Congress Urged to Impose New Mileage-Based Tax to Pay for Road Repairs

Here’s a conundrum: the government is hell-bent on reducing the average fuel consumption, and thus CO2 emissions, of new vehicles. It’s even offering federal tax incentives to buyers who choose to go “green”, i.e. hybrids or all-electrics.

It follows that, lowering fuel consumption, means lower income from federal gas taxes that have remained the same since 1993. Without new sources of revenue, the Congressional Budget Office estimated last August that the Highway Trust Fund will need at least US$110 million in funding for road repairs.

Ah, but government officials are already taking care of that.

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BMW 116d EfficientDynamics Records 103MPG UK – 2.7lt/100km in RAC Challenge

A latest generation BMW 116d EfficientDynamics hatch driven by the team at Green-Car-Guide at the RAC Future Car Challenge 2012 achieved an average fuel economy of 103 mpg UK (equal to 85.8 mpg US and 2.7lt/100km) over the 64-mile Brighton to London route, recording a 39 per cent improvement over the manufacturer's official 74.3mpg UK combined economy figure. Read more »

New Research Could Lead to Smaller, Cheaper and Faster-Charging Lithium Ion Batteries

Lithium-ion batteries may be employed widely in a variety of products, including hybrid and all-electric vehicles, but up until now, engineers have had a limited understanding of how lithium ions “behave”.

Professor Miroslav Krstic and postdoctoral fellow Scott Moura of the University of California, San Diego, claim they have devised new algorithms that enable them to better comprehend what’s going on inside lithium-ion batteries.

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Honda Offers New Civic Natural Gas Vehicle Customers a $3,000 Fuel Card, Is It Worth a Look?

With gasoline prices creeping up again to as high as an average of $4.67 a gallon (€1.23 a liter) in California on Tuesday, according to the AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge Report, Honda thought it would be a good idea to launch a new promotion for its natural gas-powered Civic.

The Japanese carmaker said that it will offer customers purchasing a new 2012 Civic Natural Gas Vehicle (NGV) at participating dealers from now until January 2, 2013, a debit card pre-loaded with $3,000 worth of fuel.

As always, there's some small print including that the card can only be used at Clean Energy CNG fueling stations around the country to purchase fuel. There are approximately 150 Clean Energy filling stations in the U.S., 40 of which are located inside California.

According to the most recent Department of Energy, Clean Cities Alternative Fuel Price report on fuel prices, the nation-wide average price of natural gas fuel for vehicles in July was $2.05 per equivalent gasoline gallon.

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