Hybrid Car - More Fun with Less Gas

More than a year after the dramatic unveiling of Chevy Volt last January here is what GM brings to Philadelphia Auto Show 2008 - a carcass. Sure, people were stopping to look at the slowly turning display with a somewhat puzzled look and then (usually in less that 10 seconds) moved right onto exploring other Chevy and neighboring Saturn vehicles, those that you cannot see through. Noone bothered to read the PowerPoint on the flat screens inside the carcass. Another missed PR opportunity… Continue Reading »

Well, this post is here just to register a trend. You would not call driving a 2-seater car with 4.8Liter V6 engine and yet unpublished MPG environmentally friendly driving. However, I see nothing wrong with every car manufacturer’s desire to pair an internal combustion engine with an electric motor for all kinds of different reasons. What are the reasons? –>

Well, let’s see: a new color - Spectra Blue Mica, as pictured here. A new 5th generation DVD navigation - DVD update, not hardware from what I can tell.
2008 Prius has narrower wheels - 5.5 in vs. 6 in on a 2007 model. An attempt to make them even less rolling resistant? The specs show the same tires and so the profile is going to be a tad different.
Anything else? Continue Reading »

Those of you lucky ones on the West Coast: do not miss a great opportunity to catch up on the latest and greatest in the alternative cars and other non-traditional means of transportation. There is a show at The Barker Hanger in Santa Monica on October 19-20. Attendance is free! There promises to be a lot of fun down there with the historic EV1 display (I believe, the only one left!), special collection of super high mileage prototype cars, Honda Civic GX test drive and more.

GM’s Volt and Tesla’s Roadster are notably missing. Oh, well. See if you can catch a test-drive in a Zap instead. Don’t forget to take a picture of yourselves inside! Send me your pictures to infoAtfuelzilladotcom and I’ll make sure to post them here!

Read on for the list of exhibitors and the address … Continue Reading »

Honestly: I do not have a Chevy Volt-sinking agenda. I truly want an American manufacturer to succeed in building a car that is capable of keeping up with the rest of the traffic in all-electric mode albeit for the first 40 miles only. It does, however, look like GM is so much further away from the goal than anyone involved cares to admit to … Continue Reading »

This post is here just for fun. There is no high-tech stuff below. Not a single chunk!

In case you were not sure how spacious the trunk of a Toyota Prius is or how useful a Prius can be in gardening, here is the proof
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I came by this Saturn ad today and could not resist to click. The ad said: “Most affordable hybrids in America”. Wow, wouldn’t that be interesting to look at? I clicked off to the Saturn website expecting to see the specs of their hybrid vehicles. Nothing really jumped at me and so I looked around trying to find those hybrids. Found precisely two - VUE Green Line and Aura Green Line - that looked like they might be hybrid vehicles. Well, that’s fair - two is plural. Let’s take a look at this Aura ad I’ve found. Read on, it will be fun! Continue Reading »

I was working on a larger post about Prius plug-in conversion kits (come back soon for it) and this mini-rant I wrote up for the post did not quite fit here, so I made a separate post for it.
Here is what the peculiarities are: Continue Reading »

When I first saw news about Chevy Volt, it was in Green Car Journal where the author of the advertorial (Kellen Schefter) had proclaimed that GM is “back in the electric car business”. Never mind strange remarks from the advertorial like “truly wonderful but now infamously defunct GM EV1” (why defunct if truly wonderful?) and “GM admits that it’s still waiting (my emphasis) for technological breakthroughs to produce a large Li-ion battery pack”. I went on GM’s website and watched the car roll on stage and Bob Lutz, GM Vice Chairman give a speech about “electrically powered vehicle by GM”.

Wow, I though to myself, they mean business this time around. Well, not so fast. Read on for some bucket loads of pure fun ahead:
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No, it does not mean that Tesla Roadster 100 development was put on hold. Quite opposite. It simply means what it says. They brought it to Arvidsjaur, Sweden in a middle of a winter and took it out for a spin (pun intended) .

I came across this video on Darryl Siry’s (VP of Marketing for Tesla Motors) personal car blog and could not resist to re-post it here: Continue Reading »