Canadian province Ontario is to introduce green-coloured licence plates, available only to drivers of plug-in hybrids and battery-powered electric vehicles.

Sounds like another gimmick? Well, here’s the deal - vehicles sporting the new green plates will be able to drive in the province’s dedicated carpool lanes until 2015, even if only one person is in the vehicle.

Speaking about the initiative, Transportation Minister Jim Bradley said, “The McGuinty government’s plan is to have one out of every 20 passenger vehicles on Ontario’s roads an electric vehicle by 2020.”

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Editor’s Note: This is a guest contribution by Nancy Gioia, Ford’s Director of Sustainable Mobility Technologies and Hybrid Vehicle Programs.

It’s clear electric vehicles (EVs) will be part of the transportation mix of the future.

President Obama has set ambitious goals for wide-scale adoption of EV technology. Advances in battery technology will help bring more electrified vehicles to market for consumers and the desire to reduce CO2 emissions has increased attention on transportation alternatives like electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids.

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Entrepreneurs have begun to retrofit ordinary combustion vehicles into all-electrics or plug-in hybrids. Here’s why this could be the “big fix” that the auto-industry needs.

Are we stuck with our oil addiction? What if millions of our middle-aged vehicles could be reincarnated as superior versions of their youthful selves, while developing new revenue streams for Detroit? What if that “fix” could start reducing the billion a day we spend on imported oil, while creating tens of thousands of local jobs in communities and cutting greenhouse gases from fossil fuels?

Automakers could do all this—by thinking of vehicles as upgradable high-tech products. For example: A pioneering Chicago startup makes a prototype Ford F-150 pickup with an all-electric range of 30 miles per charge. After that it’s a hybrid, boosting the best-selling truck’s 15 city miles per gallon to 21.

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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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Over the holiday weekend, Japanese news daily Nikkei reported that Toyota will start mass producing plug-in hybrid vehicles in 2012.

The plug-in Prius will have a reported all-electric range of 12.4-18.6 miles after a full charge, and will cost $48,000—roughly twice the price of the regular gasoline-hybrid Prius.

Considering that a used Prius can be converted into a plug-in hybrid today for less than $15,000—giving the car the same or better statistics and driving range—I’d have to ask: what the hell is Toyota thinking?

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–David Robinson, director of Facilities and Fleet, City of Hillsboro, Oregon

Hillsboro, Oregon, the 5th largest city in the state and known as “Silicon Forest” is joining the growing electric community with the announcement that it will be the first in the state to install public ChargePoint Networked Charging Stations for both plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles. The city will install 16 charging stations downtown, one as part of its “green” intermodal transit facility due to be constructed this year.

It’s not surprising that this announcement comes from the environmentally progressive Northwest. Robinson noted that the community has a, “large forward-thinking population ready to embrace electric vehicle technology,” and that the City is committed to providing the facilities that its community needs.

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Editor’s Note: This is a 4-part series covering my trip to Michigan to test-drive the Chevy Volt. See post 1. LiveBlogging from the opening of GM’s New Battery Lab, and 2. Chevy Volt Test Drive: How GM’s Electric Car Works. Disclaimer: GM flew me out for this event. This post is in no way affiliated with the GM ads that appear at the margins.

The real reason we were in Warren, MI wasn’t to test-drive the Volt, but to be on hand for the grand opening of GM’s new battery testing facility. The $25 million Global Battery Systems lab is now the largest battery testing facility in the United States, and is four times larger than the company’s old lab.

GM made a strategic decision to keep battery development in-house, because it will likely be a key competitive advantage in the race to commercialize electric vehicles. The lab already employs 1,000 engineers who work on advanced battery systems like the one found the the Chevy Volt.

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Editor’s Note: This is a 4-part series covering my trip to Michigan to test-drive the Chevy Volt. See also: 1. LiveBlogging from the opening of GM’s New Battery Lab and 3. Tour of GM’s New Battery Lab, 4. Video: Driving GM’s Electric Car. Disclaimer: GM flew me out for this event.

June 8, 2009- It was pouring rain when I arrived at GM’s Testing facility in Warren, Michigan. A crowd had already gathered inside the Alternative Energy Center which, among other things, is home to GM’s first electric car—the original model EV1 (#1).

