Free Republic

The town council's public safety committee voted against allowing hybrid vehicles to park for free. There will be no free parking in Doylestown for "green" vehicles. Doylestown Council's public safety committee unanimously voted Wednesday to reject a proposal to allow hybrid and electric vehicles to park in borough lots and at borough meters for free. Their vote was met with applause from the 15 business owners and residents who attended the meeting. The free parking program was proposed by Assistant Borough Manager Phil Ehlinger in an April 23 memo to council. He suggested allowing "green" vehicles to park for free...

The new Honda Insight is supposed to be the "hybrid for everyone," but does that include Republicans? A new Wall Street Journal article runs down the well-known tale of how, mostly, the people who drive hybrids are on the left side of American politics (remember this?). From there, Democratic political consultant Mark Penn asks his big question: "Where Are the Republican Hybrid Buyers?" From the article: But if we really want to expand the number of [hybrid] buyers, we should develop new arguments that appeal to the Republicans who have been holding back. To look at it another way,...

WASHINGTON, May 4, 2009 – The type of “hybrid warfare” that defense experts predict the United States is increasingly likely to face will pull the military in two directions, the Defense Department’s top policy official said today. Michele Flournoy, undersecretary of defense for policy, said America's conventional dominance gives incentive to its enemies to use asymmetric means to undermine U.S. strengths and exploit its weaknesses. “Preparing for this operating environment will pull the Army, and the military writ large, in two very different directions,” she told the roughly 200-person audience at the Army Leader Forum at the Pentagon. On the...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - A potential investment of roughly $600 million could bring an estimated 2,000 new jobs to Kentucky. Today, the National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Batteries (NATTBatt) announced that it has chosen a site in Hardin County to develop batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles.

Examples of zebra-horse hybrids abound, but few are as stunningly eye-catching as ‘Eclyse’ pictured here.[1,2] While most other zorses have stripes across their entire body, Eclyse looks like she’s had her face and rear flank painted by a very clever artist. But the markings are real, and she’s become a major attraction at a safari park in the German town of Schloss Holte-Stukenbrock. Her mother, Eclipse, had spent a short time at a ranch in Italy, where she shared a paddock with other horses, as well as a zebra called Ulysses. On her return to Germany, Eclipse surprised her keepers...

GM is defending its design for the Volt plug-in hybrid vehicle after a study out of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) slammed the design, saying that it's not economical. (Plug-ins are hybrids with batteries that can be recharged by plugging them in.) *** [GM VP Lauccckner] says that the study should have accounted for the tax credits for plug-in hybrids available through the stimulus bill. He implies that these credits, along with cheaper batteries, will make the Volt affordable. But if the Volt relies on government incentives to be economically viable, is it really economically viable?

AP Piaggio MP3 Hybrid The Chevy Volt just had a little of its thunder stolen. Paolo Timoni, President and CEO of Piaggio Group Americas — maker of the Piaggio and Vespa brands of motor scooters — confirmed to FOXNews.com that the company is planning to sell a plug-in hybrid version of one of its vehicles in the United States starting in early 2010. If the gas-electric scooter makes it into showrooms on schedule, it will be the first plug-in hybrid vehicle to go on sale in the U.S., beating the Volt to market by several months, at least.

KIRKLAND, Wash. - Kenworth truck reports its largest order for hybrid trucks. Kirkland-based Kenworth is a unit of Paccar. According to a company news release, Coca-Cola has ordered150 Kenworth T370 diesel-electric tractors and 35 Kenworth T370 hybrid trucks, all of which will be on the road this year. The Kenworth T370 tractors (rated at 55,000 lb. GCW) are the largest hybrid delivery truck on the road in North America. Kenworth says Coca-Cola plans to use the hybrid tractors in Seattle, Portland, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal, New Orleans, New York, San Antonio, San Francisco,...

Mechanical transmission of power using gears is very energy inefficient. The familiar automotive multi-speed gearbox and differential suffers from the friction losses that result in 20 – 30% of engine power being lost between a car's engine and the wheels. Many techniques are being developed to eliminate mechanical transmission including Wheel Motors and Hydraulic transmissions that we have seen being trialed in UPS delivery vans. Now in an innovative new approach, Scottish company Artemis Intelligent Power has developed a hydraulic hybrid transmission system it says can double a vehicle's MPG in city driving. The heart of the system is a...

Jodie Foster was pulled over in Beverly Hills last week for speeding. Police said the movie star’s politically-correct Prius was clocked doing 54 in a 35 mile per hour zone. To make it even better, the whole thing was caught on tape by a crew of “Speeders,” a truTV reality show. According to the New York Post, “Foster refused...

