This year, the online magazine is looking at five finalists including the new Ford Focus Electric, Honda Civic Natural Gas, Mitsubishi i, Toyota Prius v and Volkswagen Passat TDI. That includes two all-electrics, a CNG vehicle, one hybrid and a diesel-powered car.

Read the full article here.

Next Green Car have added a further 282 electric car charging points to Zap-Map in the two months since its launch, resulting in a total of 1,034 points mapped across 451 locations.

The majority of the charging points continue to be the “Slow” chargers (6-8 hours for full charge). However Zap-Map has added the first six “Fast” chargers (3-4 hours for full charge) and an additional two “Rapid” chargers (80% charge in 30 minutes) to add to the existing 27. Zap-Map will continue to be updated on a weekly basis.

“The continuing roll-out of recharge points at home, at the workplace and in public locations is key part of encouraging the take-up of electric vehicles. As part of this electric revolution, owners of plug-in EVs need an easy-to-use data resource showing where the public recharging points are located – this is why we have developed Zap-Map in the UK” says Dr. Ben Lane from Next Green Car.

The Next Green Car’s Zap-Map can be found on a new electric cars micro-site within Next Green Car, which also provides an electric car buying guide, details about available electric models, model prices and more.

Next Green Car’s Zap-Map is now available to license by third parties, either as a fully integrated bespoke map or as a data feed to integrate onto an existing map.  Great news, keep them coming!

Google and more than 80 other companies are collaborating with the Department of Energy to make it simple for drivers of electric vehicles to find parts and charging sites.

Via a partnership called the GeoEVSE Forum, the organizations are pooling their data to build a definitive database of all available EV charging stations in the U.S. regardless of the manufacturer or network, the DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory said yesterday.

The GPS and mapping system database will also include all available electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) stations.

The first mass-market electric vehicles are about to go on sale in selected cities, kicking off the beginning of a wave of new green vehicles hitting showrooms over the coming year.

The Chevrolet Volt, from General Motors, and the Leaf, from Nissan, both launching in December, are just the beginning of the electrification trend. At least eight hybrids and 12 plug-in electric cars in every price range are planned for 2011, with another batch of electric vehicles (EVs) expected in 2012.

The rollout of these vehicles will be regional, starting with California and a handful of other states, including New York, Texas, Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Tennessee, among others. It could be several years before EVs are readily available across America. Each employs different powertrain technologies, so it pays to do your research at sites like www.hybridcars.com or pluginamerica.org.

But here are the basics:

A hybrid, as the name suggests, uses both a gasoline engine and electric motor to power the car, switching back and forth as necessary. A plug-in hybrid is similar, but comes with a larger battery that allows the vehicle to travel solely on electric power for short hops, but not for long stretches. An extended-range electric vehicle, like the Volt, can go up to 40 or so miles on electricity, after which a small gasoline motor kicks in to recharge the battery and keep driving. A pure EV, like the Leaf, runs solely on electricity and needs to be recharged every 100 miles or so.

When it comes to hybrids, Toyota’s Prius is the only one anyone ever really talks about, so it might surprise you that there are 27 other hybrid models already on the market today, including hybrid versions of the BMW 7-series, Mercedes S-class and Lexus LS.

Many more are coming. They include luxury cars like the recently introduced Porsche Cayenne S hybrid SUV, which, at $67,700, sells for about $4,000 more than the gasoline version of Porsche’s bestselling vehicle, and the Lexus CT 200h compact, due in early 2011, which is aimed at a younger, Gen-X crowd, and will likely be priced under $32,000.

Read the full article here.

Auto parts city was once considered a menace in the community. But after greening up its act, it’s now earning top environmental awards — including Green Business of the Year from the Green Business League.

It may look like a junkyard, but brothers Jay and Larry Brosten hope to change your mind.

“We’ve spent too many years trying to improve our image and we’ve spent millions of dollars setting this facility up and trying to do the right thing,” said Larry Brosten. “But it’s always had the stigma of the ‘j-word’.”

The three-generation old Auto Parts City in Gurnee just got an $8 million make-over. The family’s goal is to set the green standard in auto recycling.