The ghost of the EV1—a car designed and built 13 years ago—still haunts GM, though it’s both a symbol of lost opportunity and tangible proof that the company could pull off the same kind of engineering feat again. The billion-dollar Volt project is a major component of the company’s reinvention strategy, and it’s clear they aren’t pulling any punches this 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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Note: see more updates on the author’s Twitter feed.

Just a few days before GM declared bankruptcy, I was surprised to receive an email from the company asking if I’d be interested in test-driving the Chevy Volt.

The offer to test-drive the product of a $1 billion development program (as well as one of the most anticipated cars of my lifetime) isn’t something that comes along every day, and I’m excited to say that tomorrow I’ll be test-driving the Volt as well as liveblogging from GM’s Tech center in Warren, Michigan.

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The issue of rainforest destruction (which many experts say is NOT a primary result of increased biofuels production) segues in to the debate of “good biofuels versus bad biofuels”. A bad biofuel may be one that uses food crops, excessive land and too much water. A better biofuel uses biomass, or waste, little water and little to no land.

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More Media:

• David Letterman Slams Chevy Volt, Tesla CEO Agrees
• Realizing the Dream of a Luxury Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle with Henrik Fisker (interview)
• Better Place: Shai Agassi on Gavin Newsom’s Radio Show

Critics are always eager to point out that the Volt’s 40-mile electric range is significantly less than that of the only electric car on the road, the Tesla Roadster, which gets 220 miles per charge. But since batteries are the expensive part of electric vehicles, more battery capacity brings increasing cost (the Roadster is a $109,000 car and the Model S sedan, which will be released in 2011, will be $57,400). The Roadster’s battery pack holds 6,831 individual lithium-ion cells (compared to 200 in the Volt) with a total battery pack weight of 900 lbs.

In GM’s thinking, it makes more sense to use the least amount of battery possible while the technology is still new and expensive. Since 40 miles covers 80% of daily driving, keeping the battery pack minimal and supplementing it with existing and cheap(er) technology seems logical.

I’m getting ahead of myself here, but when I test-drove the Volt with Frank Weber (read his post for us), he told me the cost and weight of the Volt’s battery pack could be cut in half by version 2. If that’s true, it would support GM’s strategy to minimize battery technology now, optimize the car for 40 miles, and keep the price as low as possible.

Of course, not everyone agrees with this. Every company intending to develop and market an electric car is coming to the table from an entirely different set of assumptions. GM wants to make a car they can immediately mass market to mainstream consumers (although no one in the company would or could tell me how big they think the market for the Volt is). Tesla Motors is trying to gain a foothold in the upper echelon of car buyers and hopes to innovate the price down from there. And if you’re familiar with Shai Agassi’s Better Place, their vision is to provide a total solution to end petroleum dependence.

It doesn’t really matter where these companies are entering the market because, in the simplest of terms, the winner of this electric vehicle race will be the first company to produce an affordable electric car that meets the basic needs of consumers.

NEXT: GM’s Reinvention: Tour of New Electric Vehicle Battery lab.

Photo Credits: Clayton B. Cornell, supplemented by GM Pro. Sorry about the grainy pictures. Tell my boss to buy me a real camera.

Sometimes when looking forward, you have to look back to really get inspired.

110 years ago electric cars were at their peak, representing over a quarter of all cars on the road in America, but Henry Ford and the mass-production gas motor changed all that. And while most of us have gotten used to the idea of an engine under the hood, a transmission, and sometimes a driveshaft as integral to our cars, Volvo is taking a nod from the first electric carriages and putting their motors where they are most needed: the wheels. The Volvo ReCharge is a plug-in hybrid concept that relys on four indepedant electric motors, one in each wheel, to move and power the C30-based concept.

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San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is in it to win it today. After earlier defending San Francisco from Oregon’s plan to overtake the Bay Area as the EV capital of the world, news hit the wire that Mayor Newsom struck hard at Detroit for killing their electric vehicle programs and lacking the vision to move beyond hybrids.

