World’s Fastest Hybrid Unveiled

If the new Toyota Prius left you feeling a bit underwhelmed in terms of looks, check out the Namir by Italdesign. Unveiled yesterday at the Geneva Motor Show, the Namir is sleek and sexy – and boasts a top speed of 187mph. The 370-hp vehicle will be able to travel over 1,200 miles before it needs a charge or a gas refill.

From Inhabitat:

Italdesign is responsible for an extensive list of cars and has worked with numerous automakers on concepts, production models, prototyping and testing. The Namir hybrid concept, designed with the help of Frazer-Nash, is set to be released to the public at the show today! Pictures of the concept car have been leaking out for weeks now in preparation for the show, but the newest pictures released yesterday reveal a car similar in design to last year’s Quaranta concept car.

The press release reveals that hybrid will have a lithium ion battery pack, with overall power of 270 kW, equivalent to 370 hp. They claim the car will get a fuel efficiency of about 39 km/L, which is about 92 miles to the gallon. As far as carbon emissions, Italdesign says the car will release less than 60 g/km of CO2. And with the car’s 50 liter gas tank, the car can travel up to 2,000 km without a refill or a charge.

No word yet on the cost or whether it’ll even be available in the U.S., but you can probably count on it being a little less affordable than the 2010 Prius. Just a smidge. It’s a hot car, though, and goes to show that clean & green cars can be every bit as exciting as old-school gas-powered cars.

Check out more pictures at Inhabitat, and get more details at ItalDesign.

Link [Inhabitat]

A Peek at the 2010 Toyota Prius

There have been a lot of exciting electric & hybrid vehicles unveiled over the past couple years, but perhaps none have been as anticipated as the ‘Generation III’ 2010 Prius hybrid – simply because it’s attainable for so many people. The ‘Generation II’ model, as the 2004-2009 Prius is called, has been one of the most popular clean & green cars and the Gen III promises to improve upon its predecessor’s design.

Toyota has given us a peek at the 2010 Prius, which offers an EPA-rated combined cycle fuel economy of 50mpg. From Green Car Congress:

This is about a 10% improvement in EPA-rated combined cycle fuel economy over the older generation. Of that 10% improvement, about 6% can be attributed to the new hybrid system (including the larger combustion engine) and about 4% to efficiency improvements in other aspects of the vehicle, such as better aerodynamics, said Chief Engineer Akihiko Otsuka.

The newest version of Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive as applied in the 2010 Prius is more than 90% newly developed, and has produced more patents than previous Prius generations combined. Maximum system output, including the engine, is controlled to about 100 kW (134 hp).

Nominal pack voltage of the nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) battery remains at 201.6 VDC. The more compact battery pack and system main relay assembly were repositioned, resulting in increased cargo volume and cabin comfort. Cooling air velocity and volume have been increased for increased cooling efficiency, resulting in overall improved battery efficiency and fuel economy. The pack is warranted for 10 years/150,000 miles.

At end of life, every part of the battery is recycled or processed for disposal at a dedicated facility in Japan.

More details about the engine, transaxle, inverter, fuel tank, driving modes and options packages are available at Green Car Congress.

Smug levels are going to go through the roof all over the country, not just in San Francisco, when this car is released. It’ll undoubtedly outsell the Gen II model since, as Toyota’s U.S. VP Bob Carter says, current Prius owners are eager to buy additional Priuses and it’s going to appeal to a big percentage of the public as well.

Link [Green Car Congress]

Your Prius Can Act as an Emergency Generator

Owning a Prius has more benefits than simply saving money on gas and lowering your carbon footprint – it can also get your family through a snowstorm by providing power. And while, technically, any car battery hooked up to an inverter can do the same thing, the Prius uses far less gas while doing so, meaning you can drive away when the storm is over.

The Harvard Press in Massachusetts reported that during a recent ice storm, resident John Sweeney ran his refrigerator, freezer, TV, woodstove fan and several lights through his Prius for three days on roughly five gallons of gas.

“When it looked like we were going to be without power for awhile, I dug out an inverter (which takes 12v DC and creates 120v AC from it) and wired it into our Prius…These inverters are available for about $100 many places online,” he wrote.

The device allowed the engine to run every half hour, automatically charging the car battery and indirectly supplying the required power.

The New York Times points out that what Sweeney did is essentially along the lines of “smart grid” technology.

The idea is that the battery of an electric car — a plug-in, in most smart-grid scenarios — can feed power to the electricity grid when the grid needs it.

