The City of Brotherly Love will be showing its nature-loving side this coming Sunday during GreenFest Philly at 2nd and South streets. The event, sponsored by Toyota and produced by the Urban Green Partnership, will feature a green film festival, an introduction to the Girl Scouts of America’s new Go Green Initiative and displays by some 200 enviromental groups and businesses.

About 25,000 people are expected to attend this year’s GreenFest Philly. This year’s theme is “food” and booths are expected to help educate the public on how to buy locally, eat vegetarian, grow your own food and support farmer’s markets.

Toyota will present the third generation Prius with its solar-panel roof. The green film festival will show Robert Kenner’s well-reviewed Food, Inc., and Miss Earth Pennsylvania will host an eco-fashion show. Performers will include Carolyn Malachi, PaperTrees, Singing for AJ, Bohemian Sunrise and April King.

And the environmental group, 350.org, will be advocating for support as it prepares both for an International Day of Climate Action in October and for the world climate talks in Copenhagen in December. (See their human-powered photo below.)

Another special activity at Philly GreenFest will allow guests to create their own pottery using local and recycled clay. Attendees will also be able to get a nutritional evaluation, if they bring a list of everything they’ve eaten over the last three to seven days.

The festival will run from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Other sponsors, beyond Toyota, include: Dhyana Yoga; Zipcar; Juju Salon & Spa; Mugshots Coffee & Cafe; Sustainable Business Network; Kate Svitek Memorial; WMGK; Yoga Living, Grid Philly.

(Photo of Greenfest 2008 by Jen Bendik.)

Gee-whiz technology always starts out expensive. Graying boomers can remember paying $400 for a VCR. That first DVD player probably set you back $600. Now you can buy one at a grocery store for less than $40.

The 2010 Honda Insight is no $40 DVD player, but it proves the point: costly technology eventually becomes affordable. The starting sticker price of the Insight LX, the most basic of the three trim levels available, is $19,800. The MSRP for the top-of-the-line Insight EX with navigation system is $23,100 plus $670 destination and handling fees.

That makes the Honda Insight a couple grand cheaper than its look-alike competitor, the Toyota Prius, and the cheapest gasoline-hybrid now on the market.

Add that lower sticker price to 40-plus miles per gallon and you have a pretty economical economy car. The car tested got 41.8 mpg during a week of mixed driving, including a few episodes of harsh acceleration.

This edition of the Honda Insight has little in common with the car originally bearing the name, introduced as America’s first mass-produced hybrid car in December 1999 and later discontinued. This edition maintains fuel efficiency while adding comfort and practicality.

The car’s cabin contains the typical Honda ergonomic genius. Everything is laid out just so with the only minor gripe that the driver has to reach around the gearshift to get to the cup holder. The set up could make bringing a Venti Americano from holder to lips a bit tricky.

It’s easy to find a comfortable driver position thanks to a height-adjustable seat and telescoping steering column. The driver and front passenger will find plenty of legroom. Legroom for two rear seat riders is decent. The back seat is too narrow for three average size adults, however.

The cargo area accessible through the hatchback is surprisingly roomy and the fold-down rear seats add hauling flexibility.

The Insight is powered by Honda’s Integrated Motor Assist^TM system that pairs an 88-horsepower 1.3-liter four-cylinder gasoline engine and a 10-kilowatt electric motor that adds 13 horsepower. In this case 88 and 13 adds up to 98 horsepower for the combination.

That sounds slower than it is. Acceleration is good enough to merge into heavy freeway traffic if you’re at all paying attention. But don’t try to pass any tractor-trailer rigs when going up hill. And, as you might expect, the tiny engine complains loudly when forced to work hard.

The continuously variable automatic transmission is smooth and efficient.

But the people who drive this car are the sort of people who avoid jackrabbit starts anyway. And the Insight’s behavior modification will alter that habit if you have it. The Insight has a digital speedometer display that changes background color according to the fuel efficiency of your driving style. On this dash, green equals good. Blue is bad. Punch the pedal, the light goes dark blue. Use a feather touch, the light stays green.

As is the industry standard these days, even the base trim of the Insight comes with a long list of features: automatic climate control, power windows, a four-speaker AM/FM audio system with CD player and iPod jack and an array of airbags. The Insight EX adds electronic stability control, cruise control and an upgraded audio system with six speakers.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

You’d expect Doug Fox, the cordial co-chair of the North American International Auto Show, opening to the public on Saturday, to have some good spin on how this event will rise above the stench of economic panic in the Motor City, and the country.

