to aid Republicans in shooting down Waxman-Markey, and said he thinks he might have enough votes to defeat the bill when the full House votes on it.
Continue reading...
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- Scott Doggett May 20, 2009, 2:48 PM
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- Biofuels, Emissions, Ethanol, Legislation, Surveys
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, Biofuels, Climate, Emissions, Ethanol Damage, Global Warming
November 2, 2008
By Scott Doggett, Contributor
You can't always get what you want, but if you've got a big pot of money and a sweet-sounding environmental pitch, chances are you can get a proposition on a state ballot. In California, anyway.
And if there's enough money left in the pot to pay for volleys of TV ads after you've paid the people who gathered the signatures needed to put the proposition on the ballot, odds are it will become state law. In California, anyway.
And, because California is such a trendsetting state, if your proposition becomes law there, it stands a good chance of becoming law in other states as well.
Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens knows this. It's why the Texas billionaire is bankrolling a proposition -- one that ostensibly would advance renewable energy and alternative fuels -- on California's November 4 general election ballot.
In truth, what it advances most is Picken's fortune -- while costing the state's taxpayers $10 billion.
To give you an idea of how little California can afford Pickens' proposition, consider that officials in Sacramento are expected to announce this coming week that the state's budget deficit has reached at least $10 billion.
The budget crisis is why Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson last month informing him that "California may need to turn to the Federal Treasury for short-term financing." A bailout, in other words.
At a time when the locomotive that drives America's economic train can least afford it, Pickens' initiative would nearly double California's deficit.
And despite the crushing cost the proposition would levy on all of the state's taxpayers, the ballot measure would benefit very few while throwing a tremendous amount of money behind an automotive fuel that isn't very green compared to other alternative fuels that could benefit from that kind of spending.
Continue reading...
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- Scott Doggett November 2, 2008, 10:46 AM
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, 2009 Honda Civic GX, Alternative Fuel, Arnold Schwarzenegger, California General Election, Carbon Dioxide, Climate Change, Diesel, Emissions, Fuel Economy, Fuel Efficiency, Greenhouse Gas, Natural Gas, Oil, Poll, Proposition 10, Solar Energy, Survey, T. Boone Pickens, Tax Incentives, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Wind Energy
October 8, 2008
Spurred by high fuel prices, 24 million Americans - or 11 percent of the country's adult population - are using buses, light rail or other forms of public transportation, according to a nationwide survey commissioned by HNTB Companies
and released today.
What's more, that number is expected to grow, as 16 percent of survey respondents said they expect their ridership on public transit to increase in the coming year.
Nearly one in three Americans surveyed said their biggest motivator to choose public transportation over driving would be high gas prices. Other motivating factors include convenience (14 percent), avoiding traffic (5 percent) and concern for the environment (4 percent).
The survey also found:
• More than twice as many men as women (15 percent versus 7 percent) say they're using public transit more often than a year ago.
• Nearly one in five young Americans (ages 18-34) have increased their public transit usage in the last year (19 percent); that's more than twice the number of Americans ages 35 and up who can make the same claim (8 percent).
• The average American who has public transportation available to them uses it once a week, in effect giving their car the day off.
• Nearly four in 10 Northeasterners (38 percent) use public transportation, more than any other region in the country.
• One in 10 Southerners says he or she does not have public transit where they live or work. That's twice the number of Northeasterners and Westerners (5 percent each), and nearly twice of those in the Midwest (6 percent).
The survey polled a random nationwide sample of 1,000 Americans Sept. 24-29. The survey was conducted by Kelton Research, which used an e-mail invitation and an online survey. Quotas are set to ensure reliable and accurate representation of the total U.S. population. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percent.
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- Scott Doggett October 8, 2008, 7:54 AM
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- Mass Transit, Surveys, Transportation Alternatives
August 18, 2008
Toyota has said it out loud, but apparently all the other major automakers are on board with the idea as well: everything's gonna be a hybrid before long.
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Sustainability concerns, social responsibility will double in importance in auto industry decision making over the next dozen years, study found.
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That's the message in a recent study by the IBM Institute for Business Value, which found that automakers, equipment suppliers and industry consultants overwhelmingly agree that by 2020 all new vehicles will feature some degree of hybridization.
The report, Automotive 2020: Clarity Beyond the Chaos, says that sustainability will be second on a rapidly greening auto industry's priority list , closely trailing -- and closely tied to -- technological progress.
The authors say that 125 industry executives representing 85 percent of the world's major auto industry companies -- including the 10 largest carmakers -- participated in the study.
They agreed that sustainability issues will drive investments and decision-making (what kinds of vehicles to build, what performance capabilities to stress, even what paints to use) for decades to come.