Even President-elect Barack Obama has endorsed this idea, as seen toward the end of this YouTube clip in which he said: “We’re going to have to have a smart grid if we want to use plug-in hybrids — then we want to be able to have ordinary consumers sell back the electricity that’s generated.”

Of course, it seems as if Mr. Sweeney could have saved a bit of energy by putting his food out in the snow and ice – instead of keeping the refrigerator and freezer running in freezing cold weather – but what he did is smart all the same. Hopefully we’ll see a lot more energy efficiency breakthroughs in the coming year as people realize that we’ve been a bit wasteful in the past.

Link [The Harvard Press] + [The New York Times]

Honda Debuts FC Sport Concept to Dazed Crowd

The reaction to the new Honda FC Sport Concept at the LA Auto Show last week seemed to indicate that the crowd was either so dazzled by the amazing design that they were speechless, or that everyone was kind of baffled by strange, clunky look of the thing. Treehugger described the front grille as resembling “a pair of black Honda Super Hero Underoos draped across the hood”, with the rear looking like “a tapered jet engine exhaust”. That doesn’t sound good.

From Treehugger:

There is no jet engine to speak of however, but instead a patented Honda hydrogen fuel cell. They have been trying to make the fuel cell fly for the past couple years. Honda is not a big believer in the plug-in hybrid, stating that today’s batteries are not quite up to snuff with their technology to make them a viable option. Some would say this is a smart move, others would say a foolish… but as fierce a competitor Honda is in the consumer marketplace, it is hard to question the method of their madness.

Is electric plug-ins the wave for the future, with Tesla, among many others leading the way. Or should we invest our hopes in a hydrogen infrastructure? While some folks claim that the trillion dollar infrastructure would not be economically viable, others say that hydrogen could be in our grasp for a lot less than we think.

I’m certainly no expert on hydrogen fuel cell vs. plug-in technology, so that part is better left for others to mull over. But, back to the design. It’s pretty fugly, is it not? Sure, there have been much uglier concept cars unveiled before, but it’s still pretty bad. The New York Times called it “Quantum of Grotesque” and said “each angle is worst than the last”. It’s certainly… different. But, you can’t blame them for trying something new. And, once the shock wore off, it certainly got people talking.

Link [Treehugger] + [The New York Times]
Photo credit: LA Auto Show

How the Chevy Volt Could Get 100mpg

GM vice chairman Bob Lutz boldly proclaimed at the 2007 Detroit auto show that the new Chevy Volt would get up to 150mpg based on a variety of driving conditions. Now that the model is headed for production, Lutz’s claim will have to stand up to government-approved ratings. The process of deciding exactly how to rate a new generation of hybrid-powered cars is still being worked out.

From The New York Times:

Often criticized as the killer of kilowatt cars, G.M. is now the champion of their revival. The Volt, which the company plans to begin selling in November 2010, should easily double the fuel economy rating of today’s mileage hero, the Toyota Prius. The Prius, which carries a 46 m.p.g. rating in combined city and highway driving, is a conventional hybrid that uses modest amounts of electricity to minimize the fuel consumed by its gasoline engine.

The Volt takes the opposite approach, relying mainly on electric power, with its gasoline engine running only when needed to stretch the driving range. The 100 m.p.g. automobile, which once seemed an impossible dream, will become an official E.P.A.-rated reality with the Volt’s arrival.

G.M. calls the car an extended-range electric vehicle, or E-REV. For the first 40 miles after leaving home with a fully charged battery, the Volt will consume no gas at all, according to G.M.; when the gas engine does fire up, it will only drive a generator — the engine is not connected to the wheels. Owners will recharge the battery overnight from a wall socket, which brings the Volt into the category of plug-in hybrids.

Since the Volt does consume gas on trips longer than 40 miles, it’ll have to have a guide to gas consumption on the window sticker. But it will be hard to determine a meaningful mileage rating on a car capable of going through the government test cycle without using any gas at all. The New York Times called the EPA’s task of helping automakers determine these mileage figures as “a job only slightly less daunting than weather forecasting.”

The way the EPA calculates these numbers has changed a bit lately to reflect compensating factors. A good example is the Tesla Roadster, which never consumes petroleum while driving. Its EPA-required window sticker lists the energy consumed in kilowatt-hours of electricity, which are 32kwh per 100 miles in town and 33 on the highway. Translated to the more familiar miles per gallon using a textbook conversion factor, you get 105 mpg city and 102 highway. But use the adjustment factor devised by the Energy Department, which takes factors like scarcity of fuel and production and distribution efficiency into account, and you get a staggering 256mpg city and 249 highway.

