Viva Las Vegas: Google Lobbies to Legalize Self-Driving Cars in Nevada

Internet and software bigwig Google has begun lobbying the state of Nevada to legalize driverless cars. The move comes on the heels of some very promising results in California, where Google had mapped out the terrain and sent a couple of its autonomous Toyota Priuses (Prii? Priora?) on an epic jaunt from Mountain View to Santa Monica.

The California-based company is keen to point out the claimed benefits of self-driving cars over their human-driven counterparts including better safety, improved fuel efficient and greater environmental friendliness.

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Mercedes-Benz B-Class F-Cell’s World Tour Cut Short after Accident in Kazakhstan

On January 30th, 2011, three Mercedes-Benz B-Class F-Cell models set out from Germany to travel around the globe covering 30,000 kilometers (about 18,700 miles) in 125 days to demonstrate the technical maturity and reliability of the world’s first series production fuel cell vehicle.
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Toyota and Shell Build New Station in California, Honda FCX Clarity Users Rejoice

Toyota and Honda celebrated today the opening of the first hydrogen station in the U.S. fueled directly from an industrial hydrogen pipeline. Located near the headquarters of Toyota USA, in Torrance, California, the station is built on the company's land and is the result of a collaboration between Shell, Toyota, Air Products, South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) and the Department of Energy.

The station will provide hydrogen for the Toyota fuel cell hybrid demonstration program vehicles, as well as other manufacturers' fuel cell cars in the Los Angeles area.

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Seven Years On, London’s Congestion Charging Scheme Has Had Little Effect On Air Pollution

Congestion and air pollution are killing the world’s major cities. Among them: New York, Beijing, Tokyo, Mumbai and London to name a few. And if you believe the most skewed of environmentalist hype, it’s all down to personal transport. Only it’s not. The UK’s Health Effects Institute (HEI) recently released details of a study called the, “The Impact of the Congestion Charging Scheme on Air Quality in London,” that shows that things may not be as clear-cut as some of us thought.

Led by Professor Frank Kelly of King’s College London, the study (as the title suggests) investigated what affect London’s much-derided Congestion Charging Scheme has had on the city’s air quality. The result: not much. Through the use of emissions / exposure modeling, analysis of air monitoring data and the, “assay for the oxidative potential of particulate matter,” Professor Kelly and his colleagues found:

“From their comparison of actual air pollutant measurements within the CCZ with those at control sites in Outer London, the investigators reported little evidence of CCS-related changes in pollutant levels at roadside monitoring sites, where their modeling had suggested the most pronounced effects would be seen.”

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Nissan gets Creative with Smoking Billboard at New York Auto Show

It might not be an award winning campaign, but Nissan’s new outdoor board placed right outside the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center during the 2011 New York Auto Show (April 22 to May 1 for the public) is sure to grab attention and increase awareness for the firm’s all-electric Leaf family car.

The two-sided Smokeboard was created by the Japanese firm’s advertising partner TBWA\Chiat\Day, which is the American division of the advertising agency TBWA Worldwide.

On one side, the billboard features an actual working tailpipe that emits fumes into the air (with the agency stressing the fact that the exhaust is environmentally friendly…) and a headline that reads, “The auto show has over 1,000 of these”. On the other side, there’s a photo of the Leaf and a caption that says “But only one 100% electric, zero-tailpipe Nissan Leaf”. Check out the ad in action in the clip after the jump.

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Steam Whistle Brewery’s “Retro Electro” Injects Some Green Cred into Some Detroit Old Iron

When I say, “Electric Pickup,” you no doubt think of either the Ssangyong Actyon Sports-derived Phoenix SUT or one of those toy-like, Chinese-built neighborhood electric vehicles. What you may not think of is a bright green 1958 Chevy Apache owed by Canada’s Steam Whistle Brewery and recharged via wind power.

No, this isn’t a late April Fool’s Day joke: this is serious. And being green is serious business for Steam Whistle, which – among other things – uses renewable energy, recycles damn-near everything and supports various environmental causes as a sideline to its beer brewing enterprise.

Brewery manager Mike Kiraly came up with the idea of electrifying the ol’ girl and even uses it as his daily driver. He explains his brainwave: “What if we could take a sexy vintage ride, save it from the metal scrap heap and outfit it with a zero-tailpipe-emissions engine. Old-school style combined with a modern conscience.”

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European Union Asks Formula 1 to go Electric

In 2006, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth brought global warming to the forefront of the world’s consciousness. Regardless of what end of the spectrum you stand on this issue, you have to admit that it’s real, it’s bad and if we don’t do anything it’s only going to get worse. To me and many others, it’s that simple.

So naturally we’re targeting the obvious culprits: Big Mining, Big Agriculture and Big Automotive. We’re also encouraging the average man and woman to use less and be environmentally responsible. So what about the world’s biggest and most prestigious automotive racing category: Formula 1? What are they doing to stem the tide of global warming?

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