This Honda Civic Hybrid is on Japanese police duty. (Credit: Flickr/Kenjonbro)

Can snazzier batteries jump-start Honda's hybrid sales? The Honda Civic Hybrid is planning to switch to lithium-ion batteries in a bid to make it more competitive with the embattled Toyota Prius (which has the lion's share of the hybrid market).

Li-ion is, of course, the default battery for nearly all the world's coming plug-in EVs, and it has by far the greatest energy density of any available chemistry. Hybridcars.com reports that li-ion packs could even be cheaper than the nickel-metal packs standard in hybrids today.

While not the biggest deal in the world, it's still very significant--the only hybrid to use li-ion right now is the Mercedes S400, and that's in a whole other price category. Bloomberg got its scoop, as it often does, from its Japanese reporters (Makkio Kitamura and Yuki Hagiwara). Honda Executive Vice President Koichi Kondo told them in a Tokyo interview that the Civic Hybrid would have li-ion within the next two to three years. "Lithium will become a lot more prevalent," he said.

Honda's li-ion plans hadn't made it to this side of the world. A U.S.-based Honda spokesman told me, "I suspect you read the same story I did. That's the first I'd heard of it and now you and I know the same very limited amount. It is way too soon to disclose details of any kind regarding the next-generation Civic, and I assure you that would be the answer provided by anyone (PR or executive) in North America."

The Civic Hybrid is produced at the company's Suzuka factory in Japan, and most of the news about upcoming hybrids emanates from over there. It's interesting, though, that 84% of the cars Honda sold in the U.S. last year were actually produced in North America.

Li-ion can store twice the energy of nickel-metal-hydride, so not only could the new Civic Hybrid have a smaller and lighter battery, it could possibly also have significant electric-only range (like a plug-in hybrid without a plug). I can envision a Civic Hybrid that could travel 10 to 15 miles on batteries alone. Toyota is switching to li-ion, too, but for the plug-in hybrid it will introduce in two years.

The other day in the office we were joking around about the different "hat colors" for SEOs (search engine optimizers)--you know, black hat, white hat and so on, for the efforts people make to get pages to rank highly on Google and other engines. I mentioned it to my buddy Arch Carey, who is a talented iPhone sketch artist. (He's the guy behind OM-NOM-NOMNITURE.)

We got to thinking, what would the various SEO hats actually look like? Here's what we came up with, thanks to great suggestions from the rest of The Daily Green team:

Black Hat SEO

The dark ninjas of the net, black hat SEOs try to trick search engines into ranking their sites higher by any means necessary. They often hawk scams and dubious products, and engage in such Google-banned practices as link farming, page hijacking, cloaking, keyword stuffing, link buying, spamming and other evil arts that clog up the Intertubes and give legit SEOs a bad name.

White Hat SEO

White hats worship at the altar of Google, and follow the TOCs (terms of service) of search engines to the letter. Unconcerned with "gaming" rankings, instead they focus on trying to lay out everything as clearly and transparently as possible.

Gray Hat SEO

Gray Hats avoid the activities that are expressly banned by search engines and by the Internet community. But they aren't above trying to aggressively outrank the competition through link building, use of social media, smart use of RSS and building partnerships with other sites.

Coda's sedan is just one of a small fleet of battery cars appearing in 2010. (Credit: Coda Automotive)

Nobody knows how many people will be lined up at the dealership doors with checkbooks on hand when the new wave of battery electric and plug-in hybrid cars--including the Nissan Leaf, Chevrolet Volt, Coda sedan, Fisker Karma, Wheego Whip Life and BYD E6--enter the market by the end of the year.

It's a no-brainer that green cars--if they're produced in sufficient numbers--will be a boon to the economy, and a rare lift for American auto manufacturing. A new report issued Tuesday by the Center for American Progress, the United Auto Workers and the Natural Resources Defense Council concludes that new vehicle technology could create as many 150,000 U.S. jobs (whether they'll also be unionized is anyone's guess).