So, it will be interesting to see just how far over 100mpg the Chevy Volt actually ends up getting. GM hopes to separate the Volt from ordinary hybrids, defining its mileage in a new way. We’ll find out when it debuts next year!

Link [The New York Times]

Why Can’t Obama’s New Presidential Limo be a Hybrid?

We aren’t supposed to know much about the President’s main ride, since it’s kind of a security issue. So, nobody’s really sure exactly how many miles per gallon the rumored new Obama Mobile gets – but according to reports, it might be pretty eco-unfriendly. Obama may have driven a hybrid SUV before winning the presidency, but once he’s in office this January, we’re hearing that he’ll be rolling in a souped-up limo that looks like a Cadillac GTS but is based on GM’s line of heavy-duty 2500 trucks.

Treehugger reports that even a non-souped-up 2500 series truck gets single-digit MPG and emits 16 tons of CO2 per year, earning it the worst possible climate change rating from the EPA. For security reasons, Obama’s limo will probably be even worse since all that 5-inch-thick glass and blast-proof ceramics are awfully heavy. But for all that, Treehugger doesn’t see why the new presidential limo couldn’t be a hybrid.

From Treehugger:

Clearly the limo — which is currently probably diesel-powered — has to be super strong, bullet-proof, and fast. But why can’t it also include a new drivetrain, electronics and some batteries? Ford made a conventional hybrid limo with the Mercury Mariner. If he needs something more militarized, can’t Obama car get something along the lines of those hybrid Hummer upgrades he earmarked as a senator? He did after all once call for every government car to be a plug-in hybrid.

And after all, wouldn’t a hybrid drivetrain help with accelerating such a behemoth? One commenter at CleanMPG speculates that the car might already be a hybrid for that reason.

Treehugger goes on to note that the limo could be a plug-in hybrid, though the threat of electromagnetic pulse could interfere with its electronics (a job for military engineers?).

It would be pretty awesome if they could pull that off, but when it comes to ferrying around a president with an unprecedented number of threats to his life, safety is definitely first. Hopefully this behemoth will make up for its abysmal MPG by keeping Obama as safe as possible.

Link [Treehugger]

Traveling the Country in a Green RV

RVs may seem like the antithesis of low-impact living, and they definitely can be. Most of these monster vehicles voraciously consume gasoline, getting only around 8 miles per gallon. But, RVs can definitely be modified to be green – and when a solar-panel-equipped, biodiesel-fueled RV is your only home, you’re living more eco-friendly than the rest of us for sure.

From The New York Times:

Over the last few years, Sara and Matt Janssen have been downsizing their life. First, they moved from a 1,600-square-foot home to a small apartment in Montana. Then, wanting to tour the country without harming the planet, they took up residence in a recreational vehicle fueled by used vegetable oil.

They now travel with their 4-year-old daughter, Bella, spreading the word about the sustainable life.

Their motor home has a hot water capacity of only six gallons, “so I know how long my showers are,” said Ms. Janssen, a 31-year old photographer who also works for her father, a developer of franchises for Cold Stone Creamery. The RV’s limited space also means “we can’t buy anything because it won’t fit,” she said.

Add to that a comprehensive remodeling, including nontoxic paints, bamboo floors and the waste-grease fueling system, and the Janssen mobile home “is a self-contained lifestyle,” Ms. Janssen said.

The Janssens’ RV is an interesting and fun way to spread awareness of sustainability. As Ty Adams, another green RV owner said, “If you can make an RV sustainable, you can make any industry sustainable.” Adams thinks that instead of demonizing RVs, we should be working toward improving their performance.

The Westfalia Verdier RV that recently made the rounds in the green blogosphere is a great example of where this concept can be taken. As we previously reported, it’s got a diesel hybrid engine and solar panels controlled by a global positioning system to capture the maximum amount of sunlight.

You know, I’ve often wondered what it would be like to live like this… traveling around in a green vehicle that doubles as your primary residence. It seems like quite an interesting life!

Link [The New York Times]

Specialty Garage in San Francisco Makes Hybrids Even Greener

Hybrid car owners in San Francisco can have their car repaired in at an eco-friendly garage so clean, you could eat off the floor. Luscious Garage has solar panels on the roof, hanging plants and paper lanterns everywhere you look, and a line of recycling containers for paper, plastic, rubber, metal and oil. The garage’s real specialty, though, is transforming hybrids into fully-electric vehicles.