At conference on the future of the auto industry sponsored by Newsweek, Mayor Newsom remarked:

“With respect to Detroit, it is not good enough to advance by 2012 an ambitious strategy of having 14 different models at GM of hybrids — when hybrids are yesterday’s technology. Hybrids have been on the market since 1999. The car industry must be reinvented and automakers must move quicker to plug-in hybrids.”

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Dr. Lyle Dennis of GM-Volt.com reported today that Tesla Motors’ CEO Elon Musk is not a fan of the plug-in hybrid concept—specifically the Chevy Volt—saying that it is “neither fish nor fowl and ends up being worse. . .than either a gasoline or pure electric vehicle.”

Just last week, Tesla officially announced their Model S 4-door electric sedan. The Model S has a range of about 300 miles and costs roughly $49,000 after Federal Tax Credits.

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President Obama announced today that $2.4 billion will be made available for the US-based development of plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles.

The fund is intended to spur growth in research and manufacturing of next-generation plug-in hybrid vehicles and advanced battery componenents for electric cars, while creating tens of thousands of US jobs and reducing US petroleum dependence. It should also help meet the President’s goal of putting one million plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road by 2015.

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I wasn’t expecting to be impressed with the new Opel Ampera (the Chevy Volt’s European cousin). In fact, I was convinced I would find something dull, unimaginative and lacking in technical innovation.

But instead, I believe that I’ve actually found the only serious contender to replace the Audi A3 TDI that’s sitting on my driveway right now.

This week GM invited Gas 2.0 to witness the unveiling of the Opel Ampera, to go on sale in Europe in 2011.

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Last week, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom reported for us that the city had just installed 3 charging stations for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

Yesterday, the News & Observer reported that Raleigh, N.C. plans to install eight plug-in charging stations over the next few months, under a program called Project Get Ready.

Like the San Francisco-based program, drivers will access the charging stations through key-cards. In Raleigh, this means simple credit card access at a cost of about 2.5 cents per mile, while the SF-based program uses chargers provided by Coulomb Technologies at no cost, but are only available to members of the car-sharing programs City CarShare and Zipcar.

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Critics are always eager to point out that the Volt’s 40-mile electric range is significantly less than that of the only electric car on the road, the Tesla Roadster, which gets 220 miles per charge. But since batteries are the expensive part of electric vehicles, more battery capacity brings increasing cost (the Roadster is a $109,000 car and the Model S sedan, which will be released in 2011, will be $57,400). The Roadster’s battery pack holds 6,831 individual lithium-ion cells (compared to 200 in the Volt) with a total battery pack weight of 900 lbs.

In GM’s thinking, it makes more sense to use the least amount of battery possible while the technology is still new and expensive. Since 40 miles covers 80% of daily driving, keeping the battery pack minimal and supplementing it with existing and cheap(er) technology seems logical.

I’m getting ahead of myself here, but when I test-drove the Volt with Frank Weber (read his post for us), he told me the cost and weight of the Volt’s battery pack could be cut in half by version 2. If that’s true, it would support GM’s strategy to minimize battery technology now, optimize the car for 40 miles, and keep the price as low as possible.

Of course, not everyone agrees with this. Every company intending to develop and market an electric car is coming to the table from an entirely different set of assumptions. GM wants to make a car they can immediately mass market to mainstream consumers (although no one in the company would or could tell me how big they think the market for the Volt is). Tesla Motors is trying to gain a foothold in the upper echelon of car buyers and hopes to innovate the price down from there. And if you’re familiar with Shai Agassi’s Better Place, their vision is to provide a total solution to end petroleum dependence.

It doesn’t really matter where these companies are entering the market because, in the simplest of terms, the winner of this electric vehicle race will be the first company to produce an affordable electric car that meets the basic needs of consumers.

NEXT: GM’s Reinvention: Tour of New Electric Vehicle Battery lab.

Photo Credits: Clayton B. Cornell, supplemented by GM Pro. Sorry about the grainy pictures. Tell my boss to buy me a real camera.

As part of the Senate’s proposed stimulus plan, tax credits of up to $7500 have been included for plug-in electric vehicles!  The proposal signifies the Senate is willing to work with President Obama to wean the United States off its dependency on foreign oil. 

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