Many of those jobs will flee overseas, the report says, unless the Department of Energy continues to subsidize car and battery plants on American soil. "We want to reduce carbon pollution and many unemployed people want to return to work, and building better cars can help with both," said Peter Kehner, executive director of NRDC. The report estimates that the U.S. could capture as much as 75 percent of the "total technology value" (and the same percentage of job benefits) from the new green cars.

Any potential for job creation, of course, is tied to the size of the market for green cars. Several players in the emerging EV industry, from suppliers and auto companies, testified in a little-noticed Senate hearing in February, talking about what could be "a very significant demand gap," as Mary Ann Wright of battery maker Johnson Controls described it. She said the worldwide capacity to build EVs by 2015 could be four million vehicles, but there might be demand for only two million.

The solution, as the suppliers saw it, was for the federal government to step up in the short term and not provide start-up capital for American plants, but actually buy large fleets of green cars. "These fleet programs are a great way to stimulate demand," Wright said.

As a longtime The Daily Green blogger, on the occasion of the publication of my second book, The Conscious Kitchen, I’m using my "Ask An Organic Mom" space for the next 8 weeks – give or take – to invite you to join me on the Conscious Kitchen Challenge.

What does it mean to have a Conscious Kitchen? It's a little different for every person, but at its heart, it means knowing where your food comes from, what it is, and how good it is (or isn't) for you and for the environment. It also encompasses the energy it takes to cook, what you're cooking on and storing food in, and even how you clean up and handle waste.

We all know we need to be eating better foods – local, organic, local and organic, humanely raised meat, wild and well-caught fish, packaged foods containing five pronounceable ingredients or less – but they’re not always so easy to find. Or it’s not always so easy to motivate to find them. Think of this like you think of New Year’s resolutions. Choose your own personal goal – make it attainable for better success – and then together we’ll methodically get you there. Keep in mind that any conscious steps are better than no conscious steps – 10 percent is better than no percent.

At the age of 12, I was playing with matches in the only grassy field in my urban neighborhood in Yonkers, New York. Pretty soon, my summer fun turned into a dangerous game as a match flicked through the air ignited dry grass. When I frantically stomped on the smoky spot, it turned into a fireball which seemed to magically move to another part of the field. I ran to sound the alarm. But by the time the fire engines arrived, the entire field was charred and smoldering. Fortunately for me, the firemen dowsed the field before any neighboring houses went up in smoke. While I escaped reform school, you can bet my summer fun was replaced by a lengthy grounding and an endless succession of backyard and house chores.

Decades later, I would come to appreciate the important role grasslands play in the circle of life in the Hudson Valley and throughout the world. Scenic Hudson's terrific Conservation Science Director Dr. Sacha Spector has deepened my understanding with a fascinating article recently published in Wings, the Journal of the Xerces Society. Sacha also oversees our grassland restoration projects on park lands owned by Scenic Hudson....

The Auto X stand at the recent Specialty Equipment Market (SEMA) show. (Auto X Prize photo)

The field is narrowing, and three lucky ducks are going to walk away with their share of $10 million. The money will be awarded in September by the Progressive Automotive X Prize, whose winners will be the best at building production-ready cars and trucks capable of the equivalent of 100 miles per gallon.

According to Eric Cahill, senior director of the X Prize Foundation, "We're trying to create and stoke awareness about the new technologies, and helping to familiarize people with them, so they'll be comfortable when they're introduced."

Cahill points out that since there are many different types of cars in the competition -- electrics, biodiesels, E85 ethanol, straight diesel and hydrogen, even a steamer -- it's impossible to measure them with the city and highway mpg ratings we're all familiar with. Instead, X Prize and Consumers Union both advocate what they call MPGe, which uses several factors to arrive at a miles-per-gallon equivalent for alternative technologies.

It gets interesting when you add in plug-in hybrid vehicles, which have both electric and gas modes, yielding dramatically different performance characteristics in each. For instance, Porsche just unveiled a 918 Spyder that can travel 15 miles on a charge (experiencing zero emissions) but then lights up a a humongous 500-horsepower V-8 that's not nearly as green.

