We talked about the Charm City Circulator, Baltimore’s new system of hybrid buses, back when it had just started up; now that it’s been running a while, we thought we’d check in and see whether or not the locals took to it.

As it turns out, they have. The C3 is free, first of all (not that bus fare in Baltimore is all that expensive), and it shadows popular MTA bus routes. It’s also a cleaner ride around town than MTA buses, and not always late to designated stops, either. And riders are generally pleased with the experience. “This is the best thing ever!” says someone on the C3 Facebook page, noting that “your wonderful bus delivers me from…my hotel to the hospital and allows me to spend my cab money on other Baltimore attractions.” Yelp.com also yielded happy riders, with one reviewer asking “what’s not to like?…10 minute headways means there’s always a bus coming.” People are responding well to the idea of a hybrid bus, too - Baltimore is a much greener city than is often assumed.

In fact, Baltimore Brew has suggested just limiting MTA service to express buses and transit hubs and letting C3 cover everything else because, so far, it’s a better system with more money and community support. And, as the article points out, Baltimore’s public transportation network is beyond redundant and it’s time to finally trim down their 3 or four badly-run options into one or two that actually work. That the C3 is at the top of this list already says a lot about the potential for greener transportation in general, despite how often naysayers try to shrug it off as a gimmick or a fad.

We must say, we’re proud of Baltimore for offering such a nice service - we’ve ridden the C3 a couple of times and really enjoyed the experience. Let’s hope the city government and the MTA are paying attention.

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.

Cars.com just put out a list of 2010’s greenest American cities and, whaddaya know, seven out of the top ten are on the West Coast (mostly California and Oregon). The top twenty branches out a little bit to include Charlottesville (VA), Fairbanks (Alaska), and several cities in the Midwest. Baltimore, sadly, is #103, in spite of all the recent green efforts - rooftop gardening, hybrid buses, etc. - we’ve undertaken. It’s even more depressing when you consider that Washington DC, a mere 30 minutes south of us, is #20. We’re at a loss to explain why that is; DC has a lot of the same problems Baltimore does in terms of corruption and money being scarce for things that actually matter and wealthy suburbanites leaving the city’s urban center to rot. Perhaps DC’s status as the federal government’s company town keeps enough money flowing to start up green city projects.

On the other end of the spectrum we have Detroit, which is turning green in the most literal sense of the word, at #140. Detroit certainly doesn’t have the money to buy hybrid buses or solar paneling - they can barely sustain a population - and city services have been cut to the point where parts of the city are becoming “rejungled,” AKA overtaken by weeds and plant life and, in some extreme cases, impromptu marshland sprouting from large puddles. It sounds and is horrible, but people are looking at Detroit as a site for urban farming efforts because of this, and entire abandoned neighborhoods are being bought to turn into greenhouses and communal farms. The response of Detroit’s remaining population will certainly be interesting, and varied, but the green movement’s eye for opportunity is one of its better qualities, and since everyone else has abandoned Detroit, kudos to them for thinking something can still be done there.

We’ve gone a little far afield from our original topic, but it’s also worth noting that this listing defined “green cities” by how many of their residents are “researching hybrid cars, crossovers and SUVs” thus far in 2010. Hybrids are great and all, but that’s not a complete sample of green efforts by any stretch of the imagination. Taking more green projects into account, we wonder how those numbers might change.

Ethanol has, quite literally, gone commercial; Growth Energy is putting $2.5 million into a pro-ethanol marketing campaign, which will unfold over the next six months. The TV spots are en route, and former Democratic presidential candidate Gen. Wesley K. Clark. is acting as a spokesperson of sorts, seeing as how he’s co-chairman of Growth Energy and all. The ads, and doubtless everything else in the campaign, will pitch ethanol as an American-made renewable fuel that lessens dependence on foreign energy sources. Why does that sound so familiar?

Of course, some foreign energy sources want us to be dependent on them. Brazil, for instance, has also launched an ad campaign, complete with a website - Sweeter Alternative - geared to an American audience. It’s also, according to Gas 2.0, trying to drum up support against the tariffs that have kept Brazilian ethanol out of American gas tanks thus far. Gas 2.0 pushes the Brazilian ethanol industry a little too hard, we think - yes, they’re doing much better than us regarding flex-fuels, and yes they are a democracy with whom we could trade, but pushing their ethanol too hard would discourage us from making any of our own. The whole point, after all, is self-sufficiency, which is not achieved by galloping after foreign countries with things we want at the expense of our own manufacturing sector. That said, if Brazil wants to lobby for lower tariffs, let ‘em. We just need to make sure we aren’t heading into a frying pan/fire situation.

And credit where it’s due, “cane in the tank means money in the bank” is a cool slogan. “For drivers, competition means even regular gasoline would cost less” still needs some work.

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.

So Porsche has officially said no to proposed hybrid versions of the 911 or the Boxster - hybrid components, they claim, would add too much weight, and sports cars aren’t meant for city driving anyway. Debatable point, but whatever. The good news is that Porsche does want to make an all-electric sports car, assuming it could meet the performance standards of a regular engine. Or, more likely, when the corporate yuppie fartbags who drive Porsches can be convinced to go electric.

But hybrids are making progress elsewhere. Peugeot is still in production for its 2011 diesel-hybrid vehicle, the 3008 Hybrid4 Concept, and both Mercedes-Benz and GM are following suit. “Both cars are mild hybrids,” says Fox News’ website, “meaning the electric motor adds power to that of the combustion engine, as well as restarting it from stops. But they are not capable of running in all-electric mode, like…the Toyota Prius.” That was…surprisingly vitriol-free for Fox. Huh.

Anyway, hybrids and other green cars have been a hit for American automakers, whose finances are still delicate after Detroit’s 2007-08 freefalling crash - The Daily Green reports that “Ford’s hybrid sales were up 147% for the year,” adding that “the Ford Fusion Hybrid is a hit.” Ford has been recouping its losses, ending 2009 with a full percentage point gain in US market share, and their stock price is now 10 times improved. Their success could partly explain why GM is gunning for hybrid and diesel-hybrid vehicle production in the coming year - both GM and Chrysler are still struggling. Then again, Ford could go nowhere but up - owners of the ‘93 Taurus understand what we mean here.

Still, this is all promising news for 2010. Keep sending us stories, folks, and we’ll keep reporting ‘em. There might be a list in the works, too…