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STUDY: Lots of local, green electricity possible for most of the U.S.

One of the reasons that a vehicle powered by something other than gasoline is such a popular idea in the U.S. is that it helps us become less reliant on other countries for our transportation needs. To this end, biofuels and electric vehicles offer great potential to use local sources of energy in our vehicles. To get a handle on how much green electricity – wind, geothermal, solar, etc. – is available in the U.S., the Insitute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) has conducted a study on renewable energy potential and came away with ... Read more →

SunPods make solar electric vehicle charging quick and easy (to install) Sebastian Blanco

While solar panels are not yet efficient enough to plop down on an electric vehicle's roof and charge as you go, the idea of powering an EV with the sun is tremendously appealing. A new system ...

Future tense: How a solar-hydrogen economy could provide us with all the energy we need Sebastian Blanco

What one energy source has the ability to – in the long term – supply the people of the world with all of the energy they need in an reliable and renewable manner? According to Derek ...

Toyota to build new Prius in Eco-Factory in Japan Sam Abuelsamid

While the argument about whether a Hummer H2 is actually more environmentally friendly than a Toyota Prius has long since been debunked (even if it keeps popping up its ugly head), it does raise a ...

Why don't we use solar to power our electric cars? Jeremy Korzeniewski

For years, we've been watching as solar-powered race cars travel at relatively high rates of speed for hours on end – as long as the sun happens to be shining, of course. In fact, the World ...

Police in Ohio go solar [w/VIDEO] 5 months ago on Autoblog Green

The Ohio State Highway Patrol says it was able to save roughly $1 million in fuel costs in 2008 (reportedly a 16.4-percent savings) by increasing stationary patrol time. Sitting stationary does save fuel if the other option is to drive around on patrol. Still, it's a well-known fact that police ...

Kyocera offers details on solar cells used by 2010 Prius 5 months ago on Autoblog Green

Want to know more about the solar moonroof option that's available on the latest third-generation Toyota Prius for 2010? Read on. According to Tech-On from Nikkei newspaper in Japan, the actual polycrystalline Si cells used by the automaker are supplied by Kyocera and are arranged in six columns ...

Romag introduces PowerPark solar carport 7 months ago on Autoblog Green

A new solar carport has just been launched in the UK from a company called Romag Holdings, a firm that produces "specialist transparent composites" including laminated photovoltaic panels. Called PowerParks, these carports would act as a shelter and charging point for electric vehicles. Each unit ...

It's Friday: Home-built solar trike boggles the mind 7 months ago on Autoblog Green

Solar technology, while promising, doesn't quite seem ready to power our vehicles. Large solar installations that constantly collect the sun's rays and store them for later use may be an excellent option to power electric vehicles, but even the best photovoltaic cells in the world are not yet ...

DC Auto Show: Destiny 2000 used to be a Fiero, now it's a solar electric 9 months ago on Autoblog Green

There is section of the DC Auto Show, called the Green Car Pavilion, that is intended to highlight alternative fuel vehicles. Before the show officially opens tomorrow, we managed to take a walk around the GCP and saw an interesting collection of vehicles parked there. One was the bright yellow ...

Who wins federal dollars race? Ethanol does, by a long shot 10 months ago on Autoblog Green

Undeterred by the fact that ethanol is the worst type or alternative energy, the federal government is in love with corn ethanol, perhaps a bit too much. Over the years, the American farm lobby has worked and worked to get subsidies for corn growers and, more recently, ethanol producers. The ...

UK Petrol Retailers Association suggests solar-powered EV stations 12 months ago on Autoblog Green

We'd imagine that the UK Petrol Retailers Association would have a vested interest in making the business model of the tried-and-true gas station survive. So, we aren't all that surprised to read about the group's suggestion that future gas stations should carry solar roofs that feed power into ...

Austin Alt Car: Lighthouse Solar roof, carport an enviously good deal 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

When I head just how (comparatively) cheaply you can get solar panels installed in Austin, Texas, I was pretty jealous. The real short version is that a $20,000+, 3 kWh system can be yours for around $6,000 thanks to local and federal tax breaks. And considering the amount of sunshine that Austin ...

Homebrew solar electric car wins fans in Utah 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Utah is a state that gets a lot of sun but not a lot of attention on these pages for their green transportation moves. Still, it does seem that the DIY crowd is strong there. Remember the homemade Ariel Atom? That's not the only homemade vehicle taking to the street in the state. Kyle Dansie ...

Toyota will put North America's largest single-roof solar installation on CA parts center 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Solar power is nothing new to Toyota, but the company's latest solar array does offer something new to North America: the largest such single-roof installation on the continent. According to Toyota, a new huge solar set-up (it covers 242,000 square feet and is made up of more than 10,000 modules) ...

GM Centennial: How the Chevy Volt might affect the electric grid 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/autos/Will_the_Chevy_Volt_affect_the_electric_grid'; Over at the RenCen yesterday, AutoblogGreen sat down with Britta Gross, GM's manager of Hydrogen and Electrical Infrastructure Development and Strategic Commercialization, and Mark Duvall, program manager at the ...

Wonder what it takes to build a competitive solar racer? 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Lest you think that it's easy to make a competitive solar racer, take a look at the videos of the University of Texas' Samsung Solorean (the name is a reference to the DeLorean from the Back 2 The Future movies), which are pasted after the break. In a nod towards that movie car, the portal to enter ...

