Date: 18-Feb-09
Country: ISRAEL
Author: Ari Rabinovitch

KIBBUTZ SAMAR - Israeli energy company AORA wants to prove it doesn't have to be sunny for a solar power plant to make electricity. Like weaning a car from total dependence on fuel, the answer, it says, is to go hybrid.

DETROIT: When Shai Agassi set out in 2007 to develop an infrastructure to service electric cars, circumstances were hardly in his favor.

Gasoline was cheap, and big pickups and SUVs still ruled the road in the United States. While auto companies were working on alternative-fuel vehicles, they seemed destined for a tiny niche market of green-minded consumers.

Electric-Car doubters often say that a vehicle like the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, intended to drive most of its miles on batteries charged from the power grid, is effectively powered by coal. While that is a vast oversimplification, it contains a germ of truth

By Jui Chakravorty Das

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Chastised by Congress and lampooned by comedians for flying private jets to Washington while asking for taxpayer money, the chief executives of U.S. automakers have learned a lesson: drive, don't fly.

BY JOHN MARKOFF, SAN FRANCISCO
Agassi is trying to couple existing electric car technologies with thousands of Internet- connected recharging stations.
The State of Hawaii and the Hawaiian Electric Company on Tuesday endorsed an effort to build an alternative transportation system based on electric vehicles with swappable batteries and an

Japan's Sanyo Electric Co. on Monday unveiled a new electric hybrid bicycle that can triple the user's pedal power to make it easier to climb hills.

Equipped with a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, the "eneloop bike" takes the crossover between a normal bicycle and a moped one step further, aiming to tap growing interest in tackling global warming.

The goal of the new incentives, which involve changes in how much fleet owners can charge drivers for the use of cars, was to make it more expensive for the owners to use the Ford Crown Victoria, the most common cab today, and more profitable to use hybrids like the Ford Escape and other fuel-efficient vehicles that cause less pollution.

NEW DELHI: Targeting the fast-growing eco-friendly vehicle segment, Lohia Auto Industries (LAI), a part of the Lohia Group, on Friday launched two electric bikes, priced at Rs. 25,000 and Rs.35,000. The company, which has set up a new manufacturing facility at Kashipur in Uttarakhand, plans to introduce electric three-wheeler within next three months.

The question is not whether the world can cope with three billion cars