This is not an election map. It depicts the annual consumption of vehicle fuel for cooling and dehumidification by state. Source: NREL Ventilated automotive seats not only can improve passenger comfort but also a vehicle’s fuel economy by reducing the power need for air conditioning, according to a study done... Read more →

GreenShift Corporation announced its formation of General Ultrasonics Corporation, a development stage company that owns patented technologies that use ultrasonic energies to enhance physical and chemical reactions including more efficient steam reformation to produce hydrogen. GreenShift claims that its technology, acquired in its recent acquisition of H2 Energy Solutions, can... Read more →

Currently, the emissions requirements for facilities that produce ethanol for human consumption are more lenient than those for facilities that produce ethanol for fuel, although the processes are similar. The EPA has proposed applying the same air permitting requirements for facilities that produce ethanol for fuel or human consumption, but... Read more →

Ohio Governor Bob Taft has announced a number of initiatives to utilize state resources as energy sources. The most immediate are plans to expand the state’s production and use of ethanol and biodiesel. Taft made the announcement last week during a visit to Greater Ohio Ethanol in Lima, Ohio, during... Read more →

Chevron will use SAGD to produce the bitumen. Click to enlarge. (Explanation below.) Chevron Corporation has acquired five oil sands leases in the Athabasca region of northern Alberta, spanning more than 180,000 acres and possessing an estimated 7.5 billion barrels of oil in place. The company hopes to be producing... Read more →

A composite image map of the Antarctic constructed from satellite photos. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is on the left side of the image. Source: OSU A study by University of Colorado at Boulder researchers has determined that the Antarctic ice sheet, which harbors 90 percent of Earth’s ice, has... Read more →

Bosch piezo injectors. Bosch is supplying the spray-guided gasoline direct-injection system for the new Mercedes-Benz CLS 350 CGI (earlier post). The core of this system is a set of very fast-switching piezo injectors, making their debut in a series-produced car in the 350 CGI, as well as the engine management... Read more →

Autocar WXLL refuse truck The city of Fresno, California, has ordered a heavy-duty plug-in series-hybrid CNG refuse truck from Odyne Corporation—the first of its kind. Odyne will modify a new Autocar Refuse Collection Truck with the new fuel system and series-hybrid plug-in drive. The CNG plug-in hybrid will be used... Read more →

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing standards to reduce hazardous air pollutants from mobile sources. Hazardous air pollutants, also known as air toxics, include benzene and other hydrocarbons such as 1,3-butadiene, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, acrolein, and naphthalene. The proposed standards would significantly lower emissions of benzene and the other... Read more →

The sensor is the small cap on the end of the fiber optic cable in this early rendering of the system. Source: NREL. The US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has awarded licenses to manufacture thin-film fiber-optic hydrogen sensors to Nuclear Filter Technology (NucFil). The licenses, together... Read more →

Change in sales of full-size SUVs. Click to enlarge. Sales of full-size SUVs in the US continued their decline in February, dropping 14% to 103,566 units from 120,376 units sold in February 2005. For the combined first two months of the year, sales of full-size SUVs dropped 11% from 216,485... Read more →

The California Cars Initiative (CalCars.org) will publicly convert a Toyota Prius hybrid into a plug-in hybrid during the inaugural Make magazine Maker Faire, April 22-23. Over two days, CalCars engineers, along with a cadre of volunteers, will build and install a battery pack and make hardware and software adjustments to... Read more →

The Republican chairman and Democrat ranking member of the US Senate Finance Committee introduced legislation to increase significantly tax incentives for business owners who buy fuel-efficient alternative-energy vehicles—just as they now receive incentives for the purchase of SUVs. If enacted, the bill, introduced by Senators Chuck Grassley and Max Baucus,... Read more →

More than 130 Environmental Protection Agency scientific patents of technologies developed over the last eight years that benefit the environment can now be viewed at the new EPA TechMatch web site. About 30% of those—the vast majority of them from the National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory—involve vehicle technologies: engine,... Read more →

Schematic of GE gasifier in an IGCC application. DKRW will use GE’s coal gasification technology in its proposed Medicine Bow, Wyoming coal-to-liquids (CTL) plant. The first phase of the Medicine Bow project is designed to produce approximately 11,000 bpd of Fischer-Tropsch diesel and other fuels from Carbon Basin coal. In... Read more →

Maxwell Technologies is introducing 16 new Power-type BOOSTCAP ultracapacitor cells and multi-cell modules specifically designed and constructed for demanding automotive and transportation applications. The new line of Power products includes cells ranging in capacitance from 320 to 2,600 farads and 10 fully integrated modules based on the new cells. All... Read more →

The new bi-turbo gasoline direct injection inline-six. BMW is resuming the use of turbocharger technology in the design of its large-scale serial production gasoline engines. At the Geneva auto show, the company unveiled a new in-line 6-cylinder bi-turbo engine with direct injection and fully variable camshaft control to optimize combustion.... Read more →

The Prius II CNG Two West Swiss natural gas companies—Holdigaz SA and Gaznat SA—have retrofit a stock Toyota Prius with a natural gas fuel system. The resulting bi-fuel Prius II CNG is on display at the Geneva auto show. The companies preserved the original engine, but adapted the fuel injection... Read more →

EurotaxGlass’s, a leading supplier of automotive business intelligence in Europe, asserts that the market for gasoline-electric hybrids in Europe will only flourish if vehicle manufacturers launch greater numbers of vehicles into volume-selling segments where buyers are more concerned about fuel efficiency. The company says the prospect of lower fuel consumption... Read more →