Naming a car, even a concept car, is a process fraught with difficulty. Renault, for example, it taking flak for using the common (in France) female name Zoé for one of their new electric vehicle concepts. There are a few names that apply to both people and vehicles – Dakota and Sierra spring to mind – but this one has struck a nerve.

Sébastien Mortreux is leading an online petition drive asking Renault to change the Zoé's name to something a little less human. Guardidan columnist Zoe Williams (wonder why she got the assignment?) writes that Morteux's petition begins: "Our daughters have a beautiful first name that must not be associated with a car, so let us unite to bring pressure on a multinational which is going to destroy this pretty name for our children." Williams continues:

A Renault spokesman, Valerian David, replied to all the criticism with this: "It is a name that evokes values of femininity, of youth, a playful spirit and vivacity." I mean, even if that's true (I'm working tirelessly in the opposite direction), it is a signal of how shameless this manufacturer is to look its flesh-and-blood customers in the eye and say: "All those attractive traits of yours, all the things that make you you and make you alive, those things that people will recall with a tear during your funeral oration ... we're going to attach them to this prosaic heap of metal.

That's just one brilliant graph. We recommend her entire article.

[Source: Daily Mail, Guardian via Wired]

The big news in ethanol circles is the current debate over whether or not to raise the amount of the biofuel in the national gasoline supply from a maximum of 10 percent to 15. The EPA recently decided that December 1st deadline to make a decision wasn't set in stone and so pushed a decision back to June. The Automakers Alliance said it was a good idea to allow for more testing, but the Governors' Biofuels Coalition released a statement that not only expect and want the EPA to allow the blend increase but also want that decision to come quickly. Since 2005, the GBC has been calling for higher blends, all the way up to E20. That number is unlikely, given the all the problems that are being discovered using E15 on vehicles that were not designed with that fuel in mind. The GBC is also in favor of blend pumps, which would allow the customer to select the precise amount of biofuel being added to their gasoline at time of purchase.

[Source: Governors' Biofuels Coalition]

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While we were spending our time inside the LA Convention Center this week ogling the orange Audi e-tron, Autospies' Agent 001 wandered outside and snapped some pics of the red version of this powerful all-electric sports car on a nearby street. While the car itself is nothing new, this does give us some idea of what to expect when a production version e-tron arrives, supposedly sometime in 2012. The 3319 lb-ft of torque (well...) don't get to show off while the car is stationary, but at least it's clear this car can attract attention, even near a show filled with new and unusual vehicles. See more shots over at Autospies.

[Source: www.AutoSpies.com]

The CMT-380 was the surprise basement find of the LA Auto Show. After working on the car for four years, inventor Richard Hilleman was the man of the hour as he fielded questions about his unusual microturbine-lithium-ion hybrid powertrain fitted to a GTM Supercar kit body.

Hilleman has owned an electric vehicle – a converted Porsche 550 Spyder – for at 15 years and has constantly upgraded it. The EV used to have just 30 hp with lead acids but now uses lithium ferrous batteries and has 200 hp. The 100-mile range hasn't changed, though, and so he knew it was time to build a hybrid. He decided on Capstone's diesel microturbines as the range extender. He knew he could rely on them – they've been used in buses for years – but there was still the challenge of fitting the unit into a car like this. Hilleman built the CMT-380 just for himself, but Capstone is happy to show it off as a proof of concept vehicle. It would be too pricey to put into mass production (Hilleman estimated he put in about $375,000 hours of work), but it's not impossible that a high-end, expensive, limited production run could be made some day.

Right now, Hilleman is really happy with his creation. He especially loves the sound of the vehicle. Three feet to the side of the car, the microturbine puts out about 87 dB, but in the cabin, it's nearly silent. California law might require him to add a muffler, but it's already quiet enough without one. He's got a solution for that problem, should he need it.

Hilleman hasn't had a lot of time to actually drive the car – he just finished it last week – but he now has a EV hybrid that he can drive from the Bay Area to Las Vegas, just like he wanted. Check out the car in all its matte glory in the gallery below and listen to Hilleman talk about the journey to create the CMT-380 after the jump.


Live photos copyright ©2009 Sebastian Blanco / Weblogs, Inc.

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Jeremy Clarkson seems to hate anything that greens up or in any other way adds an eco label to his cars – and some environmentalists don't exactly appreciate the television host either – so it's with some amusement that we learn that the Top Gear team has named the Toyota Prius the "City Car of the Year." Turns out, the Prius really can appeal to almost everyone.

Clarkson was not specifically quoted in the Prius praise piece – remember, this is the guy who called Honda's Insight "Biblically terrible" and pretended to run out of energy in a Tesla Roadster – but his mates said the 2010 Prius gets "awesome numbers" of 60 mpg (U.S. gallons, as measured on the UK scale) and emits just 89 grams of C02 per km. And all this from "a proper family five-door hatch." BBC Top Gear Editor Conor McNicholas even called the third-gen model "something quite ground-breaking."