Not only does he have the goods, by the end of our conversation Tuesday, I was convinced that this is a pivotal, but not hopeless time for the car industry.

Fox thinks this is not just an important, historic show, but “the most significant show without a doubt” in the 21 years since the NAIAS became a designated international show.

The automakers, he believes, are thoroughly jazzed by the technological road race in front of them and ready to turn out more energy efficient vehicles faster than “even they thought they could.” (Good point there. But then what are the alternatives for the American makers? Sell the remaining inventory of Navigators to the residents of Dubai and take early retirement?)

From his perch in the balcony above the convention, Fox pointed to the evidence supporting his premise: GM’s all-electric Volt, on target for market in late 2010 (as far as we know), and soon to generate new American jobs in batteries; the Prius, enough said; the Insight, back from the dead and touted as economical too; and the promised Chrysler EVs (Fox hadn’t spotted those on the floor, but suspected strongly that they’ll be surfacing).

And don’t forget China’s whimsically named Build Your Dreams (BYD) cars, keeping the pressure on our flabby U.S. flank to build hybrids and all-electric cars in big numbers, but with smaller price tags.

“I think clearly there were some people coming here, arriving thinking this would be a gloomy funeral like atmosphere,” said Fox of the NAIAS convention. “But when they walked into that hall and heard some of the announcements being made…there’s no other show anywhere in North America like this show.”

“The word I use is hope. That’s what this show has shown us. There is hope on the horizon,” he said.

So maybe all we have to fear is fear itself? We’ll see how that flies, or drives, in the months to come.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Photo: 2009 North American Auto Show

The BYD E6 from China,a pure electric vehicle. All the chemical substances in the battery can be recycled.

Horseshoe crabs – believe it or not – scuttle about in Jamaica Bay, a 20,000-acre maze of marshland, islands and water that forms the southern boundary of Brooklyn. There would be more if they could find a place to breed.

Decades of debris have piled up on the bay’s beaches, blocking the path to egg-laying sites for the prehistoric-looking crabs. But things will soon get better for horseshoe crabs in New York City – and blue-winged warblers in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, and marbled godwits along the Mendocino Coast of northern California – because of TogetherGreen, an initiative of the National Audubon Society paid for by Toyota.

The program awarded TogetherGreen Conservation Innovation Grants totaling $1.4 million this fall. The grants, ranging from $5,000 to $68,000, will fund 41 projects in 24 states. As you might expect from Audubon, many of the funded projects benefit birds.

Jamaica Bay, New York

What’s good for horseshoe crabs, it turns out, is good for semi palmated plovers, ruddy turnstones and other birds that feast on horseshoe crab eggs when they migrate through Jamaica Bay. Declines in crab populations over the past two decades have been accompanied by falling bird populations.

“Jamaica Bay is this incredible resource for wildlife right in the shadow of JFK Airport,” says Glenn Phillips, executive director of New York City Audubon.  While the water is cleaner than in years past, the flotsam and jetsam of decades does incredible damage to the beaches and marshes, Phillips says.

Lumber, chunks of broken fiberglass boats, industrial plastic, “anything you can imagine, including the kitchen sink, winds up on those beaches,” says Phillips.

About 80 percent of the junk, Phillips explains, is “perennial debris” that is moved from beach to beach by storms that churn the waters of the narrow-neck bay. Haul it off once and the problem is largely solved.

“The hardest part is getting the bodies there to clean it up,” Phillips says.

Part of the $58,000 grant will be used to hire buses and boats to get volunteers to clean up sites in the spring. Most of the grant will be used to hire someone to cut through the red tape. Jamaica Bay is managed by 27 agencies – federal, state and local. That makes organizing volunteer efforts complicated, Phillips says.

(For more information on the Jamaica Bay estuary, see the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation.)

Lehigh Valley Restoration Project, Philadelphia

A $7,800 TogetherGreen grant will pay for plants used in the continuing restoration of Kittatinny Ridge in the Lehigh Gap Wildlife Refuge northwest of Philadelphia, a project of the Lehigh Valley Audubon Society.

