Well, looky here! Looks like hybrid car sales spiked up last month to the tune of a 20% increase, compared to a 12% increase for the auto industry as a whole. And while Toyota’s hybrid sales still dominate the market, Ford has taken second place; their Fusion Hybrid sales are up 64%, and the Escape is up 25%.

Ford’s approach to greener cars has been cautious and variant - Ford sustainability expert John Viera told Hybrid Cars that “there is no silver bullet” when it comes to eco-friendly cars whose problems range from upfront expense to support/maintenance infrastructure. We’re pretty sure he meant magic bullet, but that’s beside the point. Instead of using a single technology to brand themselves, Ford has kept a broad scope, putting work into “advanced internal combustion technology, hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and electric cars.” Not a bad idea. Actually, we salute Ford’s efforts to supply more than one kind of green vehicle to the marketplace, even if it complicates their marketing. Options and adapability are an important part of green living, and it’s good to hear people besides us beating that drum. The risk for Ford is that one particular type of green car could heat up, leaving them in the dust behind a company that threw more resources into it, but that doesn’t seem to be where things are headed, and questions like “could Ford fall behind if electric cars take the world by storm?” are a little premature.

The Wall Street Journal has declined rapidly since Rupert Murdoch bought it and turned it into his right-wing Livejournal, but this tidbit about electric trucks caught our eye. The WSJ posits that electric trucks outpace electric cars in the marketplace because trucks are less of an upfront expense for companies than cars are for individual consumers. Rather astute of them, yes? They further explain that “electric cars will be expensive…and it could take the average family many years to ‘break even’ based on money they saved by not buying gasoline.”

This all came about because Fed Ex will soon be using eStar buses for their urban delivery routes (they plan to deploy 400 trucks by the end of the year). The WSJ continued their reasoning that delivery companies see more upfront savings from electric vehicles because they “travel more miles [and] are also at their best in stop-and-go traffic and urban settings.”

Meanwhile, electric vehicle manufacturer ZAP is working on overall efficiency by shipping out lithium battery systems for their full range of vehicles.  Lithium battery systems improve electric car performance and lifespan (at least four times the life of standard batteries and twice the driving range), and ZAP customers have been told to expect “improved acceleration and handling of their vehicles.” We’ve been writing about lithium batteries off and on for a while now, so we’re obviously pleased to see them in use. Hopefully the paths of increased corporate usage of electric vehicles and consumer engine/battery improvements converge while the public is still interested in the technology.

Lots of manly car chat in this update, but first here’s an amusing hater from Townhall.com - it’s clear from his directionless rant about cap and trade (and Obama, and unions, and all the usual GOP scapegoats) that David Harsanyi doesn’t really understand what he’s angry about. Not that it’s impossible to rationally oppose wind and solar power, but he clearly has no grasp of them beyond their convenience as buzzwords. Guys like this would get in the way if they weren’t so retarded.

Among actual adults, however, there’s a lot to talk about. Arizona’s electric car enthusiasts are soon to benefit from a $99.8 million stimulus-act grant that will help local company Ecotality Inc. roll out 12,000 charging stations and show people how to use them once the Nissan Leaf hits the streets later on this year. Whether or not Mexican residents will be allowed to drive them remains to be seen.

The Leaf won’t be the only option with a sissy name, though. Norwegian electric car maker THINK is $40 million closer to expanding operations to North America, and has plans to start production at its U.S. plant in Elkhart, Indiana next year. THINK cars are currently assembled in Finland. We didn’t get retail prices from THINK, but they’re probably (and hopefully) less than the current $50,000 tag on Toyota’s first hydrogen car. Not exactly the best way to deflate criticism that hydrogen car research is too expensive, but Toyota reps are insistent that “production cost should be covered within the price of the vehicle.” At least they understand that they have to cut that price in half before making any serious pushes to sell these things in America - we have enough reasons to hate rich people already without their cars getting fancier.

And with that, we must dash, but it’s good to see electric cars and similar tech. gaining momentum despite laughable resistance from guys like Harsanyi. Seriously, “three-cornered-hat-wearing Visigoths?” What a tool.

Wow, it’s been a while since the last update. Sorry about that! Finals and one of us having to throw hours of his life into the Pit of Eternal Suck that is the Maryland Film Festival kinda got in the way of the blog for a minute there, but we’re back! And we’ve got some interesting news this time.

Electric cars are whisper-quiet compared to conventional automobiles, which poses a unique hazard to the deaf and hard-of-hearing. The scenario of an impaired pedestrian walking right in front of a car because he or she didn’t hear it coming has been brought up a lot, and while one would think people would help keep each other safe in situations like that, the sad truth of it is that investments in human kindness rarely see returns.

So electric car manufacturers are going for the next best thing: Star Wars. Yep, the Daily Mail reports that “regulators in the European Union, Japan and the United States are considering allowing manufacturers an array of sounds - from the conventional [engine noises] to sci-fi sounds from Star Wars” so pedestrians can hear them coming. There’s even talk of allowing manufacturers to create their own “signature sounds” for their electric vehicles, which strikes us as a potentially terrible ringtone-for-your-car situation, but the basic idea is (pardon the pun) perfectly sound. Car noises alert people to oncoming cars, and also inform drivers of whether or not the car is accelerating or decelerating. Plus, all the hopeless dorks at Corn Car HQ want our cars to sound like the Millennium Falcon.

