Geely McCar : A Vehicle that Combines Car & Mototcycle

It’s certainly been too long since we’ve featured a cool vehicle. Geely McCar is cool, cute, and has an adorable name to match. Aww. In essence, Geely is an ultra compact, two-door, four-seater with a built-in, folding three wheeled electric scooter in the rear. When the scooter is docked, the car shares both its battery and electric motor to extend the all-electric range or ensure the scooter is fully charged. The vehicle is proposed as having choice of gas-electric hybrid or fully electric powerplants.

Mitsubishi iMiEV Will Be Cheapest EV in U.S.

The popular Japanese EV, the Mitusbishi iMiEV, is finally coming to the U.S. next January and at $27,990 before incentives, it will be the cheapest plug-in car on the market.

The tiny all-electric will be eligible for some major incentives:  a $7,500 Federal tax credit, thousands more in state credits (California offers $5,000, Colorado $6,000, etc.), regional and local credits like the $3,000 rebate for residents of the San Joaquin Valley and some companies like Sony Pictures are offering up another $5,000 to employees.

In fact, if you are among the handful of Sony Pictures employees who reside in the San Joaquin Valley, you can get the iMiEV for about $8,000 after all the incentives are cashed in.  Pretty incredible.

Even if you’re not among that small group, you can expect to take at least $10,000 off the top, which puts this car in the range of something like the Honda Fit. For an additional $2,790, it comes with a DC fast-charge port that delivers an 80 percent battery charge in only 30 minutes.

Interested buyers can register to pre-order the vehicle starting today.

via GreenCarReports

EVO SCOOTER

 

The EVO Scooter is pretty much the best vehicle for people cruising on the sidewalks. With its easily collapsing frame, the EVO Scooter can be folded into a compact form to be easily stored and carried around when you head indoors.

If you live in a big city, you may not need to travel very far to get to your office, it may just be a push away. The EVO Scooter provides the ability to glide through other pedestrians in a lightweight, stylish and environmentally friendly form. Designed by Luca Abate, the EVO Scooter is constructed out of durable aluminum with a total weight of only 4.5kg, making it easy to carry around when you are not on top of it.

Toyota To Build Hybrid Yaris Car In France

Image via Wikipedia

Toyota Motor Corp plans to begin producing a hybrid version of the Yaris subcompact at its factory in France in the business year starting next April, the Mid-Japan Economist newspaper said.

The gasoline-electric Yaris, called Vitz in Japan, will be sold in Europe, the paper, owned partly by Toyota, reported without saying where it obtained the information.

A Toyota spokeswoman said the automaker could not comment on future product plans. A year ago, France’s La Tribune newspaper ran a similar report citing Toyota’s plans to build a small hybrid car at its Valenciennes factory, which builds the Yaris subcompact. A spokesman at the time had denied that such a plan was under consideration.

Hybrid cars have been a tough sell in Europe, which prefers diesel engines to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Toyota has said it plans to add the hybrid option across its entire lineup by around 2020, but has not announced plans for a gasoline-electric Yaris/Vitz.

Rival Honda Motor Co is about to launch a hybrid version of Jazz/Fit in the coming months, with plans to unveil the Jazz hybrid at the Paris motor show this month.

Fuel Efficiency Classification: new window labels may come on for all cars

The federal government has unveiled its proposal for the most significant overhaul of cars’ fuel economy labels in 30 years. The Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation have put together two options for window stickers in new vehicles starting with 2012 model year, including one label with a letter grade system ranging from A+ to D based on greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy.

The system, which is still a work in progress and open to public comment, would give high marks to plug-in and hybrid vehicles, and could affect how car shoppers perceive the relative costs and benefits of different technologies and models for years to come. “American consumers are quickly accepting advanced technology vehicles,” said National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Administrator David Strickland in a call with reporters today. “Old petroleum-centric labels just aren’t good enough anymore.”

According to the proposed rule making and federal officials who spoke with reporters today, electric vehicles would typically earn the A+ grade, while plug-in hybrids would generally fall into the A category and hybrids like the Toyota Prius, Ford Fusion Hybrid and Honda Civic Hybrid would earn an A-. Upcoming models like the electric Nissan LEAF and extended-range electric Chevy Volt from General Motors have yet to be certified by the EPA, said EPA Assistant Administrator Gina McCarthy, so she could not give a sense of what grade they would get under the proposed rating system.

Applied to 2010 model year vehicles, high performance cars like the Ferrari 612 Scaglietti and Mercedes-Benz Maybach 57 would bring up the rear with D+ and D letter grades, based on more than 689 grams of CO2 emissions per mile and fuel efficiency equivalent to 13 MPG or less.

McCarthy explained that grades would be distributed across “a pretty standard bell curve,” with a B- as the median. Vehicles would be compared with all models in that year’s fleet, rather than having SUVs compete only against other SUVs, for example. There would be no failing grade, McCarthy said, because only cars that comply with the Clean Air Act can be sold.