Green Options

LA County Sheriffs stuck driving Crown Vics are about to be left feeling tragically un-hip. Their Board of Sups just approved a deal with BMW to lease 17 fully electric MINI Coopers.

Approved on Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department will lease the MINI Es for only $10 a month. With a market lease rate of $850, automaker BMW offered up the bargain price in exchange for deputy’s feedback.

The BMW mini coups took the U.S. by storm in part, due to its great gas mileage. Well, now BMW has launched the MINI E, an all electric, zero emissions car. Peter Trepp of Pacific Palisades has become the first consumer in the country to drive the car. He will have it for one year as part of a one-year field study. Additional consumers in New York, LA and New Jersey will also be taking ownership of their MINI E by the end of June.

I’m only slightly miffed that I wasn’t selected to test-drive the car for a year but I’ll get over it. In the meantime, the rest of us can follow Peter through his blog “Plugged-In With Peter’s MINI E,” which can be viewed at http://www.petersminie.blogspot.com/. Yes, his blog is a marketing tool but I can’t resist and I will be following him. Maybe we’ll even be able to get him to write a special piece for us at Gas 2.0.

With one of Nissan’s senior EV project engineers sitting next to me, it felt like I was being expectantly doted on by a protective parent as I drove Nissan’s EV-02 electric test car around a closed course Monday. Given that the EV-02 is only one of two such cars in the world, the reaction was perhaps understandably warranted.

Earlier in the day Nissan had held a joint press conference with Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski, Portland Mayor Sam Adams, and representatives from Portland General Electric, to further affirm Oregon’s burgeoning relationship with Nissan to be one of the first and premier locations for the company’s late 2010 electric car launch.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced that BMW is giving the city a fleet of MINI Es as part of a feasibility test. In fact, BMW will be testing 500 electric MINIs worldwide. Other cities included in the program are Los Angeles, London and Berlin.

>> Read the rest of this article on Gas 2.0

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced that BMW is giving the city a fleet of MINI Es as part of a feasibility test. In fact, BMW will be testing 500 electric MINIs worldwide. Other cities included in the program are Los Angeles, London and Berlin.

MINI E is the first product from BMW’s Project i program. Project i takes aim at vehicle and transportation strategies for the world’s mega-cities. The cars will be loaned to both customers and the cities for a full year.

Editor’s Note: This list represents the ten “best” electric and plug-in hybrid cars (as I see them) coming out in the next two years, but, after that initial culling, this list has been organized by release date, not preference.

With the onslaught of electric concepts and announcements coming out of the 2009 Detroit Auto Show, you’d think that the entire world is about to junk their old jalopies and rush out and buy electric cars tomorrow.

But, alas, as much as millions of Americans would love to pay 3 cents a mile on their daily commutes, our choices for electric cars are, at the moment, severely lacking.

Although the promise of the 2009 Detroit Auto Show reeks of desperation, it’s not all smoke and mirrors. Believe it or not, there are a bunch of noteworthy electric cars, both all-battery and extended range plug-ins, reaching US production sometime in the next two years.

So, if you’ve got the time to wait and you find yourself longing for the cheapest, quietest, and most earth-friendly commute you could imagine, take a gander at this list… electric bliss is closer than you probably thought.

As the dust settles out from the 2008 LA Auto Show, Nissan has clearly emerged as the car company to beat in our transportation future.

From a green perspective, even though the Mini E is getting the most hype, the Mitsubishi i MiEV is one hell of a fun car to drive, and the Honda FCX Clarity is cutting edge, those are just cars. The true measure of a car company lies in its strategies, and, after Nissan’s recent media blitz, the company has shown that there is not a single other auto manufacturer out there who “just gets it” like they do.

After my test drive of the Mitsubishi i MiEV at the 2008 LA Auto Show yesterday, I walked away with the distinct feeling that Mistubishi has designed a sporty, relatively spacious, and well-thought-out winner of an electric car.

Mitsubishi is currently testing the i MiEV in California in collaboration with Southern California Edison. Additionally, according to Mitsubishi executive, David Patterson, the company is in negotiations to partner with Oregon after Nissan announced its new electric car partnership with the state on Wednesday. I guess everybody wants to get in on the Oregon action.

At the LA Auto Show today, I had the privilege of testing the 2009 Mini E electric car on a short drive downtown. It’s zippy off the line and maintains the Mini’s sense of fun and performance, yet it also has a few quirks that may make driving it a bit of a hassle — at least during an initial “mental adjustment” phase.

The new-for-2009 Mini E electric car is undoubtedly one of the most highly-anticipated cars being released next year. Initially the car will only be offered to a select group of 500 people in the Los Angeles, New York and New Jersey metro areas who will be chosen by Mini to provide the exact set of testing conditions Mini engineers want to evaluate.

Much of the attention surrounding the upcoming 2008 LA Auto Show (Nov. 21-30) has been directed at cars like the 2010 Ford Mustang and the 2009 Nissan 370Z. Yet, while glitzy, fast, and heart-poundingly desirable, these types of cars already seem like relics of a different era — a weird and surreal window on the past. To celebrate them feels mostly cheap and material, and does a disservice to the reality of our current world.

Given announcements last Friday that the American auto industry is on the brink of extinction, it seems to me that the more important cars at the show are the ones that, if they’re smart, the American auto industry will quickly turn to as the future of transportation. In honor of these sentiments, it’s only fitting for Gas 2.0 to do a preview of the cars and technologies you care about, and leave the relics to the pros.

I’ll be covering the LA Auto Show during press days on November 19-20, so stay tuned to Gas 2.0 for live coverage. Until then, check out the small taste of what’s to come below.

The BMW Group is about to become the first manufacturer of premium automobiles to deploy a fleet of nearly 500 all electric vehicles for private use in daily traffic.