The air pollution from more than 80 years of zinc smelting denuded Kittatinny Ridge, an important flyway for tens of thousands of raptors. The Lehigh Gap Nature Center was been working to restore the 400-acre landscape.

“We’ve created a grassland where there once was a moonscape,” says Dan Kunkle, director of the  Lehigh Gap Nature Center. (See before restoration photo, top, 2002; and after, below, 2006.)

The grant will allow volunteers to give nature a boost by planting native wildflowers such as sunflowers and asters, as well as forbs, or herbaceous flowering plants.

The project is a bit of an experiment, Kunkle says, to determine what plants can flourish in the soil contaminated by zinc, cadmium, and lead deposited by the smelting operation. The new vegetation will also be planted inside and outside fenced areas to learn which plants withstand heavy browsing by hungry deer.

The projects awarded grants are designed to “achieve measurable results in energy, land or water conservation,” says Brenda Timm of Audubon.

Toyota is a company that is based on efficiency and measurable goals, says Dan Sieger, spokesman for Toyota North America. The automobile maker wanted to work with the National Audubon Society because of its long history and its effective network of 500 chapters across the country.

“These innovation grants we’re funding are going to pay dividends for years and years,” Sieger says.

The grants are just part of a five-year, $20 million gift from Toyota. Other money is being used for a fellowship program designed to develop conservation leaders and mentors. Forty fellowships – each with a $10,000 stipend – were awarded in November. Recipients include professors and Ph.D. candidates, an artist, ecologists and representatives of wide-ranging community organizations.

Copyright © 2008 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Don’t be fooled. Gasoline prices won’t be bumping around $2 a gallon for long. Driving a car with good fuel economy still makes sense. Higher mpg means lower operating costs for the household budget and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

Happily, car shoppers today have a myriad of options among fuel frugal 2009 cars. You can find something getting 30 mpg or better on the highway at nearly every dealer lot. In some cases, you’ll have to settle for a trim line with a smaller engine and manual transmission to hit the 30 mpg mark.

Here are 30 with 30 mpg:

Audi TT

Gorgeous lines, 200-horsepower and a crisp six-speed manual transmission make the Audi TT a swell sports car. The fuel economy of the base 2-liter model makes it an earth-friendly sports car.
EPA estimated mpg: 22 city/30 highway

Jennifer Drukker expected people would stare at her new car. What she didn’t expect was this: “I was at the first stop light after I’d driven off with the car. It was literally the first time I came to a stop after driving off with the car,” she recalls. “The driver of the car next to me rolls down the windows and starts shouting questions.”

If it seems an extreme response to a Chevrolet Equinox, a fairly mainstream SUV, consider that the paint job includes the word “fuel cell” on the sides.

Fuel cell vehicles that turn abundant hydrogen into electricity are one promising alternative to gasoline-burning, toxic-fume-spewing internal-combustion engines. Widespread availability of such cars – which emit water vapor instead of greenhouse gases and stuff that’s flat out unhealthy – is years in the future.

But for Jennifer Drukker, Jamie Lee Curtis (yes, that one) and a handful of other drivers, the future is now.

General Motors has 100 Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell SUVs on the highways as part of “Project Driveway,” an extended research program that puts regular drivers behind the wheel of these costly cars for a few months.

Honda this summer began delivery of the FCX Clarity through a special leasing program expected to put another 200 fuel cell cars on the road over the next three years.

When you boil it down, fuel cell vehicles (FCV, for short) are electric cars. The juice comes from that single-proton gas once used to make zeppelins float. Hydrogen and oxygen are used in a chemical reaction that creates electricity. Think of it as the flip side to the electrolysis experiment you did in high school.

“We’re using hydrogen to store electricity,” says Mark Vann of General Motors.

For drivers, that means an electric car with the range of a conventional automobile. The range of the Equinox FCV is 160-200 miles between fill-ups. The Honda FCX goes about 270 miles.

Hydrogen as a fuel offers several advantages over gasoline. When used in fuel cells, the byproduct is water. It’s abundant. Industrial volumes of hydrogen are produced from natural gas and used to refine petroleum. Enough hydrogen is now produced globally each year to replace 56 billion gallons of gasoline, according to the National Hydrogen Association.

And hydrogen is a fairly cheap fuel. “The cost of operating the fuel cell Equinox is equivalent to getting 40 miles per gallon and paying $2.50 a gallon for gas,” say Vann.