From The New York Times:

Luscious is a secular temple built to serve hybrids, the cars powered by both an electric motor (most often engaged when starting or stopping, thus most efficient in city traffic) and a gasoline engine (most efficient on the open road). But its owner’s forte is converting them to plug-in hybrids, which are functionally all-electric cars that can go 12 to 15 miles on one charge.

That’s right. Fifteen miles, maximum. For a mere $6,000. (If you go farther, the gasoline motor kicks back in. )

“People do it because they are ideologically committed,” said Ms. Coquillette, the co-founder and now sole owner of the garage, which employs two other mechanics, one male and one female.

That’s certainly expensive for 12-15 miles per charge, but many dedicated environmentalists are willing to pay – especially those who have a short commute. One Luscious Garage customer said he can now go the entire week without buying gas. He used to spend $100 a month on gas, so while it would take him five to six years to regroup the cost of the conversion, he figures he can either spend that money being green and efficient or on gas.

Coquillete recycles almost everything, including air filters, and makes her own windshield-washing fluid with vinegar. The shop was named ‘green business of the year’ by The San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Link [The New York Times]

London Getting Electric Taxi Cabs in 2009

London Mayor Boris Johnson will likely be giving the go-ahead to replace London’s famed black TX4 taxis with new electric versions sometime in early 2009.  Technical details aren’t available yet, but the aim is a top speed of 50mph and a range of 100 miles per charge.

From Register Hardware, via Geeks are Sexy:

The vehicle will use a lithium-ion iron phosphate battery pack, and is hoped to have a running cost of 4p a mile, though that’s after the yet-to-be-determined initial purchase price. No news on where exactly the battery pack will go, either, BMW’s answer – sticking it where the rear seats used to be – clearly not being an option.

London, like many big cities, has an air quality problem and replacing some of the cars on its streets is a great step toward addressing it. I’m glad they’re keeping the iconic design and not trying to modernize them, though – it’s such a classic look. Sexy, in a blockish English kind of way.

Link [Register Hardware] via [Geeks are Sexy]

Awesomely Green Westfalia Verdier Solar Power VW Van

If you’ve ever looked at VW vans in longing for that seemingly carefree life, but cringe at the thought of how much you’d spend on gas, you’re really going to covet this. Eco Chick called our attention to the sweet new Westfalia Verdier Solar Power VW Van, which is way more hip and well-appointed than those Westfalias from the ‘60s. The sleek new design of this hybrid camper features solar panels that provide electricity for the on-board accessories while the vehicle is stationary, an on-board computer and a GPS system that calculates the best position for the solar panels.

From Eco Chick:

Some other improvements from the 1960’s version include, a pneumatic suspension, which lowers the vehicle and sets its structure on the tires for improved comfort and a better stabilization in the stationary position. The sliding half-door on the passenger side has an integrated folding staircase which makes the second stage area accessible from outside the vehicle. The passenger seat is transformed mechanically into stairs so that the second stage area (top level) can be easily reached from inside. A swivel cooking range makes it possible to cook outside as well as inside.  And of course, there’s a multi-media computer with a wireless Internet connection.

Official EarthFirst Drooltime Hour. That thing is amazing. Oh, how I’d love to hop in this thing and take a driving tour of some of my favorite parts of the country, like New England and the Pacific Northwest. All those windows! Solar power! Of course, if you’re solidly in the middle class like me, buying this thing would mean permanently moving into it – it costs a cool $129,000. It’ll be available next year, and reservations are being taken now.

Check out this YouTube clip to see all the features:

Link [Eco Chick] + [YouTube]

Japanese Hybrid Engineer Died from Too Much Work

The Japanese labor bureau has ruled that the cause of death of one of Toyota’s top car engineers was too much work. The engineer, who had been working on hybrid technology, had been under severe pressure while developing the hybrid version of the Toyota Camry. The 45-year-old man had been getting 80 hours of overtime per month in the months leading up to his death.

From The Huffington Post:

He regularly worked nights and weekends, was frequently sent abroad and was grappling with shipping a model for the pivotal North American International Auto Show in Detroit when he died of ischemic heart disease in January 2006. The man’s daughter found his body at their home the day before he was to leave for the United States.

The ruling was handed down June 30 and will allow his family to collect benefits from his work insurance, Mizuno said.

In Japan, death from overwork is common enough to have its own word: karoshi. Working extremely long hours isn’t outside the norm there.

So, be grateful. Many bothans (I mean, Japanese engineers) died to bring us this information (er, hybrid technology).

Link [The Huffington Post]

Behind Automakers’ Petulant Resistance to Higher Car Mileage Standards

Every time the government proposes legislation to improve fuel economy standards, you can practically hear a collective groan from the automobile industry.  In early July 2008, automakers made a big fuss over proposed new mileage standards, saying they’re too tough.  The new standards would require automakers’ fleet of cars to meet an average of 35.7 miles per gallon for passenger vehicles and 28.6 mpg for light trucks by 2015.

This will be the first time the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has raised its ‘Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards’ (CAFE) since 1985, which is really appalling in itself.  That’s more than 20 years that automakers could have been working on better, more efficient cars.  Instead, they spent that time developing gigantic sports utility vehicles and heavy duty trucks, leading up to a rather sickening pinnacle in recent years with the Hummer.  What’s more, the agency’s mileage standards assume gas prices of $2.42 per gallon in 2016.  What parallel universe are they living in?

Meanwhile, many consumers feel the new standards would be far too lenient.  The Consumer Federation of America wants the standards raised well over what the government has proposed, to 39.5 mpg for passenger vehicles and 30.9 mpg for light trucks.

Even that’s not good enough.  After all, it’s obvious that car companies can easily reach these standards, and far sooner than 2015 – and what’s 35.7 miles per gallon if gas is completely unaffordable or not available at all? Those of us who rely on personal or family vehicles to get around want the auto industry to step up to the plate and start getting innovative.  Challenging times fuel innovation, and it seems like we should be seeing leaders in the industry eagerly savoring this chance to really show us what they’ve got.

What reason is there, we wonder, for automakers to drag their feet like bratty, fit-throwing children on raising mileage standards?  Why aren’t they leading the charge toward the future, with cars that meet and even exceed customers’ desires for greener, more energy-efficient vehicles?

Part of it is fear.  They’ve made good money off the market as it has been for the last two decades. They’ve built their companies around the assumption that they could continue operating like that indefinitely. Completely restructuring their businesses around making more fuel-efficient vehicles will cost them.

Their biggest excuse is that ‘it’s not feasible’.  But, that certainly seems like a weak argument when hybrids as they are today are already more efficient than the proposed standards and are set to become even more efficient as improvements to the batteries and drivetrain systems continue to be made over the next few years.  Plug-in technology is well on the way.  Other alternatives to fossil fuels are being researched and developed at this very moment, and who knows what else could crop up.

Even without raised CAFE standards, automakers will be forced to green up.  They don’t have much choice anymore. High gas prices will undoubtedly be a great catalyst for improved fuel economy, simply because automakers no longer have a choice, regardless of how they feel about the new standards. Having low gas prices for so long encouraged automakers to keep on producing huge, gas guzzling vehicles, and encouraged consumers to buy them. Over the last few decades, car companies grew to depend upon sales of SUVs and trucks as a large part of their profits.  Now, they’re being forced to reevaluate the entire industry.  That’s because consumers have dropped SUVs and trucks like they’re radioactive.

High gas prices, in effect, forced consumers to take responsibility for their share of the problem: they’re now clamoring for smaller vehicles. Consumer desire for big cars and trucks was the biggest obstacle car companies would have faced in making their fleets more fuel efficient, so the rest of the onus is on them.  That doesn’t mean that we’ll never have affordable SUVs and heavy duty trucks again – it just means that most of us can get by on smaller, lighter cars during this shift toward cleaner energy.

One thing that will likely happen during the shift to more fuel-efficient vehicles is that prices will rise a bit for consumers.  Without those SUV profits, automakers will be forced to raise prices on their current lines of compact cars as well as new models that debut in the next few years.  While consumers will have to swallow those price increases up front, the vehicles will be less expensive to run over time.

The funny thing is that the Big Three automakers – GM, Ford and Chrysler – have seen huge drops in profits because they failed to anticipate this shift toward smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles.  Strange, when it seems as though everyone else could see it coming from miles away, but perhaps they were too busy rolling naked in money, luxuriating in the profits brought to them courtesy of low gas prices and at the cost of the environment.  It almost seems as though they’ve engineered their own downfall, and they’re just now starting to realize it as plants close and thousands of workers are laid off.

GM, for one, is finally accepting reality and said just yesterday afternoon that they’re prepared to make hard choices in order to survive.  They plan to sell off $4B – $7B worth of assets in order to afford upcoming changes to their product line.  We hope to see more of that in the upcoming months.  The loss of jobs is, of course, very unfortunate, but hopefully those people will be able to become a part of the new, greener industries starting to sprout up.

The times, they are a-changin’, and the auto industry is going to have to change with them, just like everybody else, like it or not.  The only way out is through.  As we all try to find our way out of the Era of Oil and into a better, greener future, it’s going to be a bit painful for everybody, but there’s no doubt that it will be worth it in the end.

Link [CNN]
Photo credit: Make Your Own Gas Station Sign

Next Generation Toyota Prius Will Have Solar Panels

Toyota will be installing solar panels on the roof of the next generation Prius, set to begin production next year and released in 2010.  The power generated by the solar panels will be used to power the air conditioning system, which was previously putting strain on the hybrid powertrain.   The panels will only be available on high-end Prius models.

There have also been rumors that the next generation Prius will have a lithium battery and may get over 100mpg.  The body has been redesigned to be slightly larger and more aerodynamic.

I can’t wait to see how high gas prices are going to continue to spur innovation in all industries.  We should be seeing some extremely cool cars in the next few years, and the best part is they’ll be getting greener and greener!  With so many interesting new designs and concepts in the works right now, the hardest part will be choosing between them all.

Link [Reuters]
Photo credit: Popular Mechanics

Toyota Can Barely Meet Demand for Prius and Compact Cars

Hybrids are so in demand right now, automaker giant Toyota can barely keep up. In fact, they’ve had to refuse giant orders for the Prius and energy-efficient compact cars from rental car companies because they simply don’t have the capabilities to produce the vehicles as quickly as they’re needed. Had they been prepared for the surge, Toyota could be swimming in profits right now, but since they had a limited stock of small vehicles, they’re actually down by 11.5% since June.

From Reuters:

Toyota executives said a dwindling inventory of vehicles, such as the Prius, Yaris and Corolla, had forced the automaker to scramble to try to keep up with demand in June, a month when industry-wide U.S. auto sales dropped almost 9 percent.

Sales of Toyota’s Prius, the top-selling hybrid in the U.S. market, fell 26 percent as dealers ran short of inventory and customers faced a six-month waiting list. Toyota said it would only partly be able to satisfy the backlog of demand from its dedicated Prius factory in Japan this year.

Production of the Prius’s battery, in particular, is putting a stain on Toyota’s ability to meet demand. The current generation Prius uses nickel-metal hydride batteries produced by Panasonic EV. Meanwhile, Honda has made plenty of profits lately due to the availability of its line of hybrids and compact vehicles. Detroit is still ailing, since the three major automakers there – GM, Ford and Chysler – failed to anticipate the need for efficient cars.

Link [Reuters]
Photo credit: Flickr user Stephen Witherden

Green Car Rental Round Up: Who’s Going Green and Who’s Missing the Boat

Want to rent a car, but wishing you had more green choices?  As it stands, you’re in luck. Car rental companies are cautiously entering the world of green vehicles as consumers look for higher fuel efficiency ratings that will save them money on gas. Demand for hybrids across the country has skyrocketed lately as fuel prices have risen ever higher.

Some experts are telling the companies to slow down their green fleet efforts, since they’re convinced that the extra money consumers pay to rent a hybrid outstrips high fuel costs. Rates for hybrids at all of the major rental car companies average $5-$15 more per day than similar sized non-hybrid vehicles. That’s not stopping most of the major rental car companies from beefing up their fleets of green vehicles, though; nearly all of them plan to slowly increase the number of hybrids and fuel-efficient compact vehicles available to rent as demand grows.

So, who’s going green and who’s missing the boat?

Since 2006, Hertz Rent a Car has been offering consumers a ‘Green Collection’, which includes the Toyota Prius hybrid and three non-hybrid but small and fuel-efficient vehicles: the Toyota Camry, the Ford Fusion and the Toyota Corolla. The Green Collection fleet is comprised of 35,000 vehicles. All of them are reservable by specific make and model, have a fuel efficiency rating of 28 mpg or more and are available at 50 major airport locations across the U.S. For every reserved and paid Green Collection rental, Hertz contributes $1 to the National Park Foundation. They’ve pledged a minimum contribution of $1 million.

Hertz is pushing hybrids in Manhattan especially, where they’ve got 100 of them. Company officials say the stop-and-go traffic of the city provides the ideal driving environment for hybrids, since they’d primarily operate off of the electric motors.

