Archive for May, 2009

As goes California, so goes the nation….

(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
U.S. President Barack Obama imposed tough national standards to cut emissions and increase gas mileage yesterday.  Saying “The status quo is no longer acceptable,” Obama said new standards would reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil and save 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of the program.
Calling it the [...]

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May 14th is Bike-to-Work Day

Bike-to-Work Week kicked off May 11th encouraging all Americans to, you guessed it, bike to work. Originated by the League of American Bicyclists in 1956, the event is in turn part of National Bike Month and promotes bike commuting, environmental awareness and healthy transportation.
As part of the celebration, Bike-to-Work Day is held on the third [...]

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Pursu-ing Mobility, 3-wheels at a time

This past week while chatting with The Courage Group’s urban planner Ray Gordon, who writes a blog Courageous Futures, I had the good fortune to meet Howard Levine, founder and COO of Persu Mobility.  Formerly Venture Vehicles, the company is working on producing a PHEV, similar to the U.K.’s Carver, yet using a totally new [...]

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Citroen’s new C1 Ev’ie

The first all-electric family car went on sale in the United Kingdom recently.
Launched by Citroen and called the C1 ev’ie, the lithium ion battery-powered, all-electric mini car is classified as a car, unlike the Indian-built Reva G-Wiz, which had to be registered as a quadricycle.
It features a 30kw electric motor, is powered by 25 li-ion [...]

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Chocolate as a fuel?

145 mph on chocolate?
My question is that milk or dark chocolate?
London scientists just unveiled what they hope will be one of the world’s fastest biofuel vehicles, powered by waste from chocolate factories and made partly from plant fibers.
The car “fuel” is vegetable oils and chocolate waste that has been turned into biofuel. The steering wheel [...]

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Zipcar launches FastFleet, partners with ZimRide

Have you heard of Zipcar?
Begun in Cambridge, Massachusetts nearly a decade ago, the startup pioneers the European idea of car-sharing here in the U.S.
Its concept is simple:  offer self-service vehicles by the hour or day to city residents and businesses looking for an alternative to the high costs and hassles of owning a car in [...]

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Will Bike Sharing come to LA?

Paris.  Vienna.  Rome.  Stockholm.  Washington, DC.  What do they all have in common?

Each city has a successful public bike-sharing program that’s helping pave the way to a greener urban environment, one city at a time.

The bike-sharing concept began in Paris in July of 2007 and allows an individual to check out a bicycle from a [...]

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To Infinity and beyond! Boeing’s new Waverider X-51 experimental aircraft

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s….the new Waverider X-51, an experimental aircraft that can fly more than six times faster than the speed of sound on ordinary jet fuel!
Bridging the gap between airplanes and rocketships, the Boeing-built , X-51 is a high-speed jet that stays airborne, in part, with lift generated by [...]

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