We Obsessively Cover the Green Scene…

Last November, the Boise State University student team called Greenspeed broke the land speed record for a truck (in its class) that uses vegetable oil with a run of 155 miles per hour. Now, they're confidently ready to go after the faster, dirtier, petroleum-powered trucks.

To get that record, the modified 1998 Chevrolet S-10 pick-up truck – which has a dual-fuel powertrain that burns both regular diesel to start and then straight vegetable oil – will need to go faster than 215 miles per hour. The Greenspeed team announced its intent at the Washington Auto Show last week and hopes to set the new record during Speedweek at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah this August.

Even though the team of students is filled with confidence, the truck has not exactly been put through the on-road ringer. Thus far, it's only driven about 4.5 miles burning SVO, since it only does so on the test track. The 155-mph record was set on a 1.3-mile dry lakebed called El Mirage in the Mojave Desert at a Southern California Timing Association race. That short distance is also why the team is confident it can hit 215 mph. At Bonneville, the 780 horsepower powertrain will have three miles to really get going.

Idaho Senator James Risch (R) came by during the show to stand on a piece of Boise State's famous blue turf and congratulate the team. He said that, "This is one way we can move away from dependence on oil and to a self-sustaining nation." This may be true, but Sen. Risch still supports importing more fossil fuels into the U.S.

Watch a short video of the team being interviewed after the jump.

Last week, Nissan last week deployed a partially solar-powered ship for shipments of its Nissan Leaf battery electric vehicle throughout Japan.

Nissan's "Roro" ship, which made its maiden voyage January 27, has 281 solar panels on its deck, making the vessel the first in Japan to use photovoltaic panels as a power source. The ship, which also uses light-emitting diode (LED) lighting to save energy, can hold as many as 1,380 cars and will be used for the 1,100-mile round trip between Oppama Wharf, near Yokohama, and the southern Japan island of Kyushu.

With the solar panels in tow, the Roro's CO2 emissions are about 18 percent lower than a conventional ship, Nissan said in a statement. At two trips a week, that translates to more than 1,300 tons of fuel saved a year. The ship is about 450 feet long and took four years to build, Nissan said. To see a video on the ship, go here. Nissan previously put the City of St. Petersburg into operation, a more fuel-efficient way to move its cars around Europe and the UK.

Ford Motor Co. said it will cut landfill waste from its European factories by 70 percent and reduce water use by 30 percent within five years, all part of a plan the U.S. automaker has to cut its overall environmental footprint.

The water reduction alone – 1.3 billion liters a year, or about 1,100 liters per vehicle produced – will cut Ford's costs by about $3 million, the automaker said in a statement Tuesday. Meanwhile, each vehicle will generate about three pounds of landfill waste in 2016, down from about 11 pounds last year.

Ford is targeting factories in the UK, Spain, Germany and Belgium for such improvements. Ford of Europe has already cut landfill waste by 40 percent and water use by 37 percent in the past four years.

Earlier this month, General Motors put out its first sustainability report since emerging from bankruptcy in 2009 and said it met many of its goals to reduce its environmental impact and carbon footprint by cutting landfill use, boosting recycling efforts and reducing water use. Specifically, GM said more than 80 of its plants are landfill-free, while the automaker's factories recycle 92 percent of its waste.

What's next, Tom and Jerry vs. PETA?

"The Muppets" characters Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy are going toe to toe with Fox News after the news organization accused "The Muppets" movie of peddling liberal-backed, anti-oil messages to unsuspecting children.

Speaking in a press conference following the movie's London premiere, Frog and Piggy denied that the Walt Disney-released movie, which debuted in the U.S. in late November, was pushing a Hollywood-backed, anti-conservative, anti-oil message.

"They were concerned about us having some prejudice against oil companies, and I can tell you that's categorically not true," said Kermit in the conference. "Besides, if we had problems with oil companies, why would've we spent the entire film driving around a gas-guzzling Rolls-Royce?"

The movie, which stars Jason Seigel and Amy Adams and features the Muppet characters that actually debuted on the first-ever Saturday Night Live broadcast in 1975, includes an evil oil executive character named Tex Richman. Fox Business's "Follow the Money" used that story line as a springboard to accuse the film as being pro-liberal.

"It's amazing how far the left will go to stoop to manipulate your kids to convince them, to give the anti-corporate message," said Media Research Center's Dan Gainor, speaking with Fox Business "Follow the Money" host Eric Bolling in December. "The only thing green up on that screen should be Kermit the Frog."

To this, Miss Piggy had the perfect response: "It's almost as laughable as accusing, uh, Fox News as, uh, being news. If they take what I say seriously, they've got real big problems." See for yourself after the jump.

