Sexiest Fuel-Efficient Cars

khallgeisler — Fri, 16 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

For the last week of May, the Sexiest Green Car Show returns to the Eden Project, the UK's "living theater of plants and people." Why would a place that features a million plants representing 5,000 species have a car show? The high-mileage and alternative-fuel cars on display May 23-31 are, in theory, even kinder to plants than vegans.

The sexiest car at the show this year by a green mile will be the Lotus Exige Tri-Fuel, which made its debut at the 2008 Geneva auto show. As the name implies, the sporty two-door can run on gasoline, bioethanol, or ethanol. Using any alternative fuels in sports cars is a step in the right direction; decide for yourself how beneficial ethanol, in the form of E10 or E85, is for the planet.

Morgan is bringing its Life Car, which is sexy in the way that piles of money are sexy. This silver bullet runs on hydrogen fuel and gets the equivalent of 150 mpg. Morgan teamed up with RiverSimple (no relation to RiverWired) to develop the system that powers four motors, one at each wheel, and stores braking energy in ultracapacitors rather than batteries.

New car company Axon Automotive will debut its fuel-efficient family sedan, the 2+2 Multipurpose Vehicle, at the Sexiest Green Car Show, but the extreme-close-up images available on the Web make it hard to rate its sexiness. The car uses conventional gasoline, but through aerodynamics and use of carbon fiber, gets better (though unspecified) mileage.

Other offerings at the show include small cars from Ford, Citroen, Peugeot, and others. Most of these tend toward the Easter-egg school of green design: cute but hardly sexy. But with barrels of oil at an all time high and only going higher, drivers will take what they can get, and the sooner, the better.

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.

fisker

Sexiest Fuel-Efficient Cars

Karma Chameleon: