cars

Top 10 Ideas for Saving Gas, Money and Driving Green

RiverWired.com — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Gas prices getting you down? Carbon emissions weighing heavy on your shoulders? At RiverWired we want to reduce your worries as we help you reduce your footprint. Instead of talking problems, we offer some solutions for saving gas and improving mileage. Now more than ever, you have big reasons for driving green.

1. 15 Tips For Better Mileage -- Want to Get 70 MPG in Your Toyota Prius?

2. The Hype About Hypermiling

3. Two Wheels Are Greener Than Four

4. Honda Civic GX Tops List of Greenest Cars

5. Driving Green = Fewer Greenbacks

6. Five Tips to Find the Cheapest Gas Near You

7. Top 10 Most Fuel-Efficient Cars: Save Gas, Save Money

8. Record Month For Selling Gas -- Saving Cars Getting Better Than 30 MPG

9. GE Backs Electric Cars -- This Time For Keeps!

10. Top 10 Green Things to Do While Stuck in Traffic

Carfree Zone -- Coming Soon to a City Near You?

khallgeisler — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400

On June 22, Portland, Oregon held its first Sunday Parkways. This event, modeled after a weekly shutdown of the streets in Bogota, Colombia, closed six miles of city streets to auto traffic and opened it up to bikers, walkers, skaters -- anyone self-propelled. New York City has announced plans to do the same for three days in August.

On my walk along Portland's closed streets, I found donuts and bratwurst for sale in a local's driveway, plus free bike tune-ups offered by a cycling collective. Three city parks held additional events, like a $5 helmet sale and fitting, an intro to tai chi, live music, and pick-up kickball games. All this despite a little drizzle in the morning -- though skies had cleared up by lunch time.

How can you get your community out of its cars and onto a bike seat? Here are some ideas gleaned from the Portland Sunday Bikeways:

Put your tax dollars to work. The EPA, the city commission, and the metro-area government were all sponsors of the Portland Sunday Parkways.

Great minds think alike. Partner up with local hospitals and community organizations to get ideas -- and volunteers. Neighborhood associations would be good allies, too.

It's the journey, not the destination. Portland organizers put together meeting places for bikers in several neighborhoods so people could ride through regular Sunday-morning traffic to the car-free route together. There were parades, a women's ride, and more.

But having a destination is important, too. While it's great to have cops stopping cars at major intersections so dozens of bikes can pass, it's nice to have someplace to ride to. Area parks hosted everything from yoga classes to Clif Bar booths, with lots of local cafes camped out, ready to replenish empty bellies after all that riding. There was food along the route, too, including hunks of bread and giant jars of peanut butter for a quick energy fix at the tune-up tent.

It doesn't have to be fancy. Portland is the country's most bikeable city, so we really did it up. New York will be closing swank Fifth Ave to traffic as part of its seven-mile car-free zone. But remember -- this about getting out of the SUV, moving under your own power (or the power of your crazy-cool electric wheelchair), and actually meeting your neighbors. And you don't need a Saks or a pilates demo to do that.

Photo by Doug Geisler.

Mary J Blige Gets Her Hybrid On

kbutler — Fri, 02 May 2008 01:00:00 -0400

GM wants you to know that Mary J. Blige is gas friendly and, dare we say, gas free. MediaPost is reporting that Ms. Blige is promoting GM’s new “Gas Friendly to Gas Free” campaign. Rumor has it that the gorgeous diva will be featured in the new Chevy Malibu hybrid commercial.

You might recall – probably when you shut your eyes at night and the dark closes in – GM’s Superbowl campaign for the new Yukon hybrid: “Why push? Why change? Why grow? Why dream?” To which we answer here at River Wired…..what?

Want to see more Celebrity Dirt videos on your favorite clean, green stars? Click here

Who Built the Solar Car?

jplatt — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:00:00 -0400

The SUNN won't win any design awards, but it sure will turn heads.

This build-it-yourself solar-powered car -- invented by Art Haines -- is one of the most innovative ideas I've seen in years. For just $4,500, you get almost everything you need to build your own solar-powered, street legal, neighborhood electric car. The parts come delivered on a flatbed truck, and with just 80-120 hours and some everyday hand tools (plus the solar panels and batteries, which you are encouraged to order locally), you can soon be puttering around in your very own solar-powered vehicle.

The SUNN only goes 25 miles per hour, and it has a maximum range of just 20 miles, but if you're only going a short distance on local roads, this is a pretty cool alternative to gas-powered transportation. The kit comes with seat belts, windshield wpers and turn signals, so as long as you register it as a low-speed vehicle, you should be allowed to take it out on the town.

