This hasn’t been a good winter for a lot of people, but Tesla Motors has had a particularly rough 2010 so far. First they cease operations on their Roadster, then three of their employees die when their plane crashed into high-tension power lines. CEO Elon Musk identified the three victims of the crash as “plane owner and pilot Doug Bourn, 56…Brian Finn, a 42-year-old senior interactive electronics manager…and electrical engineer Andrew Ingram.” Finn reportedly lived a couple of blocks away from the crash site; Doug Bourn “shared responsibility for the design and testing of the power electronics module for the Roadster.”

Since we’ve covered Tesla in the past, and rooted for them as a potential developer of mass-market electric vehicles, we at Corn Car send our condolences to the families and friends of Doug Bourn, Brian Finn, and Andrew Ingram.

Wow! We meant to post much sooner than today, but our Internet was put out of commission by the Snowpocalypse, remnants piled up in 2-foot-high dunes all around Baltimore. All we could do was sit around and prepare for the inevitable Yeti attacks - the naked fear present in most of that week’s weather forecasts suggested they were on the way. But now our connection to the rest of the world is restored, so we thought we’d gather a few tips on how to deal with snow cleanly and greenly (assuming greenly is even a word).

1. Shoveling might be a pain in the ass, and back, and shoulders, and knees, but it’s the most environmentally sound way of moving snow around. A close second, however, is the Wovel, a snow shovel on a wheel that utilizes your body weight to push snow without much energy expenditure. It’s won all sorts of green awards for its design, which is equal parts shovel and olde-tymey bicycle, and it costs less than a snow blower. So if you absolutely need to update your hardware, try one out.

2. Use sand or kitty litter for tire traction instead of salt; salty runoff is bad for the water table. Relatedly, some cities in upstate New York are mixing recycled glass in with their salt loads to fix this problem, and found that the mixture is both less expensive and more potent than salt alone. The glass, ground fine enough to pose no danger to car tires, bounces enough sunlight around to melt snow and ice quickly. We’re hoping Baltimore catches wind of this idea, since we’re already used to seeing glass in the street and wouldn’t put up much resistance to it finally doing us some good.

3. If you’re just a snow blower kind of person, Toro makes an electric snow blower that’s cleaner, quieter, and doesn’t require as much engine maintenance as a conventional model. It’s also lighter, which is an obvious benefit - our backs were sore enough after digging cars out.

4. Do nothing, which uses no energy, gives off no emissions (excusing the occasional blast of methane), and might keep you from feeling like an idiot if we end up getting even more snow this week. Curse you, Ullr!

Anyway, that should be enough to get our Mid-Atlantic readers started. Godspeed, and steer clear of Yetis.

Good news and bad news to start off the week. The bad news is that the Tesla Roadster, one of the sweetest electric cars ever built, won’t be built for much longer - according to Eco Auto Ninja, “the Tesla Roadster will cease to be produced in 2011 for the simple reason that Tesla won’t have anywhere to build the high-end electric sports car.” So if you were planning on getting one, uh, now’s the time. It’s a shame, not only because it’s something else for electric car haters to gloat about, but we wanted to see those Roadsters take off just for Elon Musk’s response. He’s more than weird enough to have delivered something hilarious.

But the good news is that GM is setting up electric motor production in, of all places, Baltimore. It’ll create around 200 jobs, which we desperately need, and it puts GM in the enviable position of being the only US electric car manufacturer to build its own engines. Apparently the Baltimore plant will be used to build “a new version of GM’s two-mode hybrid system destined for pickups, SUVs and rear-wheel drive cars,” which means they’re refining their current, heavier model into a better fit for consumers. They picked a good city for this, too - despite its other problems, Baltimore is making a lot of big steps towards sustainable living.

But that leads us to wonder: what other cities could use a shot in the arm from green industry, and which ones are the best prepared? Sounds like a list idea to us…