The high amount of torque an electric motor offers compared to an internal-combustion engine means even an SUV like the Equinox is delightfully quick off the line.

“It goes faster than you legally need to go,” says Gates Clark, another Project Driveway participant. “There are no performance compromises.”

Quick and quiet. Low impact and low operating costs. Why can’t I have one now?

Pushed by the dwindling prospects for fossil fuels, the auto industry is undergoing changes not seen since the days of Henry Ford. Today’s innovators aren’t just looking to gear up production, they’re trying to dial back energy use, and that’s produced a bumper crop of wild and wacky (and some not so wacky) concept cars.

Here are eight of our favorites:

Air Car

It would cost less to manufacture (and buy), less to maintain, less to fuel and there would be no emissions. The makers of this car, Air Car Factories, are either on drugs or they’ve seized the Holy Grail. Their car would run on compressed air collected by see-saw devices on the road. Each car would be refueled through regenerative driving. The Barcelona-based company expects to begin with electric models, until testing is completed on the Air Car. A green dream? We hope it’s a reality.

Nike ONE

That’s right. This is a car designed by a shoe maker. It doesn’t much look like a shoe. More like…nothing you’ve seen before. The car is intended to be “athletic.” No joke. “An athlete training to drive the Nike ONE uses a physical resistance simulator, that mimics the vehicle’s controls, along with the digital simulation within GT4 to train their muscles and mind for specific tracks and competition scenarios,” explains Phil Frank, lead designer, who said his team was inspired by the principals of Nike founder Bill Bowerman. The long term plan is that any movement by the driver would be converted into electricity through nanotechnology using a “Spark Suit.” Frank calls it “the ultimate in convergent technologies.” We agree.

Toyota Fine-S/ Fine-N

These aerodynamic hydrogen fuel cell cars would employ motors in the wheels, thereby opening up space in the cabin for passengers. The designs have been out for a while. No word on when such a car could be in production.

Honda Puyo

Honda has already hit the road with a hydrogen vehicle, the FCX Clarity, a few select models of which are being test driven by celebs in California. The concept Puyo, though, still seems from another planet. This hydrogen fuel cell car actually glows in the dark, not due to any radioactive fuel on board, but because the body is luminescent to enhance maneuverability. But that’s just where the fun begins. The whole Puyo concept is to produce a cuddly car. “‘PUYO’ is a Japanese onomatopoeia that expresses the sensation of touching the vehicle’s soft body. It is meant to convey a warm, friendly impression,” Honda reports. Looks cool too.

Chevy Volt

This much discussed plug-in is expected to be available by the end of 2010. GM promises that its lithium-ion battery will allow it to run around 40 miles on a single charge – without using any gasoline. Past 40 miles, the engine will be able to use gasoline or ethanol working along with the battery. Unlike some of the cars on this list, the Volt appears very close to production, and no wonder, GM has assigned more than 200 engineers and 50 designers to the project.

Nissan Pivo2

The electric Pivo 2 is not just a car, it’s an “intelligent life form design,” which means…we’re not sure what. But there is a “Robotic Agent” on the dashboard, a sort of alien friend who talks to you. The car is intended to be more like a living creature and less driven by mechanical design. One problem, though, while this three-seater can twirl 360-degrees, it’s not easy to envision a successful double date in this mini-car, unless one in the party is content atop the cabin.

Saab BioPower100

This turbo-charged sedan would use 100 percent biofuel in a production 2.0 liter engine, which with modifications, could produce a surprising 300 hp. The car debuted at the Geneva show in 2007. The concept explores maximizing power within an environmentally responsible vehicle.

Toyota RiN

This literally green car remains shrouded in mystery as to how it’s green, that is, how it will be powered. Toyota has much to say, however, about how the car will work to improve passengers’ awareness of their natural surroundings, improve their posture and overall health. The car’s “meter cluster” would change colors depending on your mood, which would presumably be more “serene” in this car. And…it’s cool looking.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Toyota will become the first major automaker to use solar power when it installs solar panels on the next-generation of its Prius hybrid, according to a Reuters report citing Japan’s Nikkei business daily.
The Japanese automaker plans to add solar panels on the roof of the high-end Prius models to power the car’s air conditioning, according to the newspaper. The gasoline-electric hybrid car will be redesigned early in 2009. Toyota has sold more that 1 million Prius sedans since it launched in Japan in 1997.