1st BiWeekly Post - DC Car Show

Earth 911 is a great site for your questions about how to dispose of things you don't need anymore. For instance, I just looked up motor oil and it went into the hows and whys to recycle used motor oil.

Green Yahoo is another site I just came upon. Its a collection of green blogs.



So this weeks story....



On Sunday, my Dad and I went to the DC car show. We almost could have gotten away with not paying because the main attraction (that I wanted to see - The Green Cars), was at the entrance before they collected tickets.

There were a number of green and "green" cars. Electric cars, propane powered cars, dieseal cars, plug ins, hybrids, biofuel and solar powered cars.

Here is the i MiEV from Mitsubishi

Cool little car, going to be all electric, I couldn't find a lot on it because most of the info was in Japanese.

We saw the old Rav-4 Electric Car that Toyota did years ago in response to California's 90's EV standards.














So then there were a bunch of other "green cars" (like biofuels and weak hybrids) and they were boring. So we did pay $20 for parking downtown and $12 each so we decided to get our money's worth and check out the main show rooms.

Inside we were able to walk through and pick out the hybrids and concept cars staggered between the SUV's and junk.

Here is the Chevy Volt

It was weird that they wouldn't open up the hood.

My dad and I really liked this Hybrid SUV. The Saturn Vue Hybrid. It is out right now (2009 Car) and in a year or so they are going to have a V6 plug-in version that is going to get even better mileage.

I found a site where this company took this car (2006 version) and made it a plug in that gets 150 mpg. Here is it


This was my Dad's favorite. It in the Ford Escape Plug-in Hybrid. Suppose to get 100 mpg. It is a 2011 car so a little ways off but possible worth the wait. Video here


And My favorite was the Tesla Roadster. It was really cool to finally see this car in person. The black model was all the way in the back and we thought that was so strange. Even when we got to the middle and found this red one, no sales person was telling people about it.

Side note - here is an article about Tesla getting $350 million in a few months to start production of their new car the model S.
Article Here

And Finally to show I am not a cold heartless only electric car person.... here is a nice petro car.

Ford GT i think.



That's It see you next week.


DCgreen

Fully Electric Factor Cars in 2009-10?

I can't WAIT. For these cars to start hitting the road in substantial numbers.

We are hopefully looking at about 5-10 fully electric cars by 2010. Some of them you can pre-order and some are still in the testing phases. Here are a few of them for you to check out.

The Tesla electric car
Two Seat Sports Car

0 to 60 in 3.9 seconds
135 mpg equivalent
220 miles per charge
2009MY Roadster base price: $109,000


NEW! The Six50
A hybrid 2+2-seater (Electric and Solar Powered)

62 miles per charge
75 mph top speed


The Phoenix Electric SUT
4 Seater Pick up Truck (and they have an SUV model as well)

100 miles+ per charge
75 mph top speed (factory set)
On-Board Vehicle 6.6KW Charger: 5 to 6 hours
Off-Board High-Power 250KW Charger: Under 10 min. to 95% SOC



The Mitsubishi iMiEV

80 mph top speed
100 mile per charge
2010 in US... under $20,000


The Subaru R1e
two-seater city car

65 mph top speed
50 miles range
2012-13 in US... under $20,000



BYD (Chinesse Batter Company)'s E6 Electric Car
5 seater

100 mph top speed
186 mile range

Keep a look out for these cars hitting the road soon. Also check out Zap Cars, Tango T600, and the unimpressive Chevy Volt.



DC


UPDATE: I just found this site with 30 electric cars. I like my list better because the cars I chose are more updated and they are cars that will be mass produced commuter cars. A lot of the cars in this other article are slow neighborhood cars or concept cars that will never be sold to consumers.