"You've hit the nail on the head," Cahill said. "Electrification introduces substantial variability in fuel economy. For some of these cars, it makes a big difference if you're traveling 10 miles or 100 miles, and how fast you're going matters, too." For that reason, Cahill said the X Prize is working on a definition of fuel economy for plug-in hybrids that includes two phases, charge-sustaining (when the gas engine is running) and charge-depleting (when it's off).

"People are used to two mpg figures -- city and highway," Cahill said. "But they don't apply to some of the new vehicles, and part of our job in fostering wider adoption is in helping consumers who are not technically savvy get used to new metrics."

Dr. Shukri Souri of Exponent: Explaining the Toyota pedal issues on Monday. (Toyota photo)

From a public relations point of view, this one is for the record books. Just after Toyota staged a lavish webcast to try and put sudden acceleration behind it, a Prius ran wild to 90 mph on a California highway, resulting in sensational coverage on every website, TV station and newspaper in America.

But the real story was a bit more subtle: The 2008 Prius driven by hapless motorist James Sikes had not been "fixed" by Toyota (he claims he was turned away from his dealership) but the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) "defects and recalls" database has recorded more than 60 sudden acceleration incidents in cars that were fixed. Here's a few, just involving 2010 Camrys:

"I own a 2010 Camry. I just had the recall done last week. Since the work has been done, I have had nothing but problems with the idle and the engine. Before the recall was done, I never had a problem. Something needs to be done before more people are killed."

"My vehicle has been recalled and 'repaired'--gas pedal, floor mat, brake override system. Prior to the recall, the gas pedal was sluggish and I would experience mini, sudden accelerations. There has been no improvement since the repairs (done March 2). In fact, it appears to have become more frequent. The sudden accelerations are not dramatic and braking does take care of the problem."

"While parking my 2010 Camry at the grocery store, I slowly turned into the parking space and my car suddenly accelerated, jumping the curb and hitting a cement surrounded light pole....I was not noticeably injured. The car had just had the replacement pedal installed on March 2, 2010 as ordered by the recall."

And here are a few involving the 2010 Prius, which has a separate acceleration problem connected with braking over broken pavement:

"Since I purchased the car in September of 2009, the brakes fail when I am braking and hit a bump, pothole or uneven road surface. The brakes fail for a second or two, and sometimes the cr lurches forward...On March 6, 2010 I had the recall software for the 2010 Prius done in the service department at the Mike Calvert Toyota dealership in Houston, Texas. On the way home, I experienced the brake failure again when I was braking and drove over a small pothole."

"I visited my local dealership for repair of the brake recall of the 2010 Prius in early February. I do not believe that this repair has fixed the problem. A few days after the fix, my car seemed to accelerate as I was braking and happened to be going over a pothole."

I'm aware there is such a thing as the power of suggestion, and the fact that runaway Toyotas are blanketing the news may make some people see problems where they don't necessarily exist. After Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast in the 1930s, many people reported seeing his Martians or Venusians or whatever they were.

Despite the delivery, during the Copenhagen climate talks, of 10 new Ford Focus FCV fuel-cell vehicles into the tiny country of just 300,000 people (adding to a small fleet of 10 hydrogen-burning Priuses), it's still likely that Iceland will have an EV infrastructure before there's extensive fuel cell operations. (Photo: Ford.)

Iceland is still on the ropes financially, and that complicates the purchase of any high-tech cars in what is otherwise the greenest country on earth (according to the Yale/Columbia Environmental Performance Index). After all, more than 80 percent of Iceland's energy use is from ultra-clean domestic sources, including geothermal and hydro.

Iceland already produces far more electricity than its small use (which explains the presence of those current-heavy aluminum smelters). It could easily produce hydrogen in bulk, too. So which way will it go?

The Wheego Whip Life: 90 miles on a charge. (Credit: Jim Motavalli)

ATLANTA--We've reached the make-or-break point for electric vehicles. As many as a half dozen different models will be on the road by the end of the year, and when it comes right down to it we have no idea if people will line up to buy them.

There are several big hurdles, including price (EVs will be significantly more expensive than we're used to -- small two-seat cars will start around $25,000), unfamiliarity (people will be plugging in at night, instead of going to the gas station) and range anxiety (most of these cars will go only 100 miles between charges).