What's the biggest compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicle order that GM has ever received? Thanks to an announcement yesterday from the automaker and AT&T, we now know the answer is 1,200 vehicles.

That's how many Chevrolet Express Cargo Vans AT&T will get from The General. The dozen hundred vehicles will go into service across the country and are part of AT&T's much larger initiative to green up its fleet. From electric vans to other electric vans to hybrids, the company has invested in a variety of alternative powertrain vehicles. It pretty much has to look at many options if it wants to reach its target of deploying 15,000 alternative power vehicles by 2018. This $545-million project started in 2009; the 5,000th vehicle joined the fleet last week.

The 1,200 new GM vans are all Chevrolet Express models that have been built at the factory to burn CNG in their Vortec 6.0L V8 engines. GM says the modifications include "hardened exhaust valves, and intake and exhaust valve seats for improved wear resistance and durability with gaseous fuel systems." The fuel may burn cleaner than gasoline, but these are still fuel-hungry monsters that get a gasoline-equivalent fuel economy of 11 miles per gallon (city) and 16 mpg (highway), according to previous statements from GM, which also indicated the CNG versions cost an extra $14,590 compared to regular gas vans.

AT&T's order is the latest in a bit of an upsurge in CNG vehicles in America and around the world. The Honda Civic Natural Gas won the 2012 Green Car of the Year award at last year's LA Auto Show and is the first passenger car to be available in all 50-states. CNG has long been more popular in the fleet market than in general use, since fleet managers can calculate the cost benefits fairly easily, just ask Waste Management or the AT&T of last March, which ordered 100 CNG-powered Chevy Express vans. If everything goes as planned, AT&T should have around 8,000 CNG vehicles in its fleet sometime this decade.

Some notable dates for Toyota and/or hybrid fans:

• 1997: Toyota introduces its first production hybrid vehicle, the Prius
• August 2010: Toyota sells on millionth hybrid in Japan.
• May 2011: Toyota sells one millionth Prius hybrid in the U.S.
• June 2011: The two-millionth hybrid is sold in the U.S.
• As of today, Toyota has sold over 3.5 million hybrids around the world.

Thinking about those seven-digit numbers might make Toyota's recent bit of news – that it has now sold over 400,000 hybrids in Europe – seem a bit lackluster, especially given that the company introduced its first hybrid there 12 years ago. Still, we have to put things in perspective. Each market is different, and Europeans most certainly choose passenger cars with diesel powertrains at a much higher rate than they do in either the U.S. or Japan.

As it is doing in other areas, Toyota is expanding its hybrid range in Europe with more models, specifically the Prius Plus (known as the Prius V in the U.S.) and the Yaris Hybrid. Toyota already offers the standard Prius, now called the Liftback, and an Auris Hybrid on the Continent. With moves like these, Toyota's goal of selling a million hybrids a year is quickly coming into view.

Never a company to hesitate when it comes to self-promotion, Tesla Motors has released a new video touting the upcoming Model S. Just a few minutes long, the video features Tesla's chief designer, Franz Von Holzhausen, and George Blankenship, Tesla's VP of sales and ownership experience (and former Apple retail strategist) speaking no evil about the all-electric vehicle.

The two men talk about how the Model S takes the idea of a car decades into the future, thanks to the wildly open design options that an electric powertrain gives you. Filled with close-up shots of the car and clips of it running down the road, we hear how great the car drives and how the company is "growing more excited every day to deliver this revolutionary car to our customers."

Yes, we've seen similar videos before, but now that we're living firmly in Tesla's "Year of Model S," it's a pretty safe bet we'll get more of the same before too long. You can watch the latest after the jump.

GM sells Buick smartphone app game that simulates fuel-efficient driving

Remember the car-racing video games you played as a kid? Think of this as the opposite.

General Motors is looking to raise consumer awareness of the hybrid drivetrains on its Buick LaCrosse and Regal by selling three Buick-branded smartphone application games that reward players for "driving" in a more fuel-efficient manner.

GM's free Buick eAssist Fuel Efficiency games, which are being sold for both iPhone and Android phone users, challenges the players to drive their Buicks to a particular location without running out of gas from a heavy foot. The games highlight eAssist features such as its regenerative braking system, which stores energy created through braking that can be used to propel the car. Buick's $30,820 LaCrosse (see Autoblog's test drive review here) has a hybrid system that helps the approximately 3,900-pound car get 25 miles per gallon in the city and 36 miles per gallon highway.