Hertz also announced earlier this year that by the end of the summer, they’ll have spend $68 million adding another 3,500 hybrids to their fleet. They also won points with customers recently when they announced that they’re doing away with ridiculously high refueling fees starting July 1st 2008. The fees are currently as high as $8 per gallon when you don’t bring back your rental car with a full tank. Under the new rules, customers will pay fair market value for gas along with a $6.99 fee for the refueling service.

Last year, Avis Budget Group expanded its fleet to include the Toyota Prius and the Nissan Altima hybrid along with the Ford Escape hybrid. Avis’ hybrid fleet numbers 2,500 out of their total 375,000 vehicles. Avis’ foray into the green rental car world has been slow and cautious as the company tests certain markets to make sure that the demand for these vehicles is really there.

Thrifty Car Rental and Dollar Rent a Car, both owned by the Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, have made the least progress toward a greener fleet of any major car rental company. Their spokespeople have said that they have ‘a few’ hybrids and biofuel vehicles, but have had trouble purchasing more due to high retail demand. They also blame what they call their core customer group: people wanting to rent large vehicles at lower prices for family vacations and other short-term uses.

In terms of environmental initiatives, Enterprise Rent-a-Car (and its sister brands, Alamo and National) is probably the winner of the green rental car race. The company offers the largest fleet of hybrids and fuel efficient vehicles of any rental car agency in America: their fleet numbers 440,000, and that includes 5,000 hybrids and 73,000 ‘flex fuel’ cars that can run on E85, a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gas.

In April of this year, Enterprise also opened four ‘green’ branches in Atlanta, where they have a fleet of 4,000 hybrids and other fuel-efficient vehicles available. In Portland, the company has five biodiesel vehicles available to rent.

They have also pledged to plant 50 million trees in national forests all over the country to offset their rental fleet’s carbon emissions. Enterprise is responsible for planting 1/7th of all trees planted in national forests in 2007. They also offer customers the opportunity to offset carbon emissions by paying $1.25 per rental, which the company will match dollar-for-dollar up to $1 million annually.

That’s not a big surprise for anyone who knows anything about the Taylor family, who own Enterprise: they’ve got a long history of environmental advocacy. They donated $30 million to the Missouri Botanical Garden in 2002, and gave $25 million to create the Enterprise Rent-a-Car Institute for Renewable Fuels, which researches biofuels.

Unfortunately, Enterprise’s efforts are undermined by a few factors. First, there’s the fact that E85 fueling stations aren’t widely available – not to mention the fact that ethanol isn’t really a sustainable alternative fuel. Another issue that all rental car companies are facing is that there aren’t enough hybrids being produced at the moment for the companies to buy, which means customers aren’t guaranteed a hybrid when they want to reserve one. Part of the blame lies on customers, too: only 1 in 10 are paying the extra $1.25 per rental to offset their carbon emissions.

Residents in some metro areas of the U.S. have more eco-options than just the major car rental companies. EV Rental Cars offers environmentally friendly vehicles in six California cities – LA, San Diego, Santa Ana, San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland – along with Phoenix, Arizona. EV is currently the only full-on eco-friendly rental car company – they don’t offer conventional vehicles. Fox Rent a Car, a discount rental car service, works with EV Rental Cars to provide green rentals to customers at all of their U.S. locations.  And, if you’ll be taking a vacation to Maui anytime soon, you have the option of selecting a biodiesel vehicle at Bio-Beetles, the nation’s only all-biodiesel rental car service.

As gas prices continue to rise, it seems safe to assume that consumer demand for hybrids will increase as well, and hopefully rental car agencies will continue to meet these needs with increasing numbers of hybrids and other cleaner, greener vehicles.

Photo credit: Flickr user Beige Alert

Eco Fail: Hybrid SUVs Just Aren’t Selling

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Ah, sweet justice for the SUV. Detroit auto makers aren’t seeing the demand for hybrid SUVs that they thought would come this year as models like the Chevrolet Tahoe and GMC Yukon were released. Only 1,100 have been sold since January, and the sales goal was 12,000 for the year, putting them pretty far behind.

The New York Times has it:

Giving a four-wheel drive Tahoe a gas-electric hybrid engine raises fuel economy for city driving to 20 miles a gallon from 14.

But to get the better mileage, consumers pay a high price: $53,000, at least $4,000 more than a conventional Tahoe.

Environmentalists see the jumbo hybrids as a small step forward in the effort to reduce America’s fuel consumption.