[Source: Toyota]

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How cool can a driver's seat headrest be? How about cool enough to charge your iPod while you drive? Or maybe the real cool feature is that a new, thinner headrest could, along with other lightweight interior parts from Faurecia, could shave 130 pounds off of a vehicle's weight. That is, if Faurecia's technologies are implemented in full by the target date of 2020.

Faurecia displayed some of its "clean" technologies at the LA Auto Show this week, including a lightweight and very thin seat (above, introduced earlier this year), a premium wood fiber called ligneos, and the aforementioned thin headrests. One way Faurecia makes the items smaller and lighter is by using biomaterials and natural fibers in the ligneos, ligneco, and lignolight products. In thin headrest prototype, the design drawing show that the back could have a light, coat hanger or iPod charger installed. While these sorts of things aren't being used in production vehicles yet, Faurecia says that "16 of the 20 most fuel efficient vehicles on the world market" already make significant use of the company's products.

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The Audi A3 TDI was named Green Car Journal's 2010 Green Car of the Year yesterday, and the magazine is already looking ahead to next month, when the Green Car Vision Award will be announced at the Washington Auto Show at the end of January. The five finalists for this award, given to cars that aren't available yet but show a lot of eco-promise, include the Nissan Leaf, Coda Automotive's electric sedan, the Ford Focus BEV, the Mercedes-Benz F-Cell and Toyota's plug-in Prius.

That's a pretty good selection, considering that some other suitable candidates were named as finalists last year, when the winner was the Chevy Volt (the others were: Mitsubishi i-MiEV, Honda FCX Clarity, Fisker Karma and MINI E). Looking over the list this year, what's is your pick for top dog? I'll go for the Leaf, but the Focus is an awful close second.



[Source: Green Car Journal]

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Here's a line from Mitsubishi's press release dated April 9, 2009:

Ending months of heightening speculation, Mitsubishi Motors North America President and CEO Shinichi Kurihara confirmed the i MiEV (Mitsubishi Innovative Electric Vehicle) is being developed for sale in world markets, including the United States.

Reading that, doesn't it seem that Mitsubishi is saying that the i-MiEV will be for sale in the U.S. someday? That's what we thought. Turns out, that's not exactly what Mitsubishi confirmed eight months ago, according to David Patterson, Mitsubishi R&D of America's chief engineer of mobile emissions, regulatory affairs and certification. When we took a spin in an i-MiEV with Patterson today, he said that he wishes Mitsubishi would confirm that the i-MiEV would someday go on sale in the U.S., and he's been pushing the company to just say it already. "What we announced in New York was that we would bring an electric vehicle to the United States. That's the announcement that I was able to convince them to make," he said.

Granted, in his speech yesterday, Masuko simply said that an electric vehicle would come to the U.S., and didn't say which model it would be."I think President [Osamu] Masuko wanted to make that [i-MiEV] announcement yesterday," Patterson said, but he believes that the company hasn't decided which electric vehicle they will sell here. At the very least, Patterson is confident that whatever vehicle we get, it'll be cool. "Trust me, it gets better than this [the i-MiEV]," he said.


Live photos copyright ©2009 Sebastian Blanco / Weblogs, Inc.

Our travel and lodging for this media event were paid for by the Auto Alliance.

Reading through Cleantech Group's "Ten Predictions for 2010," it's easy to dismiss their vision for plug-in vehicles next year as nearly impossible. You can read all ten predictions after the jump, but the sole vehicle-related items reads as follows: "Electric cars take the back seat to smart mobility." Um, nope.

Of all the years to predict that plug-in vehicles are going to be put on the back burner, 2010 is not going to be the one. It's tough to know exactly how Cleantech plans to measure the popularity of EVs vs. smart mobility (and, really, aren't EVs smart?), but media attention is certainly one way to judge which one is on top. And there is absolutely no way that, by the end of 2010, we will have had more news stories about careful driving than we will about the Volt, the Leaf and the like. Simply not going to happen. We're not saying that smart mobility won't be talked about in 2010, but EVs will clean its clock in the media. You can read Cleantech's 2009 predictions here.

[Source: Cleantech]

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At the LA Auto Show this morning, Audi's A3 TDI was crowned the 2010 Green Car of the Year, wresting the title away from last year's winner, the Volkswagen Jetta TDI. Even thought three hybrids made this year's list of finalists, the A3's win marks the second year in a row that a TDI diesel car took top honors in the Green Car Journal competition.

The judges selection kind of meshes with AutoblogGreen readers, who overwhelmingly picked the VW Golf TDI from the list of five finalists. The other contenders were the Honda Insight, the Mercury Milan Hybrid (we still don't get why this car beat out the better-selling and nearly identical Ford Fusion hybrid) and the Toyota Prius.

Each year, Green Car Journal picks the five finalists and then hands over selection duty to celebrity jurors (Jay Leno, Carroll Shelby, and the Sierra Club's Carl Pope, to name a few). During the award ceremony, Green Car Journal editor Ron Cogan said that the five finalists are notable because they are all mainstream vehicles that are available today. They exist because that's what the market is asking for. Whaddya think? Is the A3 TDI this year's rightful Green Car of the Year?


[Source: Green Car Journal]

Our travel and lodging for this media event were paid for by the Auto Alliance.

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