Buick's eAssist system which mates a 182-horsepower 2.4-liter Ecotec four-cylinder gasoline direct-injection engine with an electric motor that can deliver an additional burst of up to 15 hp during acceleration while shutting the engine down when not in motion. The eAssist system is also available on the 2012 Buick Regal.

http://green.autoblog.com/2011/04/01/2012-buick-lacrosse-eassist-quick-spin-review/
http://www.autoblog.com/buick/lacrosse/
http://www.autoblog.com/buick/regal/GM sells Buick smartphone app game that simulates fuel-efficient driving

Remember the car-racing video games you played as a kid? Think of this as the opposite.

General Motors is looking to raise consumer awareness of the hybrid drivetrains on its Buick LaCrosse and Regal by selling three Buick-branded smartphone application games that reward players for "driving" in a more fuel-efficient manner.

GM's free Buick eAssist Fuel Efficiency games, which are being sold for both iPhone and Android phone users, challenges the players to drive their Buicks to a particular location without running out of gas from a heavy foot. The games highlight eAssist features such as its regenerative braking system, which stores energy created through braking that can be used to propel the car. Buick's $30,820 LaCrosse (see Autoblog's test drive review here) has a hybrid system that helps the approximately 3,900-pound car get 25 miles per gallon in the city and 36 miles per gallon highway.

Buick's eAssist system which mates a 182-horsepower 2.4-liter Ecotec four-cylinder gasoline direct-injection engine with an electric motor that can deliver an additional burst of up to 15 hp during acceleration while shutting the engine down when not in motion. The eAssist system is also available on the 2012 Buick Regal.

http://green.autoblog.com/2011/04/01/2012-buick-lacrosse-eassist-quick-spin-review/
http://www.autoblog.com/buick/lacrosse/
http://www.autoblog.com/buick/regal/GM sells Buick smartphone app game that simulates fuel-efficient driving

Remember the car-racing video games you played as a kid? Think of this as the opposite.

General Motors is looking to raise consumer awareness of the hybrid drivetrains on its Buick LaCrosse and Regal by selling three Buick-branded smartphone application games that reward players for "driving" in a more fuel-efficient manner.

GM's free Buick eAssist Fuel Efficiency games, which are being sold for both iPhone and Android phone users, challenges the players to drive their Buicks to a particular location without running out of gas from a heavy foot. The games highlight eAssist features such as its regenerative braking system, which stores energy created through braking that can be used to propel the car. Buick's $30,820 LaCrosse (see Autoblog's test drive review here) has a hybrid system that helps the approximately 3,900-pound car get 25 miles per gallon in the city and 36 miles per gallon highway.

Buick's eAssist system which mates a 182-horsepower 2.4-liter Ecotec four-cylinder gasoline direct-injection engine with an electric motor that can deliver an additional burst of up to 15 hp during acceleration while shutting the engine down when not in motion. The eAssist system is also available on the 2012 Buick Regal.

http://green.autoblog.com/2011/04/01/2012-buick-lacrosse-eassist-quick-spin-review/
http://www.autoblog.com/buick/lacrosse/
http://www.autoblog.com/buick/regal/GM sells Buick smartphone app game that simulates fuel-efficient driving

Remember the car-racing video games you played as a kid? Think of this as the opposite.

General Motors is looking to raise consumer awareness of the hybrid drivetrains on its Buick LaCrosse and Regal by selling three Buick-branded smartphone application games that reward players for "driving" in a more fuel-efficient manner.

GM's free Buick eAssist Fuel Efficiency games, which are being sold for both iPhone and Android phone users, challenges the players to drive their Buicks to a particular location without running out of gas from a heavy foot. The games highlight eAssist features such as its regenerative braking system, which stores energy created through braking that can be used to propel the car. Buick's $30,820 LaCrosse (see Autoblog's test drive review here) has a hybrid system that helps the approximately 3,900-pound car get 25 miles per gallon in the city and 36 miles per gallon highway.

Buick's eAssist system which mates a 182-horsepower 2.4-liter Ecotec four-cylinder gasoline direct-injection engine with an electric motor that can deliver an additional burst of up to 15 hp during acceleration while shutting the engine down when not in motion. The eAssist system is also available on the 2012 Buick Regal.

http://green.autoblog.com/2011/04/01/2012-buick-lacrosse-eassist-quick-spin-review/
http://www.autoblog.com/buick/lacrosse/
http://www.autoblog.com/buick/regal/ Remember the car-racing video games you played as a kid? Think of this as the opposite.

General Motors is looking to raise consumer awareness of the hybrid drivetrains on its Buick LaCrosse and Regal by offering three Buick-branded smartphone application games that reward players for "driving" in a more fuel-efficient manner.

