What’s it take to stop drivers from polluting the air with their smoky old cars? A little green, apparently. That was the simple thought behind a North Texas plan aimed at getting older cars off the road to help the Dallas/Fort Worth region improve its air quality and meet EPA mandates.

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By Harriet Blake
In Columbus, Ohio, yesterday Mayor Michael Coleman and his staff biked from their homes to the Ohio Statehouse, jacking up their heart rates and kicking-off the city’s 20-year Bicentennial Bikeways Plan.

Photo: City of Columbus
 
Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman
In Boston, Mayor Thomas Menino fought a stiff wind cycling a half mile from City […]

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By John DeFore
Nissan Motor Company took the occasion of its financial-results stock exchange reporting (nearly $7 billion in profits from $90+ billion revenues in fiscal 2007) Tuesday in Tokyo to make an announcement of interest to those of us who don’t own stock. In 2010, the company plans to release an all-electric car in […]

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By John DeFore

With the chorus of ethanol critics becoming impossible to ignore, biofuel advocates are under pressure to pursue options that don’t threaten the world’s food supplies. Researchers at the University of Texas announced late last month that they’ve developed a promising contender:

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By Bill Sullivan
Charles Harris is here, there and everywhere. While the rest of the Winston Solar Car Team dotes over “Sun Hunter”, the eighth such vehicle in the organization’s nearly 20-year history, the captain surveys the scene, making sure everyone is playing his or her proper role.
“Everyone here is motivated. You don’t have to […]

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By Bill Sullivan
Charles Stone expected to encounter a skeptic or two. He had done his research, and this outside-the-box idea seemed to make good sense, but the Director of Transportation for the Mansfield (Texas) Independent School District figured he still would have some explaining to do.
“Natural gas is a little unusual,” he says. “Most people […]

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Perhaps more than any other auto brand, General Motors’ Chevrolet division is applying various fuel-saving technologies across a wide range of vehicles, including full-size SUVs and pick-ups that are not usually thought of as environmentally friendly. The 2008 Tahoe Hybrid was even named Green Car of the Year by Green Car Journal. […]

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By Barbara Kessler
How did Ford do it? Despite a gloomy domestic economy and malingering slumping car and truck sales, the American automaker scooped up a handy first quarter 2008 net income of $100 million (a huge boost of $382 million over Q1 2007).

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By John DeFore
W Hotels, the boutique lodging brand of the Starwood Hotels empire, is getting in the Earth Day mood with a few promotions offering their more environmentally conscious guests some small ways to shrink the carbon footprint of their travel plans. Most straightforward is a promotional team-up with Puma, in which most locations […]

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By Bill Sullivan
I have just slipped behind the wheel of a 2008 Toyota Yaris…and I have never felt so big in my entire life.
Not just a little large, mind you; we’re talking Shaquille O’Neal kind of big here. Granted, I’m not a small guy — about 6-1, 240 – but, in this case, the […]

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By John DeFore
One of this spring’s box office successes, 21, draws on the true-life tale of a team of MIT students who used their mathematical gifts to win huge sums counting cards in Las Vegas. One of the men who was part of that group, Neil Renninger, has since gone from blackjack to biofuel, […]

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By Barbara Kessler
If timing is everything, then premiering a film that champions biofuels at a time when the news media’s aflame with stories about the problems with biofuels must be a tad discouraging.
But Josh Tickell, creator of Fields of Fuel, does not seem discouraged. Determined, but not discouraged. Tickell, who has been been on […]

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