According to the SUNN's FAQs, the solar panels aren't included so you can decide how much you want to spend on them, where on the car you want to mount them, or even if you want to use them or not. If you skip the solar panels, the SUNN can also be plugged into a standard electrical outlet, with an estimated energy-cost-per-mile of just $.01.

Right now, the SUNN Electric Vehicle Company is just taking orders (and deposits) for their car kits, which will ship in the near future.

Karma Chameleon:

khallgeisler — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

One of the most buzzed-about concept cars at this month's North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Mich., was the new sports-luxury plug-in hybrid from Fisker Automotive, called the Karma. Delivery of the first few models is planned for Fall 2009, a year and a half after its closest competitor, the all-electric Telsa Roadster, hits the streets this spring.

The Karma is powered by something the manufacturer calls QDrive: a small gasoline-powered engine turns a generator, which charges a lithium-ion battery pack that powers the electric motor. That's what gets the wheels turning—fast. The Karma promises to do 0-60 in under 6 seconds with a top speed of 125 mph. Just as importantly, Fisker says the Q Drive configuration can deliver up to 50 miles a day of emissions-free driving, aslong as the car is recharged every night. The company goes on to say that if Karma drivers cover 50 miles or fewer every day and charge every night, it's possible to only make one annual trip to the gas station to refuel the combustion engine.

The four-door body is low-slung and sexy, a rarity in alternative-fuel vehicles. (See the cute-as-a-button ZAP Xebra or blunt-as-a-bludgeon Toyota Prius for comparison.) People who pay attention to design may find the Karma has a familiar European sports sedan feel; that's because Henrik Fisker designed the Aston Martin DB9 and the BMW Z8 in a previous, gas-guzzling life.

The design has us smitten and the technology has us convinced we'd be better people if we had a Karma. We're ready to drop the cash to drive quick and clean. Not so fast, there, Sparky. The first run, which will look almost identical to the car shown in Detroit, is already sold out. In classic supercar fashion, $1,000 buys a place in line for the 2010 models,which will retail for somewhere in the $80,0000 range, a full $20,000 less than a Tesla. Karma comes to those with patience and a healthy bank account.

MPGs and Model Ts

tdupuy — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Would you like to know the carbon footprint of your new Cadillac Escalade? I bet you wouldn’t. Nope, if you drive one of those you don’t really care about MPGs or pollution. I’m sure you’re just too busy eating your young.

Okay, cheap shot - totally uncorroborated (but not unimaginable). Your annual carbon footprint, according to fueleconomy.gov, is 13.1 tons of C02, by the way. Worse than the 12.2 of the Hummer H3 (the H1 and H2’s footprints are suspiciously absent from the site). Oh yeah, I have found a new realm of self-righteousness and reason to be snotty to people in traffic. Not that I needed any more, I was plenty snotty already…

This one started with mild curiosity:

I read somewhere that the Model T got better gas mileage than the average light-duty vehicle today. Think about the leaps the telephone has made in the last 100 years. From a glorified telegraph machine at the turn of the last century to the iPhone. But cars are getting WORSE fuel efficiency?! The answer is yes and no. The reports of the actual MPG of the Model T vary. Some say that it got average of 21 MPG; others, up to 25. The average for all vehicles today is 21 MPG. But the fudging of the MPGs for sake of argument may never change. The Model T’s all 4 cylinders couldn’t go above 45 miles an hour. It also had a whopping 20 horsepower (compared with the ’07 Camry that has 269).

The thing from an environmental stand point with the Model T was that early versions could run on ethanol. That changed during prohibition. The Model T was not chosen as the most popular car of its time because it was good looking, safe or fuel efficient. It became popular because it could be mass produced and Ford had a credit program where the middle class could at last own an automobile. There were other electric and steam powered cars that were superior to the Model T but economic Darwinism left them behind.

So the Model T kind of got around the same gas mileage as today’s vehicles, if not held to any today’s standards for automobiles. Skewed factoid, but still very interesting. Still mortifying.

That lead me to the EPA’s website, where I looked up what the MPG is on my car (an ‘07 MINI Cooper manual). There is a bit of a difference between what the manufacturer said it was going to be (37-40) and what it actually gets (average 35).

The website now offers to quantify the carbon footprint of your vehicle. Mine is 5.9. The Prius is 4.0. The Aston Martin DB9 Coupe- 15.2. Now I have the ammunition for a juicy new prejudice! “Your footprint is over 10 - don’t even think I’m letting you in!” “Oh yeah, you don’t care about smog, Mr. 11.3? - I don’t care about speeding up so you can have this parking place.” “Hey you, 9.6! Go @*#& yourself!”