GM's free Buick eAssist Fuel Efficiency games, which are available for both iPhone and Android phone users, challenge the players to drive their Buicks to a particular location without running out of gas from a heavy foot. The games highlight eAssist features such as its regenerative braking system, which stores energy created through braking that can be used to propel the car. Buick's $30,820 LaCrosse (see Autoblog's test drive review here) has a hybrid system that helps the approximately 3,900-pound car get 25 miles per gallon in the city and 36 mpg on the highway.

Buick's eAssist system mates a 182-horsepower 2.4-liter Ecotec four-cylinder gasoline direct-injection engine with an electric motor that can deliver an additional burst of up to 15 horsepower during acceleration while shutting the engine down when not in motion. The eAssist system is also available on the 2012 Buick Regal.

Coda Automotive will finally start selling its battery-electric sedan by the end of February, Coda CEO Phil Murtaugh told the Detroit News.

The Los Angeles-based company will soon have five dealers – one in San Diego, one in the San Francisco Bay Area and three others in locations that haven't been disclosed – the newspaper said, adding that Coda plans to have 40 dealers in 25 cities by year end. The company hasn't disclosed how many vehicles it plans to sell this year.

The company, which opened its Los Angeles headquarters in November, said last September that it raised $147 million in its fourth round of financing to bring its total to more than $300 million since the company's 2009 founding. Coda will sell its 150-mile-range Sedan for $39,900 and said earlier this month that it would offer a version with a slightly shorter range for $2,650 less.

Coda Automotive parent company Coda Holdings said last week that it would launch a division specializing in energy storage, as the company looks to cash in on what many believe will be a rapidly growing market for secondary use of electric-vehicle batteries. The new company, Coda Energy, will specialize in designing battery systems that may be used for on-site power supply as well as a backup power source in the event of a grid outage. Coda has an existing business partnership with its car-battery supplier Lishen, which also makes lithium-ion batteries for companies such as Apple and Samsung.

Today's early-adopter owners of plug-in vehicles are known to have a tendency to geek out on data related to their low-carbon rides and now there's a new app that helps them get even geekier. And share the results. GreenCharge by Xatori – the same folks behind the popular PlugShare app – syncs up with your Nissan Leaf or Chevy Volt and spits out info about everything from battery state-of-charge to how much money you are saving by driving on electrons.

Available now for the Apple iPhone, iPad and, iPod Touch for $9.99 (calm down, Google fans, an Android version is coming soon), the app offers functions and functionality automakers don't quite get right. For instance, the infamous Leaf state-of-charge reading. The car expresses how much energy is in your battery in miles remaining, which changes constantly depending on a wide variety of factors. You can find the preferred percentage reading on the Leaf app but you have to pull out your phone, open the app and wait for it to pull the information from the vehicle. GreenCharge collects this data every five minutes and displays it on your gadget's desktop, saving you the frustrating wait. Nice, eh?

Another touted feature is the savings calculator. Drawing from prices in your area, it tells you how much money you're saving by driving electric and keeps a record so you can look at the numbers broken down in daily, weekly or monthly increments. You can then share your savings with friends via Facebook, Twitter or email and perhaps encourage them to consider the benefits of going gas-free.

You can find the download link to the Apple's iStore at the GreenCharge website. For even more details, hit the jump for a short video along with the official press release.

Owning an electric car with a reasonable range could be a very practical solution for many drivers. After all, pulling into the garage at the end of the day and plugging in your car can be a huge time saver if it means you can forgo the gas pump, not to mention the potential environmental benefits. That is, if you have access to a plug.

As we recently found out after driving a 2011 Nissan Leaf for a week, the availability of electrical outlets can be a major downer on EV ownership. Our test car spent a week in the Phoenix, AZ area, and was parked overnight in a covered parking garage. No problem, since there were indeed unused outlets in the structure, so we could plug it in. Except that we couldn't.

It seems the property management company that oversees the garage decided that electric cars were not allowed to draw power. The problem, as so often is the case, came down to monetary concerns. It seems that, without having a way to measure how much power was being consumed by the electric car, management decided it could not accurately charge the driver for any electricity consumed. This is despite the fact that the garage serves a building with tenants that pay the electricity bill.

We understood the monetary aspects involved, so we offered to pay the property management company a fee of their choosing (after jointly considering local rates) to use an outlet for a week, which was declined. The end result? We charged the Leaf at the nearest local Nissan dealer free of charge.

It turns out ours wasn't an isolated issue. According to a report from TheTruthAboutCars.com, at least one Chevrolet Volt owner in Ontario, Canada has been blocked from charging his car in his unit's parking garage unless he installs his own separate charging system. Interestingly enough, something similar also happened to Derek Kreindler, who wrote the story for TTAC.

