August 2nd, 2009
Aptera Electric Cars Showing Peek at Interiors
Stumble it!
For those of you who follow our blog, you know we’re big fans of what the folks at Aptera are up to. Aptera is building an all-electric, three-wheeled car that has a small fraction as much aerodynamic drag as a Prius. The Aptera 2e goes 100-120 miles with a top speed of 85-90mph, and boasts normal car safety features and impressive crash test results. And it looks like a super cool Jetson mobile, which makes it especially exciting.
Now the folks at Aptera are starting to reveal what the inside of their space-age auto will look like. You can see a sample below and here is what Aptera has to say about their design developments:
“The first major issue was space. We tested men and women of every age and stature and found, in many cases, we were not offering enough room in the cabin. With that information, we enhanced the cabin using our Aptera formula — safety, then aerodynamics, then lightweight. The new interior cabin is now roughly 10% larger by every measure.
“The new 2 series also now has headroom and legroom comparable to, if not better than, the Mini and Chevy Volt. We widened the area at the hips to provide more space than the Smart EV and the Nissan Cube. Then to top it off, we increased our cargo capacity by more than 24 cubic feet, which is nearly two times the space available in the Honda Accord.”
Alright, let’s get that thing into market and start driving it! We’re ready!
You can learn more about Aptera here. Images courtesy of Aptera.
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July 15th, 2009
Zipcar Launches All-Electric Car-Share Scheme
Written by Andrew Williams, courtesy of Gas2.0, originally published on July 10, 2009
US-based car-share giant Zipcar Inc. has launched its first ever Electric Vehicle Pod, featuring an all-electric Citroen C1 and a Plug-In Toyota Prius. The vehicles, among the most efficient and technologically advanced on the road today, can be hired by the hour for a fraction of the cost of owning one.
The company figures that EVs are ideally suited for early, large-scale use in Zipcar’s car sharing platform since the average Zipcar trip lasts just under four hours and less than 25 miles, well within the range of a typical EV. (more…)
Popularity: 7% [?]
April 17th, 2009
Yahoo Choo-Choo! Obama’s High Speed Rail Plan
We are tickled pink to learn about President Obama’s new high speed rail plan for America. What better way to cut traffic, reduce our global warming contribution, AND create jobs? Yahoo for this Choo Choo Plan, we say.
The President is committing $13 billion to fund his plan. He’ll be using $8 billion from the existing stimulus plan and plans to allocated $5 billion over the next five years.
The plan identifies 10 corridors for federal funding, including California, the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, the Southeast, the Gulf Coast, Pennsylvania, Florida, New York and New England. (For an illustrated map see this Wall Street Journal article.)
Read more about the plan at CNN.com here.
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February 23rd, 2009
Green Auto News Roundup
There are lots of exciting developments on the green auto scene…and here are some of the highlights.
San Francisco continues to be a leading green city and is installing electric vehicles in front of City Hall. Mayor Gavin Newsom did a guest blog post on Gas2.0 last week in which he describes the city’s commitment to making electric transportation a feasible reality. Let’s hope more American cities follow SF’s approach.
Speaking of electric cars, there is a new one on the market– the ZERO from Tazzari. This is a cute little city car worth checking out. According to the company ZERO’s electric motors deliver brisk acceleration to 35 mpg and a top speed just over 55 mph for a claimed 88 miles. Click here to watch a video of the ZERO in peppy action.
On the not-so-good-news front, one of our favorite green car companies has decided to delay the launch of their plug-in hybrid by a bit. The futuristic Aptera 2e was slated for release in late 2008, but is now aiming for late 2009/early 2010. This is a hotly awaited vehicle. The company says they just want to get it right and make sure that all customers are totally delighted with the vehicle. They did offer test drives at the recent TED conference, though.
A bit of great news is how amazing the mileage is for the new Honda Insight. HybridCars.com reports that the 2010 Insight is routinely getting over 60 MPG in road tests. Originally Honda had announced that the new 2010 Honda Insight would “only” average about 41 or 42 mpg — but it seems they have outdone themselves. (Hey that even puts my Prius to shame.) And what’s even better is the price point Honda is aiming for: somewhere around $19,000. (There is no official exact price yet.) If they can deliver a sub-$20K car that gets 60 MPG, this car will seriously be a green dream.
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