Last week, I talked to Mary Ann Wright, managing director of the business accelerator at major battery maker Johnson Controls (they're supplying lithium-ion packs to both the BMW and Mercedes-Benz hybrids), and heard about the "EV gap." She said the industry worldwide has the capacity to produce four million cars, but the actual demand might be only two million.

Wright was among several witnesses at a Senate hearing last week asking the feds, specifically the Department of Energy, for help closing that gap -- with one popular concept being the mass purchase of EVs for government fleets, which could include more than a million vehicles. It makes a lot of sense, particularly because fleet cars come back to central depots that make recharging a cinch.

Wright also told me that EV costs will come down with desperately needed volume. "Scale won't get us all the way, but it is going to be a significant driver," she said.

It's official: I've become my grandmother. I realized it the other morning when I opened the door to our freezer.

That icy vault was packed to the brim. But -- in the finest tradition of my Grandma Yeager -- it wasn't filled so much with leftovers, like you'd find in most household freezers. You see, my Grams had a few deep frozen secrets. She knew about weird stuff; weird stuff you can deep-six in the freezer and maybe save some money in the process.

* Candles: Keep your wax candles in the freezer and they'll burn longer. It's especially good for slim table tapers that normally burn very fast.

* Batteries: A number of studies have shown that storing batteries in the freezer helps them retain their charge longer. This is less true for alkaline batteries (freezing extends their shelf life by only about 5%) than it is for NiMH and Nicad batteries often used in electronics. Keeping NiMH batteries in the freezer can boost battery life by 90%.

* Plant Seeds: Many (but not all) types of plant seeds will keep longer and germinate more successfully when stored in the freezer. Consult a copy of Seed Storage of Horticultural Crops, by S.D. Doijode, for more than you'd ever want to know about this fascinating topic. Many of the planet's most important seeds are being stored in the chilly "doomsday" seed vault in Norway.

* Cheap Booze: In the interest of full disclosure, my Grams was a teetotaler. Me, I need an attitude adjustment from time to time, and I've found that storing cheap booze -- not just vodka, but all types of distilled spirits -- in the freezer makes it taste smoother (and more expensive).

* Wine Cubes: Speaking of keeping alcohol in the freezer, when you have a little leftover wine from dinner, pour it into an ice cube tray and freeze it. "Wine cubes" are perfect to use in making stock and other cooking.

* Plastic Soda Bottles Filled with Water: Grandma knew that keeping her freezer chockfull helped to insulate it and perform better, and kept things cold longer if the electricity failed. I like to fill empty plastic soda bottles nearly full with water, and put them in the freezer to take up any vacant space. Plus they make convenient "drip-less ice cubes" to use instead of real ice cubes in my ice chest.

]]> Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:35:00 EST http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/okgo-video-rube-goldberg?src=rss http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/okgo-video-rube-goldberg?src=rss Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:04:00 EST http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/blogs/cars-transportation/charge-electric-cars-stores-460310?src=rss http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/blogs/cars-transportation/charge-electric-cars-stores-460310?src=rss

Best Buy parking lots are ideal for EV charging. (Flickr/NCReedplayer)

For electric vehicle (EV) advocates, it's a no-brainer: Big-box stores have huge parking lots, and it's in their interest to keep you shopping as long as possible. Given that, why wouldn't they be friendly to installing EV charging in their lots? And, hell, won't they just make it free (a $2 to $4 value) so they'll have an advantage over the competition?

For some reason, however, the usually publicity-friendly big boxes are curiously unwilling to say much about the idea.

The beauty of big box plug-ins, the thinking goes, is that fast-charging an EV (with 480 volts, which big boxes will have but you won't) will take 15 to 20 minutes, and those consumers aren't going to sit in their cars and watch the juice flow. They'll go into the store!

Jonathan Read, CEO of fast-moving charging company ECOtality, offers a vision of consumers holding swipable "charge cards" (get it?) and for 60 cents or $1 getting topped off with electric power as they sip their Starbucks latte. "We think charging will be stimulated by the government, but ultimately it will be offered by the private sector," he said. "Soon the charging will be ubiquitous in the retail landscape, and companies will be at a competitive disadvantage if they don't offer it."