We don't really see an easy solution to this problem, so we suggest speaking to your property management company, if applicable, before signing on the electrified dotted line... or at least know where your nearest fast charger is located.

Ener1, a maker of lithium-ion batteries for electric-drive vehicles and a major investor in now-bankrupt electric-vehicle maker Think, has gone bankrupt itself.

Ener1, which was also making batteries for the Norwegian automaker, said late last week that as much as $81 million in debt will be restructured (see below) as part of its Chapter 11 filing. The company's stock was de-listed from the Nasdaq stock exchange in December.

New York-based Ener1 appears to have been pulled down by the failure of Think, which in September 2009 received a $118.5 million grant from the U.S. government but which still went bankrupt last June. Ener1 last August had to restate its 2010 losses to $165 million from $69 million because of the failure of Think. Think has since been acquired by a group headed by Russian investor Boris Zingarevich, who is also a major investor in Ener1.

Ener1 last September announced changes to its senior leadership team, including the resignation of Charles Gassenheimer, the man formerly in charge as the Chief Executive Officer of Ener1. The president of Ener1 and CEO of EnerDel, Christopher Cowger, replaced Gassenheimer as CEO.

UPDATE: We received the following clarification from Westcomm, doing PR for Ener1:

The story mentions that the company stated that as much as $81 million in debt would be restructured as part of the filing. The $81 million is actually the amount of equity funding the company will receive after exiting bankruptcy. It is outlined in the third paragraph of the press release.

Also, the reporting regarding the grant has a slight error.

Below are some points that will help clarify the situation:

• Ener1 is the parent company of several subsidiaries, including EnerDel.
• EnerDel, not Ener1 was awarded the Department of Energy (DOE) grant. To date, EnerDel has received 50/50 cost-share reimbursements of approximately $55 million, for which it had to originally invest $55 million of its own funds.

In the wake of last week's bruising hearing on Capitol Hill about the safety of the Chevrolet Volt, which itself followed an investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that concluded plug-in vehicles do not "pose a greater risk of fire than gasoline-powered vehicles," former General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz has written a column for Forbes that strikes back against the media (especially conservatives) who are attacking the car he thought would be one of his most important legacies.

Politicians and members of the media on the right, from Mitt Romney to Neil Cavuto, have talked smack about the Volt, and Lutz says this "has attracted my attention and ire." In typical Lutz fashion, he doesn't mince words, writing:

The Oscar for totally irresponsible journalism has to go to The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News, with, as its key guest, Lou Dobbs. Amid much jocular yukking, the Volt was depicted as a typical federal failure. ... Boiled down to the subtext, Dobbs' message was this: "All Volts catch fire, and therefore all Volts have been recalled." That simply isn't the case. ...

To top it off, these two media pros lamented the fact that the same government that had forced GM to produce the Volt was now extending $7,500 tax credits towards its purchase, thus squandering even more of "our taxpayer" dollars on this failed Socialist-collectivist flop. Truth? The $7,500 tax credit was enacted under the Bush administration!

Don't let Lutz's words make you think he's taking a left/liberal stance. He's still a self-declared "conservative Republican" who hates that right-wing talking heads are spiraling downward into this sort of "deliberate misstatement of facts." They "have managed to make me embarrassed to describe myself as a conservative," he writes, adding, "Let's leave the 'invention of facts' to the left-wing climate-change alarmists." There, that should offend pretty much everyone who's not in the dead political center.

Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler AG has acquired a 15-percent stake in smartphone application publisher MyTaxi, marking the German automaker's continued willingness to invest in transportation-related businesses that don't actually focus on selling vehicles to customers.

Bloomberg News reported that Daimler's Car2go division, along with Xing AG founder Lars Hinrichs and Deutsche Telekom AG invested about $13 million combined into the company, which makes an application that lets smartphone owners order a taxi with their iPhones or Android devices, the wire service reported, citing an interview with MyTaxi founder and CEO Sven Kuelper. The application, which has been downloaded about 800,000 times, is available for use in about 30 European cities.

With the investment, Daimler continues to take a broader view of personal vehicle demand by acquiring stakes in non-vehicle manufacturing companies. Daimler in 2008 started Car2go, which differs from other car-sharing programs because it does not require the vehicle to be returned to a defined space – i.e., where it was picked up. Instead, as long as the car ends up inside the operating area, drivers are free to leave it in any legal parking space when they are finished with it.

Car2Go operates in Amsterdam; Austin, Texas; Hamburg; Ulm, Germany; and Vancouver. Late last year, car2go added Vienna and San Diego. Washington, D.C. is coming soon.