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Sebastian Blanco

Et tu, Clarkson? Top Gear names Toyota Prius its "City Car of the Year"

by Sebastian Blanco (RSS feed) on Dec 6th, 2009 at 3:41PM

2010 Toyota Prius - Click above for high-res image gallery

Jeremy Clarkson seems to hate anything that "greens up" or in any other way adds an "eco" label to his cars – and some environmentalists don't exactly appreciate the television host either – so it's with some amusement that we learn that the Top Gear team has named the Toyota Prius the "City Car of the Year." Turns out, the Prius really can appeal to almost everyone.

Clarkson was not specifically quoted in the Prius praise piece – remember, this is the guy who called Honda's Insight "Biblically terrible" and pretended to run out of energy in a Tesla Roadster – but his mates said the 2010 Prius gets "awesome numbers" of 60 mpg (U.S. gallons, as measured on the UK scale) and emits just 89 grams of C02 per km. And all this from "a proper family five-door hatch." BBC Top Gear Editor Conor McNicholas even called the third-gen model "something quite ground-breaking." Press release pasted after the jump.

Gallery: 2010 Toyota Prius

[Source: Toyota]

AutoblogGreen for 12.04.09

by Sebastian Blanco (RSS feed) on Dec 4th, 2009 at 5:53AM

	*LA 2009: Mitsubishi will* bring an EV to U.S. in 2011, but it might not be the i-MiEV** Really. Shoot.		LA 2009: First Fisker Karmas now expected to hit showrooms in Sept. 2010 Delays were expected, but this is still a disappointment.
	LA 2009: Bob Lutz keynote: "The automobile industry simply can no longer rely on oil" Quite a quotable guy, that Mr. Lutz.	Other news: LA 2009: Audi A3 TDI named 2010 Green Car of the Year in diesel repeat Tesla Brabus Green Package includes free electricity, at home and away LA 2009: The World's Most Expensive Tesla Roadster

LA 2009: Audi A3 TDI named 2010 Green Car of the Year in diesel repeat

by Sebastian Blanco (RSS feed) on Dec 3rd, 2009 at 6:41PM

Audi A3 TDI - Click above for high-res image gallery

At the LA Auto Show this morning, the Audi A3 TDI was crowned the 2010 Green Car of the Year, wresting the title away from last year's winner, the Volkswagen Jetta TDI. Even though three hybrids made this year's list of finalists, the A3's win marks the second year in a row that a TDI diesel car took top honors in the Green Car Journal competition.

The judges selection kind of meshes with AutoblogGreen readers, who overwhelmingly picked the VW Golf TDI from the list of five finalists. The other contenders were the Honda Insight, the Mercury Milan Hybrid (we still don't get why this car beat out the better-selling and nearly identical Ford Fusion Hybrid) and the Toyota Prius.

Each year, Green Car Journal picks the five finalists and then hands over selection duties to celebrity jurors (Jay Leno, Carroll Shelby, and the Sierra Club's Carl Pope, to name a few). During the award ceremony, Green Car Journal editor Ron Cogan said that the five finalists are notable because they are all mainstream vehicles that are available today. They exist because that's what the market is asking for. Whaddya think? Is the A3 TDI this year's rightful Green Car of the Year?

Gallery: Audi A3 TDI - 2010 Green Car of the Year

[Source: Green Car Journal]

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Ford Motor Company

Driving Skills for Life

Ford hosted another Driving Skills for Life driving camp in Washington D.C. just before a two-day summit created by the U.S. Department of Transportation on the topic of distracted driving. The connection of the two is a natural.

Full Coverage >

Best Buy Geek Squads to start testing Mitsubishi i-MiEV

by Sebastian Blanco (RSS feed) on Dec 3rd, 2009 at 5:58PM

Mitsubishi Geek Squad i-MiEV – Click above for high-res image gallery

While Mitsubishi didn't unveil any new vehicles at the LA Auto Show today, company president Osamu Masuko did announce the latest step in his company's plan to bring plug-in vehicles to North America. The vehicle – well, one of them – is an all-electric i-MiEV plastered with Best Buy's Geek Squad logo. The electronics giant will start using them in January (after they're shown off at CES) at some Geek Squad locations in California. Details have not yet been totally worked out, but the Geek EVs will start with a fleet of four vehicles and then expand and rotate to other stores over the course of three years. Most likely, the i-MiEVs will be doled out in pairs and the probable early cities where these vehicles will make house calls include Chicago, New York, Portland and San Francisco.

Best Buy plans to use the i-MiEVs just like any other fleet car, with the exception that they will be right-hand drive. Best Buy's Senior Vice President of emerging business, Rick Rommel, told AutoblogGreen that the idea is to learn "how these will fit into a Geek's daily life." The plug-in vehicle tests with Geek Squad are unrelated to how select West Coast Best Buy stores are selling electric bikes. That said, Rommel admits that the key thing is that Best Buy likes to conduct new experiments, and these EVs fit into that general concept.

