Editor’s Note: This is a guest contribution by Mary Fraser, BASF, American Chemistry Council - Plastics Division Automotive Team

Despite all of the challenges facing the automotive industry today, this is a time of great innovation.

Electric vehicles are just months away from entering the U.S. market and evolving engine technology is consistently improving fuel efficiency. Auto manufacturers are taking big steps to reduce emissions and hybrid cars are becoming mainstream. While powertrain technology has significantly improved fuel efficiency in recent history, the materials used in production of automobiles are increasingly playing a key role in making vehicles more sustainable.  One group of materials, in particular, that is opening new doors to auto design and fuel economy is plastics.

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A new report ranks ten leading world cities on their greenhouse gas emissions. It also examines how and why the emissions differ.

As the report says, over 50% of the world’s population lives in urban areas. Leading cities of the world, global cities, are the places where greenhouse gas emissions really need to be cut. The greenest city from the study is Barcelona and the worst is Denver.

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In a somewhat suspect interview that was posted to the web and then subsequently removed (but not before being turned into a transcript), Dick Weir — the clandestine CEO of the even more secretive EEStor — was caught on tape in a 30 minute interview covering many topics that fervent followers of the company have been curious about for a long time.

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Is 120 miles-per-gallon too much to ask from an American car company? Ford doesn’t think so.

With the addition of the Ford Escape Plug-In Hybrid (PHEV) to its development line, Ford Motor Company is showing that it can dance with the best of them.

The Ford Escape Plug-In Hybrid uses high voltage lithium-ion batteries, which can be charged using common household currents (120v). Fully charging the battery takes six to eight hours. For the first 30 miles following a full charge, the Ford Escape PHEV can drive on the batteries alone, before switching to operate as a fuel efficient, standard Ford Escape Hybrid. The transition is automatic and unnoticeable.

It was the Ford Escape PHEV that was delivered to Hydro-Québec, Canada’s largest electricity generator, on June 9th. Ford Motor Company and Hydro-Québec announced that Hydro-Québec has joined a North America-wide demonstration and research program on plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs).

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Listening to NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday, there was a segment in which some environmentalists lamented Obama’s new fuel economy standards as being a small drop in the bucket for what needs to be done to solve our climate problems.

While this is true, two comments made by Harvard University Professor, Robert Stavins, during that segment struck me as weird and based in something less than reality — a kind of academic fantasy if you will. At the time, I was driving and the comments slid out of my mind. But last night an old friend from college brought it up again in a Facebook thread and it got me thinking more in depth about it.

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Norwegian Finance Minister, Kristin Halvorsen, and her Socialist Left Party have put forth a plan that would disallow the sale of new cars that run solely on gasoline after 2015.

Under the plan new cars such as hybrids, that run partially on gas, would still be allowed to be sold in the country, but any cars that only use gas as their power source would be illegal. Cars already on the road would be unaffected.

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Hey, hold on a just a minute Chicago, San Francisco and Portland. Connecticut and Massachusetts want in on your race to be the country’s EV hotbed.

Northeast Utilities wants to build a 575-outlet EV charging system in the Nutmeg and Bay States, The Hartford Courant says. The pilot project would take two years to complete and the outlets would be built at private homes, businesses and public spots. Total cost: $1.4 million, helped out by a $694,000 federal grant.

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On the heels of a Nissan electric car press conference in Portland Monday, yesterday Norwegian electric car manufacturer Th!nk was wooed by Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski and US Senator Ron Wyden as the place to site an electric car manufacturing facility.

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By now we’ve all heard about the new four door, seven seater (5 adults + 2 kids), all electric eco monster from Tesla — the Model S. We’ve seen the pictures of the gorgeous beast and we’ve had our chance to let the lust settle.

But the thing that’s been bothering me, and surely many of you, is that it still feels like Tesla is making cars with a decidedly un-populist bent. Tesla has been claiming for a long time now that their business plan is to start with the high end market, make some money, learn some lessons, and subsequently release cars that the rest of us can afford — using that money and those lessons to get there.

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Last April, we reported that a small, affordable electric car would finally be available in the U.S. in 2009. Like many predictions made about electric vehicles, this one was a little optimistic.

On March 12, Norweigian electric car manufactuer Think announced plans to open up a manufacturing plant in the United States. The plant would eventually employ up to 900 people and have the capacity to produce about 60,000 electric vehicles per year.

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The automotive research and manufacturing company Lightning Hybrids says they’ve designed a 100 MPG hydraulic-hybrid with sports sedan performance (0-60 mph in 5.9s). The company hopes to score the $10 million purse from the Automotive X Prize.

You may be asking yourself ‘What, exactly, is a ‘hydraulic-biodiesel hybrid’? Since there isn’t a great deal of information available on the Lightning Hybrids’ website or ABG, I decided to give the company a phone call.

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Seems that Honda may have vastly underestimated the appeal of their new hybrid — twice as many Honda Insights were ordered by the time the car had been on sale for ten days than Honda expected to sell in its first two months on the Japanese market.

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David Bassett of the University of Texas and John Pucher of Rutgers University present their findings in “Walking, Cycling and Obesity Rates in Europe, North America and Australia”; they conclude that “Countries with the highest levels of active transportation generally had the lowest obesity rates. Walking and biking are far more common in European countries than in the United States, Australia and Canada. Active transportation is inversely related to obesity rates in these countries.” Nowhere is this more apparent than in the United States, where less than 12% of the population walks, rides a bike or takes mass transit, and one in three of us is obese.

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Apparently one EESU weighs 281 pounds, has a volume of 2.63 cubic feet, can be fully charged in 3-6 minutes, is completely unaffected by temperature, will not explode or catch fire in an accident, and provides 52 kWh of electricity (nearly the same amount of energy the Tesla Roadster battery can hold, which reportedly takes the Roadster about 240 miles).

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FedEx has ordered 10 purpose-built zero tailpipe emissions cargo vans from UK-based electric vehicle manufacturer Modec. The new electric trucks are specifically built for the duty cycles required in stop-start city driving, can go 70 miles on one charge, and can haul up to 2 tonnes (2.2 US tons) of cargo.

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By Jonathan G. Dorn

With the dramatic increase in oil prices earlier this year translating into higher prices at the gas pump in the United States, concerns over U.S. dependence on foreign oil are once again part of the national discussion on energy security. Combined with the growing understanding that carbon emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels are driving global climate change, the debate is now focused on how to restructure the U.S. transport system to solve these two problems.

While the idea of running U.S. vehicles on natural gas has lately received a great deal of attention, powering our cars with green electricity is a more sensible option on all fronts—national security, efficiency, climate stabilization, and economics.

Having a fleet of natural gas–powered vehicles (NGVs) would simply replace U.S. dependence on foreign oil with a dependence on natural gas, another fossil fuel. The United States has scarcely 3 percent of the world’s proved natural gas reserves, yet even without the increased demand that would result from a fleet of natural gas cars, the country already consumes nearly a quarter of the world’s natural gas. At current rates of consumption, U.S. proved reserves would only meet national demand for another nine years.

U.S. natural gas production has remained relatively constant over the last two decades and is unlikely to increase over the long run, despite growing consumption. Consequently, any rise in demand is likely to be met by increasing imports. Since the late 1980s, U.S. net imports of natural gas—primarily from Canada—have tripled. The U.S. Department of Energy projects that by 2016 the majority of U.S. natural gas imports will come from outside North America.

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