Archive for October, 2009

Electric Cars Don’t Deserve Halo Yet

Posted by zach On October - 27 - 2009ADD COMMENTS

Nope.  They still don’t.  Maybe I am publishing this just as a reminder, bringing to the forefront the real facts through all the talk about green initiatives and advancement, not to mention all the misleading advertising.  I don’t think we are as far along as most think, and here is why.  This article from Autonews refers to a study that reveals the true “green” status of electric cars.  Half of the energy produced in the US still comes from coal.  So, while there is no exhaust that pours out from a tailpipe, electric cars’ energy sources produce twice the carbon dioxide and many times more pollutants, such as particulates and smog components, than Natural Gas.  So, currently, although it may not have the perception of such, gasoline cars are more “green” than EV’s.

This study is not new information, just a reality refresher.  Don’t get me wrong though.  The progress is in the right direction.  However, additional focus is needed in shifting away from coal, a dirty black energy producer, in order take advantage of storing energy in batteries.  And the more this is accomplished the more we are on are way to build a sustainable and healthy society.  Chevy Volt Review

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AFFORDABLE!?!? Green Sports Machine From Honda

Posted by zach On October - 23 - 2009ADD COMMENTS

UGLY is hopefully on its way out, along with crappy driver’s experience, for green automobiles.  Nobody ever said what we should drive and what we want to drive had to be different.   Although that is how I personally felt with the Insight and the Prius.  Things got a lot better with the release of Hybrid versions of existing models.  That’s for sure.  Honda’s CR-Z, however, is a different kind of step toward integration. It takes us further away from “green inconvenience”, and I have a feeling things are only going to get better.

The word on the street is that Honda will use a specially built high performance version of either the 1.8-Liter or 1.5L  i-VTEC engine that is found in the civic coupled with Honda’s IMA (integrated motor assist), a fancy way of saying it has an electric motor too. No, I’m not exactly wowed by that combination either, but the good news is that the car only weighs a measley 2,800 lbs.  I’m definately not going to bash those specs, because  a torquey electric motor for muscling the car off the line and a powerful high-end i-VTEC could be a killer combination for an outstading performance car, not to mention the 6-speed manual transmission.

Price range estimates vary from $15,000-$17,000 to $16,000-$19,000.  Honda will unveil all the information we seek in the Detroit Auto Show in January 2010.

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CEO Fritz Henderson’s annual salary is being cut by twenty-five Percent to $950,000 as part of the Obama administration’s  mandated pay reductions for some of the top executives of companies that received government bailout money.  It’s reported that the top 175 execs’ salaries of seven companies that were given help were all slashed.  However, the US Treasury did not report the identities, only the salary numbers were listed.  Evidently Henderson was identified by a source knowing the CEO as the highest paid GM executive, which only makes sense since he is the cheif executive officer. Read the rest of this entry »

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