What other sound packages would be cool to include with electric cars? Anyone?

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.

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…

Hello? Is this thing on? We’ve been without Internet for a couple of days, but it looks like we’re back, and with a stronger Mbps rate, to boot. We’ve also been slacking on the cool, eco-friendly things Baltimore has been doing as of late, so let’s pause for an update.

Before Mayor Dixon resigned, the city introduced a fleet of DesignLine 2009 EcoSaver buses called the Charm City Circulator as part of an on-going plan to revitalize the city’s public trans., and there’s lots of rooftop gardening and urban sustainability projects going on locally, as well. B’More Green, the Baltimore Sun’s environmental blog, brought up a recent interview with Gov. O’Malley where he talked about doing more to strengthen solar power development and offer tax breaks for electric cars. The article also mentions the major budget crunch hampering many of the state’s green efforts, so who knows how far any of O’Malley’s plans will go. Hopefully he’ll do better for Baltimore as a governor than a mayor, not that we have much room to complain about his mayoral legacy in light of our current, rudderless City Hall.
But before we all go patting ourselves on the back about eco-friendliness, there’s also a story about how far the city still has to go: turns out local woman Maxine Taylor was cited last year for “having a driveway and parking pad made out of wood chips.” The city’s zoning codes still insist that parking areas have to be “dustless” asphalt, brick, concrete or stone block,” even as Baltimore’s Sustainability Plan hopes to engage residents in making the city a cleaner, greener place. Oops.

We’ll stop here, just short of jinxing our repaired Internet connection, but we’ll post again later in the week.

We’re back, as promised, with more book suggestions for our dedicated readership. Most fiction with an alt. fuels focus is sci-fi, so we’re not sure what to tell you if that’s not your thing. But if you’re reading a biofuels/alt. energy blog, you’re essentially telling the world that it is, so we’re not worried about insulting anyone with more traditionally literary tastes.

First up is Ben Bova’s Powersat; Bova has always been pro-space exploration, and this book’s plot hinges around “a terrorist conspiracy…to sabotage Astro [Corporation]’s plans to put satellites in geosynchronous orbit capable of beaming solar energy in microwave form to earth.” Bonus: the villains have ties to oil barons. Bova isn’t the most sophisticated writer on earth, but his science is plausible and he’s certainly a passionate environmentalist, to the point that he was hired as a consultant for Repo Men.

Along the same lines is Fallout!, by Lawrence Dunning; it’s about a disgruntled, drug addict scientist who plans to blow up a nuclear power plant near Denver. Yeah. Not exactly Gravity’s Rainbow, but what can ya do? Anyway, said scientist and another character discuss the pros of combined solar/wind energy around page 170, and lament the campaign against considering energy sources beyond petroleum and nuclear power. Don’t we know it.

Moving on, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Sixty Days and Counting has a plot devoted to the issue of global warming and resource scarcity - as Publisher’s Weekly puts it, “time will tell if the world has both the scientific know-how and the political will to reverse the ongoing rush toward an ecological precipice.” Discussions of environmental science abound without killing momentum in favor of a shiny hardware exhibition (an unfortunate tendency of hard sci-fi), and the idea that a Buddhist liberal eco-dork (the main character) could be elected president ever is just precious.

Finally, Lyle Estill’s Biodiesel Power: The Passion, the People, and the Politics of the Next Renewable Fuel isn’t a novel, but it does focus on the people in the biodiesel movement, exploring tensions between grass-roots activists/co-ops and their agribusiness counterparts. It also touches on ethanol’s technical properties, but this is much more of a Howard Zinn treatment of the subject than ethanol usually gets.

So there you have it. That oughta keep everyone busy for a while, us included. We’ll be back on Tuesday with some news updates, and maybe a movie recommendation or two if we can think of any.

Well, while Democrats try to force the global warming bill through the Senate and Republicans threaten to kill it in committee with a boycott, F.O. Licht’s World Ethanol 2009 12th annual conference is being held in Paris this week. Countries like the United States, Brazil, India, France, and Nigeria are being represented and sharing their views on global ethanol development. One of our representatives, Renewable Fuels Association CEO/President Bob Dinneen,  will look at “expanding ethanol markets and addressing unsubstantiated claims about the environmental impact of ethanol.” So at least SOMEONE can address the topic like an adult.

Meanwhile, the rest of us get Barbara Boxer and George Voinovich interrupting each other over a retarded semantics disagreement and conservative pundits smearing anyone who speaks up about the issue as a fanatic hippie moonbat. And that’s not even counting the Midwestern contingent who can’t debate this issue for more than ten seconds without tripping over their own dicks trying to monopolize it for political points.

Anyway, now that we’ve thoroughly bummed ourselves out, we’re gonna stop here and hope for the best. But we need something to cheer us up. Some hot chicks posing next to an electric car should do it.