Gallery: Best Buy Geek Squad i-MIEV

AutoblogGreen for 12.03.09

by Sebastian Blanco (RSS feed) on Dec 3rd, 2009 at 5:55AM

	LA 2009: Officially, Official: Golden state to get first dibbs on the Chevy Volt A bit of a reward for relentlessly pushing for plug-in vehicles.		LA 2009: Mitsubishi unveils Geek Squad i-MiEV, brings PX-MiEV to U.S. Geeks with EVs will soon be making house calls.
	LA 2009: Honda's P-NUT cracked open for all to see Concept cars. What a concept.	Other news: Lexus Magazine explains how to get 85 mpg from HS 250h Feds mull an extra three months to crush Cash For Clunkers victims LA 2009: Volkswagen Up! Lite Concept teases with practical, lightweight innovation

LA 2009: Honda P-NUT concept gets cracked open

by Sebastian Blanco (RSS feed) on Dec 2nd, 2009 at 7:21PM

Honda P-NUT - Click above for high-res image gallery

Turns out that the Honda P-NUT is not some sort of twist on the UX-3 unicycle thing we saw in Tokyo recently. Instead, the concept vehicle is a three-seat thing enclosed in lots of glass and angular lines. Honda says the P-NUT is ready for one of three possible powertrains: an efficient gas engine, a gas-electric hybrid, or a pure electric set up. There's not a whole lot of room for any of these powerplants up front because the driver's leg room extends almost all the way to the front of the concept. Good thing the power source is intended to be mounted in the rear.

Let's be clear, this is a pure concept car. There are no side mirrors (but there is a back-up camera). Bumpers? Bah, Honda barely put headlights on this thing. Still, the Honda 'Personal-Neo Urban Transport' could make for a pretty sweet ride through a city, with lots of sight lines for the three inhabitants (a driver in the front middle, two passengers arranged behind and to either side) to see out of. The P-NUT does succeed in Honda's stated goal to get the most space out of a small footprint, and we wouldn't mind some sort of production version BEV someday. Chances are, though, that this is the last we'll ever see of it.

Gallery: LA 2009: Honda P-NUT

Gallery: Honda P-NUT

AutoblogGreen for 12.02.09

by Sebastian Blanco (RSS feed) on Dec 2nd, 2009 at 6:02AM

	LA Preview: HH2 will be back to tout onboard hydrogen generation. Can you believe it? Some things never change.		Viridian Joule picked as winner of Chevy Volt Paint Color Contest Millions of Americans will reach for the dictionary on this one.
	LA Preview: CMT-380 plug-in diesel hybrid supercar uses microturbine, li-ion batteries It's unlike any other hybrid, that's for sure.	Other news: Hydrogen cars + math. Worth the trouble? An adventurer and his Brammo Enertia Spy Shots: Smart ForTwo+2 in the works?

Feds punt on E15 waiver decision, want to test ethanol's effect on more cars

by Sebastian Blanco (RSS feed) on Dec 1st, 2009 at 2:29PM

There is some ethanol in almost all of the gasoline sold in the U.S. Usually, this amount is no more than 10 percent of the total and, if it's more than that, it jumps all the way to 85 percent and is sold as E85. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was supposed to come down on one side or the other today of a possible increase across the board to 15 percent that Growth Energy and 54 ethanol manufacturers asked for, but instead announced that it needs more time.

The EPA has been looking at the E15 issue all year and investigating all sorts of issues, but there are a lot of moving parts in this sort of decision. Everyone from farmers and their subsidies to grow the corn used to make most of the ethanol sold today to car makers who have tuned their engines to run on E10 but not E15 want to have their say. The EPA has heard the comments, and now says that it needs more time to test E15 in vehicles. Right now, it thinks that any vehicle built after 2001 will burn E15 just fine, but there are a lot of older vehicles still on the road. Cash For Clunkers didn't get all of them off the road, after all. A decision is now expected in mid-June 2010.

The postponement was met with approval by the Alliance of Automobile Manufactures, which said they want more government testing "to prove that increasing the allowable ethanol blend limit will not harm vehicle emissions, performance, and durability." Read their full statement after the jump.

[Source: Reuters, Auto Allliance | Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images]

AutoblogGreen for 12.01.09

by Sebastian Blanco (RSS feed) on Dec 1st, 2009 at 5:56AM

	Nissan expects to double battery energy capacity by 2015 Ghosn's strategy makes sense, if the company can pull this off.		Quick Spin: 2011 Chevrolet Volt charges toward production Driving the Volt: everything it's cracked up to be.
	eBay Find of the Day: Messerschmitt KR200 Hawt.	Other news: Not-so-shocking admission: Zap kills Xebra, slows development of Alias 2011 Ford Fiesta gets another early reveal LA 2009: Chevrolet finally unveils the U.S.-market production 40 mpg 2011 Cruze

2011 Ford Fiesta gets another early reveal

by Sebastian Blanco (RSS feed) on Nov 30th, 2009 at 5:30PM

2011 Ford Fiesta Hatchback – Click above for high-res image gallery

The Fiesta Movement, Ford's campaign to introduce the little global Fiesta car to the U.S. market, kicked off at the Chicago Auto Show earlier this year and will end this week during the LA Auto Show with, what else, a party. Oh, and the official unveiling of the 2011 North American version. We got a sneak peek of the Fiesta earlier today that it now seems was incorrect, based on these new pictures found buried on Ford's website.

The U.S.-style three-bar grille is thankfully not present in these official pics, though the hatch and sedan do wear different grilles (we like the hatch's version better, for what it's worth). The rest of the car remains as good-looking as the Euro-spec version ever did, and the interior will be a big draw for this car – along with solid MPG numbers, of course. For those of you who hoped Ford would bring the Fiesta over from Europe pretty much intact, it appears your wishes have been granted. We'll have all the details from LA right soon.

Gallery: 2011 Ford Fiesta Hatchback

Gallery: 2011 Ford Fiesta Sedan

[Source: Ford]

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