“Is this a green vehicle? I think it could be a lot greener,” said David Friedman, research director of the vehicles program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit group in Washington that focuses on the environment. “The question is whether the improvement in fuel economy is worth the cost.”

Hybrid or not, large S.U.V.’s are fading fast in a market that is shifting quickly to smaller cars and crossovers, S.U.V.-like vehicles built on a car chassis.

While the hybrid 20/21 MPG is certainly an improvement over the 14/20 the non-hybrid SUVs typically get, the fact is that the Toyota Prius gets 46 MPG currently, and a new model set to be released next year will get over 100. That makes paying the extra money for the hybrid SUV seem like a pretty big waste. Consumers aren’t willing to pony up the extra cash, and with SUVs losing popularity in general, hybrid SUVs are looking to go the way of New Coke.

Hybrid SUVs may be a tiny bit better for the environment than regular SUVs, but that doesn’t make them an eco-friendly option. We were a bit afraid that hybrid SUVs would make people think they could have their cake and eat it too, using the ‘hybrid’ angle to defend dumb shit like suburban housewives with 2 kids driving behemoth vehicles to the grocery store. So, we’re happy that hybrid SUVs are an ECO FAIL. Down with SUVs!

Link [The New York Times]
Photo credit: Mark Graham for the New York Times

Paul McCartney Catches Lexus in a Big Time Eco-Fail

Sir Paul McCartney, or Macca as they call him across the pond, has once again proven that he’s no eco-fraud. Unlike some celebrities we know, he’s not green to be cool – he really does care. So when Lexus gifted him with a Hybrid Limousine to thank him for getting the word out for green automobiles, and he found out that said limousine was delivered by jet, he was understandably pissed.

Ecorazzi has it:

The gesture was nice, but Lexus chose to fly the car from Japan to Britain, creating a carbon footprint almost 100 times bigger than the standard method of shipping.

A source told Britain’s Daily Mirror newspaper: “…he was horrified after learning it was delivered by plane. Paul has always campaigned for green issues and he can’t understand why anyone would send an enormous car from Japan to Britain on a plane. “

No word yet from Lexus on this dubious choice.  They’re very generous with funding for green events and seem to have a legit interest in green options, so hopefully they’ll do something to make up for such an egregious misstep.

I’m itching to point out that any limousine, hybrid or not, isn’t a great choice when you could be riding in a far greener vehicle (though at least the Lexus hybrid limousine isn’t a stretch model). But, he’s Sir Paul, so I guess he gets away with that sort of thing – screaming mobs of fans and all. He wouldn’t want to ride in a car that a crowd of crazies could easily pick up and cart away to some secret Beatle Mania dungeon.

Link [Ecorazzi]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

SUVs Going Down in Value, Filling Up Used Car Lots due to Gas Prices

Praise be, y’all, sports utility vehicles are going down in value. Are people actually learning a lesson, here? SUVs are flooding the used car market as people realize that the behemoths are unnecessary, stupid environment killers – no, scratch, that, it’s because of gas prices. Well, whatever works, right?

Ridelust has it:

Most owners who go to a car dealership looking to trade their current ride in for something new usually come out shell-shocked when they learn what the dealership is willing to give them for their trade. Those choosing to turn in their SUV right now will certainly be finding their trade-in value far from what they had invisioned.

According to CNW Marketing Research and the AP SUV sales were down 14% in the month of March when compared to March of 2007. The darling SUV of the American Auto Industry no longer sparkles under the looming clouds of $4/gallon fuel prices. In the face of such a decline in value the only solution for many SUV owners looking to downsize may be to sell their vehicle themselves; a task many owners dread. Even diesel trucks are not immune to the declines in value.

All this has GM concerned that their ‘Green Car of the Year’, the Chevrolet Tahoe 2-Mode Hybrid will suffer a similar fate. The Tahoe Hybrid might get more miles to the gallon, but the $10,000-$15,000 markup probably doesn’t make it worth the cost, especially when depreciation is taken into consideration.

Don’t make any sudden moves, people. We are slowly sliding toward the edge of common sense and responsibility, but we don’t want to scare these SUV-loving folks into realizing they’re actually doing something good for the environment. They’re cringing as they trade in their cars, waiting for the chorus of I-Told-You-So’s, and rubbing it in could well make them want to keep their suburban monsters out of pure spite. The idea of doing things like those fruity Your-a-Peein’s doesn’t sit well with Middle America, no sirree.

Link [RideLust]

Photo credit: Flickr user reedbiotch