Battery technology - for hybrids and, some day, all-electric vehicles - will be foremost among the factors pushing the industry to innovate, the study says.
But the driver in first place, by a long shot, is us.
"Enlightened consumers will expect their vehicles to provide information, entertainment, safety and convenience. They will demand economy, environmental responsibility and sustainability," the authors write in their forward.
And woe to the automaker that doesn't listen.
John O'Dell, Senior Editor
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- John O'Dell August 18, 2008, 3:30 PM
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, IBM Institute for Business Value, Sustainability
August 4, 2008
Portland, Ore., encourages mass transit with convenience and cheap fares. It costs $2.05 for the 11-mile trip from downtown to the Portland International airport on the city's electric trains.
B
y
John O'Dell, Senior Editor
There are a lot of people trying to get us to give up on the ides of independent, personal transportation - i.e., the private automobile.
But I've come away from a two-day "Meeting of the Minds" program in Portland, Ore., with a new example of just how difficult it will be to kill the spirit of independence that has made ownership and use of private vehicles in the U.S. as sacrosanct as the right to vote.
The upshot of
the program
, convened to examine ways of making our cities more sustainable, was that we are rapidly approaching the point of no return - some pessimists believe we stepped over the threshold years ago.
Change Is Needed
We have got to make some radical and rapid changes in the way we approach transportation if we wants our urban core, indeed our entire society, to survive the 21st Century.
It was largely an urban planning and policy wonk crowd, so while there was some enthusiasm for hastening the arrival of plug-in hybrids, (Toyota Motor Co. was a principal sponsor) there was little discussion of other green transportation alternatives that would leave people with personal vehicles.
Instead, the focus was more on things that could be done to get us out of cars, or at least out of single-occupant cars, and into carpools, transit buses, trains and other means of mass transit.
Pay to Go
Suggestions abounded for carbon taxes, higher gasoline taxes, toll roads and other plans that would have us pay for the privilege of driving. Such disincentives probably would make most of us greener drivers, simply by making us cut down on the amount of driving we do in order to have a few bucks each month for things like food and rent.
I'm not opposed to such ideas - after all, if we don't change the way we do things, we sooner than later may not be able to do things at all.
Continue reading...
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- John O'Dell August 4, 2008, 9:23 AM
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, Mass Transit, Meeting of the Minds, Zipcar
July 28, 2008
If you think gasoline is expensive now, thank your creator that it's not 1920.
Back then, gas cost 20 cents a gallon - and it was no bargain at that price.
The average American made $1,500 in 1920, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
If, like many Americans today, you put 10,000 miles a year on your Model T back then and got 15 miles per gallon, you'd have spent $133 annually at the pump.
Or to put it another way, nearly 10 percent of your income was spent on gasoline.
So who could afford to put a lot of miles on a vehicle back then without thinking twice about gas prices? Babe Ruth for one.
In 1920, the Boston Red Sox traded him to the New York Yankees for $125,000. At the time, the sum was the largest ever paid for a player.
Scott Doggett, Contributor
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- Scott Doggett July 28, 2008, 9:24 AM
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- Ford, Fuel Economy, Hybrid, Plug-ins and Electric, Surveys
July 10, 2008
Mitsubishi Motors gave the nod today for production of a new compact crossover model based on the popular Concept-cX that debuted
at last September's Frankfurt Motor Show.
Featuring a family of Euro-5 clean-diesel engines -- including a new 1.8-liter 4-cylinder turbocharged engine that produces 134 horsepower and 207 pound feet of torque -- a high-efficiency turbocharger and a diesel-oxidation catalyst with particulate filter, the full-time AWD sub-Outlander compact will serve as the showcase vehicle for the automaker's coming enviro-friendly technologies.
The wedge-shaped compact sport utility vehicle will wear the "Jet Fighter" grille introduced with the all-new Lancer family and use a derivative of Outlander's 4-wheel-drive drivetrain. Mitsubishi says the crossover will be the missing link (or is that the "found link"?) between its SUVs and its passenger cars.
The first production model is expected to roll off the assembly line in late 2009. Whether that vehicle or any of its clones will be sold in the U.S. has yet to be decided.
Also unknown is how a group of esteemed green-car enthusiasts would respond if asked whether the grille is more characterist of, say, the gull-sucking air intake manifold of an F-4 Phantom II supersonic fighter-bomber or the gaping maw of a great white shark? There is no wrong answer, though we'll be bitterly disappointed if you pick gull-sucking air intake manifold of an F-4 Phantom II supersonic fighter-bomber.
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- Scott Doggett July 10, 2008, 11:18 PM
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- Auto Shows, Diesel, Emissions, Fuel Economy, Mitsubishi, Surveys
