Category: Transportation

Why big railroads are torn over climate policy

Posted by: Adam Aston on September 16

Joel Kirkland at ClimateWire reveals how climate policy is splitting not just industries, but even individual companies. Focusing on the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad, Kirkland shows how big rail…

Fedex, Eaton & EDF collaborate to develop commercial hybrid trucks

Posted by: Adam Aston on September 08

Here’s an interesting case of what companies do when the market doesn’t meet their green needs. In the case of delivery trucks, there’s a classic chicken-and-egg problem. Fleet owners such…

Airlines Face $1.6 Billion Carbon Charge

Posted by: Mark Scott on July 27

Estimates for carbon prices are notoriously hard to nail down. Markets fluctuate, so any figure could soon be out of date. With that in mind, though, consultants Point Carbon and…

NYC Green Taxi Debacle Marches On

Posted by: David Kiley on April 22

New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg has been frustrated so far by the courts in his quest to make all the city taxis get 25 mpg or better A…

Foton Surprises With Market Ready CNG Bus

Posted by: David Kiley on April 22

Foton America surprised many attendees of this week’s Alternataive Fuels & vehicles National Conference in Orlando by showing a Chinese built CNG Transit Bus with enough U.S. componentry to satisfy…

Inside BMW’s new electric car: The Mini E

Posted by: Adam Aston on November 19

Here’s a first look of BMW’s Mini E. Matt Vella and I had a chance to check out some advance details early this week: check out the details here. And…

Jack Nicholson talks up hydrogen power, circa 1978

Posted by: Adam Aston on September 02

A brief reminder of how long the vision of a clean, hydrogen automotive fleet has been lumbering along. Try not to be distracted by the narrator’s pronunciation of cahr….

Google maps debuts walking directions

Posted by: Adam Aston on July 24

What does it say about car-centric US culture that, for all the eye-popping progress Google, MSN, and others have made with online maps, it’s taken me till now to find…

New York City locks in its hybrids

Posted by: Adam Aston on July 16

Last year, when gasoline was in the then unheard of range of $3 per gallon, the city of New York had the good sense to mandate that it’s taxi fleet…

GM Stumbles, Sees the (Green) Light

Posted by: Arthur Eves on May 14

Like most Americans, GM made some bad strategic choices in the last decade or so and has come to regret it. Bob Lutz called hybrids an “interesting curiousity” and went…

Bigger, more efficient next-gen Prius due Jan 2009

Posted by: Adam Aston on May 12

Edmunds Auto Observer has some intriguing details of the much anticipated update to the Prius, Toyota’s iconic and best-selling hybrid which just surpassed 1 million units in sales, a major…

Server farms as polluting as air traffic

Posted by: Adam Aston on April 04

Air travel has become a sort of spectral symbol of the most indulgent sort of carbon-intensive lifestyle, so much so that some deep-green enviros have sworn off flights entirely. The…

First “production” Tesla rolls in

Posted by: Adam Aston on February 12

Catching up on news from other green blogs I see that last week, over at Earth2Tech.com, the lads got special access to the arrival of the first “production” models…

Are biofuels doing more harm than good?

Posted by: Adam Aston on February 09

Finding substitutes for fossil fuels is a central strategy for most nations trying to slow global warming. Yet in a stunning setback for the burgeoning biofuels industry, a pair of…

Will green-car buyers bite at Porsche’s high-speed hybrids?

Posted by: Adam Aston on January 14

Among the rush of green car announcements at this week’s Detroit auto show, Porsche unveiled two new entries in the green car race. First, the German supercar maker announced…

Ford’s new green-er engine isn’t a hybrid

Posted by: Adam Aston on January 09

Kudos for Ford for taking the lead and rolling out a new generation of advanced gasoline engine technology. The move is fresh evidence that Detroit has more mileage boosting…

The return of airships… again.

Posted by: Adam Aston on January 07

Flip through an old stack of future-philic magazines such as my longtime favorite, Popular Science, you’ll find proclamations of a new era of air ships announced every few years….

Better mileage measures for green cars: Why MPDs will beat out MPKWHGs

Posted by: Adam Aston on November 06

Car mileage, as it’s widely understood, is naturally expressed as “miles per gallon”, as in miles traveled per gallon of fuel consumed. So what happens when you begin to substitute…

Why Forrest Gump’s electric car really is better for the environment

Posted by: Adam Aston on October 29

I’ve had a couple of questions on my last post asking: don’t electric cars just shift the pollution away from a car’s tailpipe and to a power plant’s smokestack? This…

Forrest Gump Goes Electric

Posted by: Adam Aston on October 25

Hollywood isn’t much of player in the high-stakes drama about the future of transportation. But Tinseltown is playing an increasingly important role showing off greencar alternatives. And, like luxury brands…

Volvo plug ins to hybrids

Posted by: Adam Aston on September 07

Volvo may be leaping into the hybrid game by going straight to a plug-in. The Swedish car maker (owned by Ford, for now, at least) plans to show a concept…

Could ultracapacitors help make plug-in hybrids a reality?

Posted by: Adam Aston on September 05

It’s no secret that batteries are the big hold up for automakers trying to make the leap to plug-in hybrids that could go an average day’s driving on battery power…

A green Cadillac? GM’s surprising new hybrid

Posted by: Adam Aston on August 16

Given GM’s offerings in the hybrid market to date — so-called mild hybrids like the Chevy Silverado the deliver unimpressive mileage gains — the new hybrid technology promises to be a game changer.

Bad mileage = sales crash for Detroit

Posted by: Adam Aston on August 10

Bad fuel economy is crippling the US auto sector.

A bet: Toyota will beat GM to the plugin electric hybrid

Posted by: Adam Aston on July 26

The dissonance of GM’s green messaging hit me again with Toyota’s announcement that it is now formally testing PHEVs in the US, at UC Irvine and UC Berkeley. While Toyota has said it had been developing PHEVs for some while, the news moves its efforts into the daylight. Toyota’s go-quietly strategy is consistent its recent habits. As the company gets closer to eclipsing GM as the world’s No 1 vehicle maker, Toyota has become increasingly subdued in playing up its growth and technology plans.

Auto Fuel Economy — Here we go again!

Posted by: John Carey on June 19

This week, Congress is debating whether or not to mandate higher fuel economy for cars and light trucks. Predictably, the U.S. auto industry is fighting such increases tooth and nail….

GreenWords — Top eco-tales to check out

Posted by: Adam Aston on June 12

As they catch my eye, I plan to post links to important, controversial or outstanding stories on the environment and green biz. Here are few recent picks. In the “The…

Why NYC’s Yellow cabs took so long to go green

Posted by: Adam Aston on May 24

For the city, hybrid taxis mean cleaner urban air, less energy consumption, and lower costs. So why didn’t the shift happen sooner? Consider the simple economic savings this move promises. The city estimates the plan will save 22 million gallons of gas -– and related emissions -– in the first year alone. For a hack driver making the switch from a 10-mpg Crown Victoria to a 30-mpg hybrid, daily savings in fuel costs could hit over $100 on a 12-hour shift, particularly with gas going for $3.50 or more at city stations. Those savings go straight into drivers’ pockets and lower the pressure to increase taxi fares down the road.

Welcome to GreenBusiness, BW’s newest blog

Posted by: Adam Aston on May 22

Welcome to Green Business, BusinessWeek.com’s latest blog. Our aim here is to explore the business side of energy, the environment and climate change. They’re fast changing issues, and highly divisive—perfect…