Electric Car Blogging

African locusts never hit each other, even in swarms millions strong. Volvo wants cars to do the same thing.

On Friday, media organizations started running stories about a possible merger of General Motors and Chrysler. We wondered what such a merger would mean for the future of domestic hybrid and plug-in cars—so we asked a panel of auto industry analysts. Here’s what they had to say.

How much can Detroit’s financial woes be blamed on a reliance on gas-guzzlers and dragging heels on hybrids?

“More than half. I predicted billion in losses per year from having wrong products.”

- Walter McManus, auto economist, University of Michigan

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The Playmaker’s Standard, a Washington, DC-based communications firm, released an analysis on Friday of General Motors’ chess-like strategy for trying to gain a footing in the hybrid car market. The Playmaker’s Standard used its “classification framework of 25 irreducibly unique stratagems or plays” to map GM’s high-stakes tit-for-tat match against critics, including skeptical environmental groups, financial analysts, and industry watchers.

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• SiOnyx Brings “Black Silicon” into the Light; Material Could Upend Solar, Imaging Industries - Xconomy
  New company formed from Harvard-discovered method for making silicon more receptive to light, potentially making solar cells far more productive.
• Bloom Energy Licenses Modine’s Fuel-Cell Tech - Earth2Tech
  Bloom Energy, backed by Kleiner Perkins

…

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–The fledgling ocean energy industry is awash in ideas for making electricity from moving water but it is still reaching for a toehold in the commercial world.

Greentech Media last week released a summary of an ocean energy report that forecasts great potential for wave and tidal energy.

…

In a rare independent study of China’s energy sector, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found that the problem with China’s coal power generation is not that its power plants lack cleaner technology.

The emissions are definitely higher than they …

Originally posted at Sinobyte: China and technology

Filed under: Hybrids/Alternative, Green

While there are some very early rumors of an 80-mile battery being worked on for a future-generation Volt model, it’s still an open question if the domestic automakers can survive long enough to make to a second- or third-gen PHEV.
In more fun news, Ruf builds an electrically powered 911 and the AIRPod (above right) will soon come to New Zealand. Wheee! Oh, and this: Corvette Z06 wins MPG Marathon.

• Could future Volts get 80-mile batteries?
• Audi Mileage Marathon: Diesels are definitely efficient, will it matter?
• Honda sabotaging its own FCX Clarity?
• Audi Mileage Marathon: Audi’s boss not worried about Toyota diesel cancellation
• MDI’s AIRPod coming to New Zealand
• Ruf reveals electrically powered 911
• eBay Find of the Day: 1993 Elektro electric mail vehicle
• Aptera has some questions for you
• Toyota iQ prices start at £9,495, deliveries start in January
• WIRED NextFest: Imagine PS Roadster
• Zap ships record number of vehicles in 3Q 2008
• MDI’s AirCar get a new name, now called the FlowAIR
• We can get down to 130 g/km of CO₂ in 2012!

More headlines after the jump.

Continue reading AutoblogGreen for 10.13.08

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