Remember last spring, when Seattle's mayor rolled out the city's first car that could be "filled at the plug instead of the pump?" It's called a plug-in hybrid. They are all the green rage — "possibly the most sought-after technological innovation since Captain Kirk first flipped open his communicator," says The New York Times. You may have seen the city's cars around town, painted with an eye-catching claim on the rear bumper: "This plug-in hybrid gets 100+mpg." Also, a greener boast: "150+City MPG!" Not exactly, it turns out. Not even close. Try 51 miles per gallon, city and highway combined....

I'm in the market for a new car. Hybrids have always intrigued me from a gadget and gas-thrift standpoint, but I'd certainly like to not mistaken for the self-righteous, eco-charlatan liberal who normally drives one. That's right, the same people who pretend to engage the downtrodden driving an uber high-mileage car that only a well-off person could afford. (I suppose a "Protected by Glock" bumper sticker would be enough to dispel any false assumptions.) Of course, the common-sense conservative approach tells me to buy a compact that gets only about 10 fewer MPG's but costs over $10K less...all without the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A partnership between Johnson Controls Inc and France's Saft will supply a complete battery system for Ford Motor Co's first plug-in hybrid, due out in 2012, Ford said Tuesday. Ford also said ahead of the Washington Auto Show that seven utilities, including Consolidated Edison Inc, American Electric Power Co and Michigan's DTE Energy Co, will join its ongoing research effort to test rechargeable plug-ins and assess their impact on the electrical grid. [...] Automakers are lobbying Congress to include battery funding initiatives and plug-in tax breaks in U.S. economic stimulus legislation now before the Senate. [...]

The Air Car, made by French company MDI, could be launched by Tata Motors in India by 2010-11. Replying to an email query, the French company said, "We will release in France the first cars for the Air France company before June 2009. The cars will be available for the public at the end of 2009." Mumbai-based Tata Motors, India's third biggest car manufacturer had signed a licensing agreement with MDI for manufacturing the car in India. The agreement between the two envisages development and refinement of the technology. The Air Car doesn't require traditional fuel options like petrol, diesel,...

Regarding the Instruction Dignitas PersonaeAim In recent years, biomedical research has made great strides, opening new possibilities for the treatment of disease, but also giving rise to serious questions which had not been directly treated in the Instruction Donum vitae (22 February 1987).  A new Instruction, which is dated 8 September 2008, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, seeks to provide some responses to these new bioethical questions, as these have been the focus of expectations and concerns in large sectors of society.  In this way, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith seeks both...

We're in the City of Angels this week to drive a bunch of new Fords, including the new 2010 Mustang and Fusion. We started off Monday afternoon with a mileage challenge in the new 2010 Fusion Hybrid.

It may have been nothing but a publicity stunt, but it didn’t come cheap for Ford Motor Company CEO Alan R. Mulally. After being embarrassed in front of a congressional committee for flying in a private jet to ask Congress for a bailout, Mulally revealed he would make the 525-mile trip from Detroit to Washington in a Ford Escape Hybrid – a trip totaling nine hours. Despite the perception that a private jet is some sort of lavish wasteful mode of transportation for the affluent – it makes more financial sense for the shareholders of Ford (NYSE:F), as CNBC’s Jeff...

GM to return two leased jets amid criticism By Poornima Gupta Poornima Gupta 12 mins ago DETROIT (Reuters) – General Motors Corp will return two of its leased corporate jets amid intense criticism in Washington this week on the luxury travel arrangements of its chief executive even as the company pleads for federal aid. CEO Rick Wagoner was in the capital to testify on the company's dire financial situation but his testimony was overshadowed by irate lawmakers who blasted him for flying on a private jet to ask for public funds and failing to make personal sacrifices in exchange for...

ScienceDaily (Nov. 19, 2008) — Important pedestrian safety issues have emerged with the advent of hybrid and electric vehicles. These vehicles are relatively quiet—they do not emit the sounds pedestrians and bicyclists are accustomed to hearing as a vehicle approaches them on the street or at an intersection. In a recent study, human factors/ergonomics researchers examined participants' preferences for sounds that could be added to quiet vehicles to make them easier to detect.Though the safety of quiet vehicles has become an issue for pedestrians in general, it is also of concern to the National Federation for the Blind, which has...

A little less than four months ago, the world's largest retail chain, Wal-Mart,announced that it would be launching an environmental plan to reduce its environmental footprint. “Sustainability 360”, as it's called, outlines a number of different sub-projects, such as reducing the amount of packaging that it uses for its products, and selling (and using) energy-efficient lighting. Not surprisingly, a good deal of the plan focused on the transportation side of things. Wal-Mart has requested that its suppliers cut down on the amount of packaging, citing that a 5-percent reduction would be the equivalent of taking 213,000 trucks off the road,...