Good going guys! Keep up the green work! Congratulations to Auto Parts City from everyone here at GreenVehicleDisposal.com

read the entire article here

A broken board tossed in a landfill will take generations to biodegrade; the plastic fins probably never will. Even the thin strip of wood that runs down the middle to provide strength comes at an environmental cost — a minuscule yield from the raw material it’s milled from. “A ‘green surfboard’ is inherently an oxymoron at this point,” says Joey Santley, 44, a frenetic surfboard shaper and entrepreneur in San Clemente on a mission to create an environmentally friendly surfboard — or at least one with a carbon footprint that’s less titanic. “Hopefully in the future it won’t be.” In recent years, a wave of experimentation has sought to detoxify surfboards by using materials that suggest the Whole Earth catalog rather than the periodic table of elements: hemp, bamboo, kelp and silk instead of fiberglass; foam made from soy and sugar rather than polyurethane, which is composed of toluene diisocyanate, or TDI, a possible carcinogen that can be inhaled and absorbed through the skin; adhesive resins made from linseed, pine and vegetable oils. But changing the way surfboards are made has proved difficult. The few who have sought to go greener have struggled not only with finding just the right materials but also with overcoming resistance from shapers and professional surfers reluctant to fix what they don’t consider broken.

After experimenting with castor oil, sugar and corn, McMahon’s company found that blanks made with soybean oil were as strong and light as conventional foam.

Two years ago, he and a partner formed Green Foam Blanks, which makes rigid foam surfboard cores by fusing polyurethane with recycled polyurethane dust gathered from workshops that would otherwise discard it. That yields more boards per ounce of toxic polyurethane.

The company recently signed a deal with a leading maker of traditional blanks to manufacture and distribute its product in North America, Japan, Europe and Costa Rica. Still, this being a start-up, Santley is not just part-owner, he’s also the chief dust collector. Darting down a gangway between two nondescript buildings recently, he bounds up the stairs of one of the neighborhood’s numerous surfboard factories. Under a whirring cutting machine, he hits gold: a pile of white polyurethane foam shavings as light as Rocky Mountain snow. “This is like a perfect powder day,” Santley says, shoveling the stuff into a trash bag and holding it aloft. “Probably enough for about a dozen boards. And it won’t end up in the landfill.”

Hat’s off to you Joey and we hope your quest for a green surfboard is successful!

Mike Anton – read the full article

According to The Engineer, “the plant will produce aviation fuel from plasma gasification of biomass into BioSynGas which is then converted by Fischer Tropsch into biojet fuel. The facility will process all types of biomass and residue feedstock which will mainly be sourced from local waste management facilities. The process produces no waste products other than an environmentally-benign slag that can be used as construction aggregate.”

The plant is slated to be fully operational by 2014, and if successful, it will offer a way to convert 500 kilotonnes (1,102,311,310 pounds) of carbon-based material per year into 16 million gallons of jet fuel, and could potentially reduce annual carbon emissions by 145 kilotonnes (319,670,280 pounds).

The announcement of British Airlines’ plan to manufacture it’s own sustainable jet fuel comes fast on the heels of news that the U.S. Department of Defense has achieved a breakthrough that could put algae-based biofuels in use by American military aircraft much sooner than the 2016 goal.

This is great news and I hope the auto fuel industry is watching all the progress closely.

We caught up with David for a brief chat on Monday morning and when asked how it felt to be voted number one as the most influential auto recycler of 2009 he replied, “I was in shock!  I love the business and love all the great people involved in it.” “It is a huge honor and over at Standard Auto Wreckers we are committed to helping our fellow recyclers across North America and the world.”

Surprisingly, car donation in the UK is not nearly as big as it is in the USA.  Launched late last year, Giveacar.co.uk is the only vehicle donation program currently operating in the UK. A potential reason for this is that car owners in the UK are not offered tax breaks when they donate their vehicles.  As a result, the Giveacar model operates in a different way to those in North America. They focus on the collection and disposal of scrap cars, rather than those which can be resold for use on the roads.

The Director of the program, Tom Chance, stated that this novel approach is reaping great rewards for UK charities.  He wants to emulate the success of the USA programs like www.CharityCar.us, but do it in his own way.  The UK regulations for scrap cars are particularly stringent, and Chance takes pride from the fact that he is not only benefiting charities, but also the environment.  Because Giveacar was launched only a few months ago, it is not yet clear just how popular charitable car donation will become in the UK.  Chance however, believes he is on to a winner, and feels that he may have imported something of great significance. For more information or to make a car donation in the UK, visit www.giveacar.co.uk