There are complications, of course. My colleague Matthew DeBord of Slate's "Shifting Gears" blog agrees that Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, Best Buy and the others "have the lot space," but unless they offer charging at every spot (probably cost-prohibitive) congestion could occur. "It isn't hard to imagine ‘charge lines' forming, or the need to employ service personnel to act almost as valets, if people are going to shop while charging. It's also unclear whether fast-charge stations would need to be carefully attended during the charging process, to prevent vehicles from staying hooked up to the chargers once they're fully re-juiced."

One way of avoiding the need for EV valets is a charging solution proposed by a new company called Evatran, which starting late this year will offer hands-free electric fill-ups. Using the concept of inductive charging, cars will drive into a parking space and draw the front of their vehicles over the concrete barrier at the end of the space. A charger embedded in the barrier will connect with a "vehicle adapter" on the car, and the charge can jump a half-inch gap (without presenting a shock hazard, they say).

I was hoping to talk about this with the retailers themselves, but most didn't reply to repeated queries. From Target's Amy Reilly: "I understand you called Target seeking information about electric car chargers in our parking lots. We've got nothing specific to share regarding this topic."

She told me my story wasn't "specific to Target," whereupon I offered to make it so. "I'm sorry, but no," she said.

Paula Baldwin at Best Buy, which is already selling electric Brammo motorcycles, was a bit more forthcoming. "Thanks for tapping us re: the EV charging station story you're working on," she emailed. "Best Buy is testing a number of options in the e-vehicle space, but has no definitive plans around EV charging at this time."

They directed me to the Best Buy EV website, where the following video about their work with plug-in Brammo motorcycles resides:

Live blogging from the Greener Gadgets Conference 2010 (#GG10 on Twitter)

Ever wondered where your iPod actually comes from? Actually, the flash memory comes from South Korea, the HDD input comes from Japan, chips come from Taiwan, assembly was most likely done in China, and design happened in California.

Looking a bit like Jimmie Kimmel in a black blazer over a black cotton shirt, Leonardo Bonanni showed the Greener Gadgets audience a map that showed the above supply chain, as well as the carbon footprint of an iPod (9.84kg). Bonanni is a PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab, where he researchers and teaches sustainable design. Through the lab he is the founder of Sourcemap.org, an open source site where anyone can share the supply chain of products or activities.

Bonanni talked briefly about the big impact of mining around the world, especially how it is driven by our insatiable appetite for electronics. "Each computer is a treasure of materials, it's a really awesome thing and we should recognize and respect that," said Bonanni. "Every product we only own for a brief time in its lifecycle. It was touched by many people before us, and it's probably going to end up with lots of other people, in lots of other places, when we are done with it. These materials in a sense don't belong to us."

Bonanni said he originally conceived of Sourcemap to help designers understand where materials and products come from, but he says it is finding the biggest use among big global companies, which have struggled to keep on top of increasingly complex supply chains, and which are increasingly being scrutinized for environmental and human rights issues at every step. Tesla Motors has posted an entry of their electric cars, and another company uses the software to track meetings and staff movements, and the associated carbon footprints.

When Bonanni looked to get business cards for his site, and the largely volunteer staff that helps him out, he checked out Moo cards online. He discovered that the printer offered two kinds of cards, and he wondered which had a lower carbon footprint, half-size cards or regular-size cards made from recycled paper. It turns out the half-size cards were a bit better. "This shows that we know little about the carbon footprints of things," he said. "We don't want there to be any excuse for people not to know where things come from."

Another example of a use for Sourcemap is shown by the caterer who serves local food, and who prints maps of the farms that source his ingredients on his menus. He uses Sourcemap's easy interface to locate the farms and keep track of the impact. The end result, is that customers are really ordering from the place, and they can go to that place if they like the food.

Sourcemap is a great web 2.0 application to help us learn more about our increasingly global footprint, and to become smarter, greener consumers and businesses.