GM plant in Maryland to get solar panels 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

GM's hybrid transmission plant goes solar This sounds like it must have been a really easy decision for General Motors: Install a brand new solar array which will provide 1.2-megawatts of power - enough to cut its electricity bill by 20-percent per year beginning in 2009 - for free. We wish ...

Introducing the World's Smallest solar-powered car 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Click above for a few more shots of the World's Smallest solar racer These days, one of the most-heard complaints about cars in the United States is that they are too large. Each new generation, for some reason, needs to somehow one-up its predecessor by adding a few inches of girth in every ...

Nissan to use solar chargers to keep batteries charged up 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

While solar-powered cars have a long road ahead of them before there is any real chance that our daily driven vehicles will be powered by nothing more than the sun (not counting large arrays powering a single electric car), a small smattering of solar cells hooked up to a car battery is enough to ...

Elon Musk on PHEV's, battery technology and solar cells 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria recently got some face-to-face time with Elon Musk, who, as you surely know by now, is one of the "product architects" at Tesla Motors. There were plenty of interesting quotes to come from the interview, but a few truly stood out from the rest. For instance, Musk slams ...

Spanish GM factory adds solar roof 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

The General Motors factory in Zaragoza, Spain is set to get a roof tiled in solar panels as part of a larger initiative throughout GM's European operations. 183,000 square meters of photovoltaic cells will be capable of providing up to a quarter of the factory's peak demand. Zaragoza is GM's ...

Solar power heats up. Government freezes projects. 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

With the cost of fuels and the environmental toll of traditional carbon-based sources of electricity generation quickly climbing, solar power in America has become so popular that the government has placed a moratorium on the building of any such projects on Western public land. The Bureau of Land ...

VIDEO: Nanosolar makes a one gigawatt printing press 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

With so many auto-makers throwing their hats into the electric car ring, cleanly producing electricity cheaply becomes even more important. While the oft-touted nuclear solution seems to be getting a lot more expensive, solar is set to get a lot cheaper. Days after IBM announced it is moving into ...

New Jersey parking garages to get solar power 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Apparently, California ranks as the nation's largest state when it comes to solar installations, but, rather surprisingly, New Jersey takes the second spot away from such sun-rich states as those situated in the southwestern part of the country and also ranks in the top ten worldwide. The state ...

Solarial solar blimp concept takes the power where its needed 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

From time to time, an idea pops up which causes you to say, "Why didn't I think of that?" Often, these concepts seem to make so much sense that they absolutely must be implemented as soon as possible. Andrew Leinonen's concept for a floating solar-powered power station may just be one such idea. ...

Odysseus: a Z-shaped solar aircraft, built for DARPA 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

DARPA, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has set a seemingly impossible task, known as the Vulture program, by calling for an aircraft which can remain in the sky for five years while generating five kilowatts of power for a 1,000 pound payload. The Odysseus by Aurora Flight ...

Zap's Earth Day delivery: Solar Electric catering car in Chicago 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

click to enlarge It's Earth Day, so we would have been shocked to see the day slip by without a press release from Zap about their something or other. True to form, the EV company presents us with news that the Sopraffina Marketcaffe in Chicago will be using an electric Xebra truck with solar ...

Thule to install solar cells on roof of U.S. headquarters 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Thule, self proclaimed "experts in maximizing a vehicle's roof space," have decided to maximize their own roof space, so to speak, by installing a 318-kilowatt (kW) DC solar photovoltaic (PV) system at their Seymour, CT U.S. headquarters. Consisting of two separate arrays with a total of 1,876 solar ...

Video: Huge solar project to begin this year 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Lately when talk of using solar energy via large installations comes up it seems the suggestion will invariably be made that we should cover huge swaths of the desert with a solar panel blanket. This strikes me as a little wrong-headed. What might seem a barren wasteland to some is home to a large ...

2008 Shell Eco-marathon Americas roster - all 38 teams - announced 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

We're getting close to the start of the 2008 Shell Eco-marathon Americas, and the list of 38 teams that will participate in the competition in some ways mimics real-world power train usage. The overwhelming majority (28) of the vehicles will use combustion engines to try and top last year's ...

Nelson Kruschandl shows how to make a solar car on the cheap 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Wanna build a solar car? Good new for you, then! Nelson Kruschandl has set up a website where he gives you the ins and outs of solar car construction. Sure, there's plenty of power available from the sun, the tricky part is harnessing enough of it to get anywhere. Therefore, lightweight parts and ...

SUNN EV: order a solar electric NEV kit car 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Remember last year when we posted the video Infinity Miles per Gallon? In that video, Art Haines of Applied Robotics Company set out to build a solar powered electric car ... and succeeded. At the time, we lauded the independent thinking that Haines clearly showed in the project. The story was far ...

Solar company claims it can power a fleet of electric cars... and 90 percent of our homes 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

As much as we report on the electrification of the automobile, it's important to remember that electric cars need to be charged somehow, and with a huge amount of the electricity in the world coming from less-than-clean power sources, alternatives must be found. Solar power is one such alternative, ...

Power your car with paint 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Need electricity to power your future PHEV or electric car but don't want more coal or nuclear power plants to add to our pollution problems or maybe drain the country's water resources? It seems with each impending disaster our past and present technology creates, a new technology emerges to ...

DOE picks 2009 Solar Decathlon teams 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Twenty college teams from around the world (well, the U.S., Germany, Canada, Spain and Puerto Rico) will compete in the 2009 Solar Decathlon competition that will take place next fall in Washington, D.C. The U.S. Department of Energy's challenge is to build and run an entire home on solar power. As ...

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