Merry Christmas and Happy New Year To All

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year To All from usaalternativeenergynow.blogspot.com.
Have a safe trip. If you are traveling to your destination by ALTERNATIVE ENERGY, we say BRAVO!

We will be traveling by electric vehicle and CNG vehicle. Bravo to us.

We look forward to many more advances in ALTERNATIVE ENERGY in the coming year 2011.

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Plug-In Car Advocates Buy Chevy Volt

Report: Plug-In Car Advocates Buy Chevy Volt

Wednesday, long-time advocates of PHEVs (Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles) took ownership of a pair of Chevy Volts - world's first mass-produced plug-in hybrid. The celebration marked the climax of a long and successful campaign for Felix Kramer, CalCars.org founder and the world's first consumer owner of a PHEV, along with Ron Gremban, the other full-time CalCars.org worker.

In the below photo, the Volt is eerily silent while backing up inside the Novato California Chevrolet dealership. This small town dealer was allocated twelve cars and all were pre-sold. General Motors (GM) is only building ten thousand Chevy Volt units this year and they are all sold.




The new Chevy Volt PHEV (GM calls it an extended range electric vehicle or EREV) has been winning awards everywhere. It's the first consumer vehicle whose local miles can be electric, chargeable at 120 Volts, while it can drive across the country anytime. Every aspect of the Volt is computer controlled with the latest in driver comforts and information delivery systems.

General Electric (GE) will buy 25,000 electric vehicles for its fleet through 2015 in the largest-ever purchase of electric cars. They will start with the purchase of 12,000 Chevy Volts in 2011. The conglomerate said it will "add other vehicles as manufacturers expand their electric vehicle profiles."

GE's purchase is a far cry from when Kramer and Gremban modified a first generation Toyota Prius to become a PHEV. Then, everybody who was an expert on cars had a lot of reasons about why PHEVs would not sell to the public.

Felix Kramer's history with PHEVs is worth retelling to put into perspective the event we attended. In 2001, Kramer sold his small Internet company and was looking for something to do.

He said, "I was blown away by the Rocky Mountain Institute's vision of 99 MPG vehicles. I went to Aspen and began discussions about new ways to advance that project."

In 2002, Kramer met many of the Silicon Valley "entrepreneurs, environmentalists, engineers, and EV (electric Vehicle) advocates who've helped us immeasurably ever since."

They formed what is now known as CalCars.org.

Next, Kramer saw his first PHEV at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and realized today's technology could get things started. Then, Professor Andy Frank, the Father of the modern PHEVs, came into the picture. Frank has always been easily approachable and generous with his time and knowledge.

Professor Frank and his students at University of California, Davis had been rebuilding vehicles into PHEVs for nearly thirty years. The problem always was cost. Over $100,000 to rebuild a standard automobile into a one-off electric powered street drivable PHEV test vehicle.



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LED Lights For Chritmas Trees

LED Lights For Chritmas Trees
Toledo Zoo Uses Bikes to Power Lights

Toledo Zoo
Height: 85 feet
For 25 years, the Toledo Zoo has hosted the city's biggest holiday party, Lights Before Christmas. Not only is their resident Norway spruce taller than Rockefeller Center's, it's decorated with more lights: some 35,000. To encourage energy conservation, the zoo is using LED lights. They've also rigged two bicycles to the energy grid, allowing visitors to help light the grounds using pedal power. With 120,000 visitors expected, they shouldn't have any problem keeping the lights on.


Read more (in new window) at: http://travel.yahoo.com/p-interests-36906427


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Chevrolet Volt Production Begins, First Volt Going To Charity

Bid on the first Chevy Volt

In order to increase their exposure (and good Karma) automakers often donate special cars to charity. Sometimes they are special editions, other times it is the first-ever of its kind, as is the case with the Chevy Volt.

Production of the Chevy Volt began today, and GM just launched a website, BidontheVolt.com, to sell the second production car. Why the second car? Well GM has this little collection of cars called the GM Heritage Collection, and basically they kept the first of every car there. So in actuality you would be bidding on the second-ever production Volt, the first one for sale to the public.

The current bid is up to a whooping $180,000, and there are still almost two weeks left in the bidding. So what charity will get the money? Well GM will put the money right back into its hometown of Detroit, donating the proceeds of the sale to the Detroit Public School Foundation. The money will specifically be used to support Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math education initiatives in the Detroit school system.

I guess GM is feeling pretty charitable these days, and with good reason. Say what you will about the auto bailouts, but at least GM is giving back. I haven’t seen too much generosity on the part of the banks, unless you happen to be a favored executive.

Source: GM

Chris DeMorro is a writer and gearhead who loves all things automotive, from hybrids to Hemis. You can follow his slow descent into madness at Sublime Burnout.

Read more at:
http://gas2.org/2010/11/30/chevrolet-volt-production-begins-today-first-volt-going-to-charity/

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Chevrolet investing $40 million in Clean Energy 2011

GM Clean Energy for 2011

While GM has enjoyed a wealth of goodwill lately from the Chevrolet Volt and today’s IPO (which closed at $34.19). Today they announced that they will take $40 million from Chevy’s marketing budget and invest it in clean energy.

The goal of this $40 million investment, which comes right out of Chevrolet’s advertising budget, is to reduce carbon emissions by 8 million metric tons through 2011. That would be the equivalent of taking about 1.9 million cars off the road, or the emissions from over 970,000 U.S. homes.

This investment will cover multiple areas, including;

Providing energy efficient technology such as smart energy sensors and solar panels to schools and other community-based facilities in need of upgrades to decrease carbon dioxide emissions and reduce heating bills.
Supporting wind farms and solar projects that deliver renewable energy to the grid and also help family farms increase their revenues per acre.
Capturing flammable methane from community landfills that delivers clean energy to the grid and improves local air quality and safety.
Contributing to forestry projects throughout America.
They say you can’t buy good publicity, but I’d beg to differ. While $40 million may be a drop in the bucket compared to their last quarter profit of over $2 billion, it isn’t exactly a negligible sum either. Every little bit helps, right?

Source: GM

Chris DeMorro is a writer and gearhead who loves all things automotive, from hybrids to Hemis. You can follow his slow descent into madness at Sublime Burnout.

Read comments on this at:
http://gas2.org/2010/11/18/chevrolet-investing-40-million-to-in-clean-energy-in-2011/

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