We Obsessively Cover the Green Scene…

So, you're a regular AutoblogGreen reader and think you can't learn much from an infographic called "Green Cars 101," right? Well, how about this little tidbit: in a compressed natural gas car, the fuel is "compressed to less than 1 percent of its volume." Or this: "A small solar energy system (1 to 2 kW) can provide 15,000 electric miles a year" to your plug-in car.

Those are just two of the pieces of information in the Green Cars 101 image from One Block Off The Grid. Most of the rest, admittedly, will be quite familiar to readers, but easy-to-understand information dumps like this are good to keep on hand to share with people who are just getting started in knowing their PHEVs from their BEVs.

See the full image below.

Stash this one in the "we don't see a downside to this" department.

UC Riverside researchers are developing a navigation system specifically geared towards cutting fuel use and, in some cases, increasing electric-vehicle driving range.

Instead of merely plotting out directions to a certain destination, the so-called "eco-routing" navigation system would also factor in things like traffic, topography and road type to provide the route that may not be the shortest, but would be easiest on the right foot. For instance, the driver may be directed to avoid either an area with stop and go traffic or a hill climb in order to get to a destination using less gas or electricity. Other issues, such as weather and cargo weight, would also be factored into the range estimate.

Such a system would be good for everyone, but especially useful for electric-vehicle drivers, since those extra few miles could mean the difference between getting home and needing to call AAA for a charge. Some of the money the researchers at the university's Center for Environmental Research and Technology (CE-CERT) are using comes from a California Energy Commission grant.

Because he's quick like that. And lucky.

Chip Yates has, in a few short months, converted a Burt Rutan-designed Long-EZ airplane to battery power and, at the same time, undergone all the flight training necessary to get his pilot's license. On Wednesday, he took his renamed Long-ESA (Electric Speed & Altitude) on its maiden voyage. On Thursday, he took to the skies above Inyokern Airport for the second time and set an unofficial speed record of 202.6 miles per hour. It might have been his last flight. Ever.

To save time, Yates installed the same battery pack that have been in his record-setting electric motorcycle last year. During its last bit of heavy usage on the Bonneville Salt Flats, it had begun to shows signs of significant voltage sag under throttle. In fact, it couldn't put out anywhere near the 250 horsepower the UQM motor could have handled. Still, compact, with just under 12-kWh worth of energy storage, it fit nicely into the plane and it seemed robust enough for some early test flights. Emphasis on "seemed." (More below.)

For anyone who wants to drive from Paris to Budapest without that pesky problem of filling-up, Opel has got the car for you.

General Motors' Opel division is offering its Insignia with an engine that can run on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) as well as petrol, Green Car Congress reports.

The engine, which is available in all three of the Insignia's body styles, is a 1.4-liter turbocharged four-banger that delivers about 140 horsepower and uses 7.6 liters of gas per 100 kilometers, or about 31 miles per gallon, on the slightly more lenient European driving standards. More importantly, with both the gas tank and LPG tank filled, the car has a leg-cramp-inducing range of 1,056 miles, which will get you from the French to Hungarian capital cities with about 100 miles to spare. The Insignia with the LPG option starts at 28,150 euros ($34,266 U.S. at today's exchange rates).

London Calling, indeed.

The Rimac Concept_One super-duper electric car will be shown off at London's Salon Privé in September, Hybrid Cars reports, giving us another chance to show off pictures of this electric beauty.

The exhibit will be the second ever for Croatia's Rimac, which unveiled the EV at the Frankfurt Motor Show last September. Since then, more details have been disclosed about the car, which will have a production run of less than 90 vehicles and a $1 million pricetag.

The Concept_One will have a 92-kilowatthour battery and a powertrain that delivers almost 1,100 horsepower, giving the car a 0-60 mile-per-hour acceleration time of 2.8 seconds and a 190-mile-per-hour top speed. The car is also said to have a single-charge range of 373 miles, though trying to hit the aforementioned acceleration rate will likely bring that range down a bit.

Bruder, can you spare a Euro?

That's what BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer was saying to the German government at a Munich conference, Green Car Congress reports, citing (and translating from German, danke schön) Financial Times Deutschland.

The Reithofer said that the German government's goal of having a million electric cars on German roads by the end of the decade will require the government to enact subsidies in the form of tax incentives. Just 2,000 EVs were sold in Germany last year.

Automobile Magazine reported in June on rumors that BMW may delay or even discontinue some of its planned electric-drive vehicles within its new i brand because of concerns over lagging demand for plug-ins, but the news from BMW continues to show progress on plug-ins. Last month, BMW unveiled a concept version of its i3 battery-electric vehicle along with the opening of the world's first i store in London. The i3, which is said to have 170 horsepower and a single-charge range of as many as 100 miles, is set to go into production next year.

Ford's marketing strategy for its plug-in vehicles is coming into Focus (pun intended): compare, compare, compare.

When announcing the Focus Electric's 105 miles per gallon equivalent, for example, Ford made sure to note that it beats the "Nissan Leaf by 6 MPGe while also offering more motor power, passenger room and standard features. Customers can make more use of this efficiency with Ford's faster charging technology that can recharge Focus Electric in about half the time of Nissan Leaf." With the C-Max Hybrid, Ford said it would get better mileage than the Toyota Prius V. Today, Ford is revealing more details about the C-Max Energi Plug-In Hybrid, and the press release says it offers "nearly double electric-only range of Prius."

What does that mean, aside from some numerical chest puffery? Ford says the electric range of the Energi PHEV will be "more than 20 miles" and that the car's full-tank-of-gas-plus-electricity range is 550 miles. On top of that, the C-Max Energi is expected to get 95 MPGe (Ford expects its Fusion Energi plug-in hybrid to get 100 MPGe). It may not be saying much, but Ford also says that the Energi has a "maximum electric-only speed projected to top that of Prius plug-in." The C-Max Energi Hybrid will be available this fall with a base price of $25,995, including destination and delivery.

Oh, by the way, Ford would like you to know that that price is "$1,300 lower than Toyota Prius V."

Watch a promotional video of the C-Max below.

*UPDATE: An earlier version of this post misstated which C-Max would cost $25,995. We regret the error.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the Chevrolet Volt can start to blush.

China's FAW Group is looking to develop a car similar to General Motors' Volt extended-range plug-in, Ward's Auto reports.

The vehicle, which has been under development for about a decade, can go a Volt-like 37 miles in all-electric mode and has a full-tank-plus-full-charge range of about 250 miles, Ward's said, citing a presentation from China FAW research and development president Li Jun at the Advanced Vehicle Technologies and Integration conference in Changchun, China.

The car uses a 0.7 liter, 56-horsepower, two-cylinder turbocharged engine as an on-board generator, and has a nine-kWh LG Chem battery (to compare, the Volt has a 16-kWh battery, but only uses around 9-10 kWh). The vehicle is about 1,300 pounds lighter than the Volt's nearly 3,800-pound curb weight, according to Ward's. The company estimated that the extended-range plug-in set-up boosts vehicle costs, compared to a conventional car, by about $8,600, though didn't give any details on possible production.

FAW, which has had a joint-venture vehicle-making entity in China with Volkswagen for more than 20 years, unveiled its first alt-fuel vehicles in August 2011 with a plug-in hybrid vehicle that could go 44 miles in all-electric mode on a full charge and an all-electric car that had a single-charge range of 111 miles. Early last year, FAW said it had registered 65 advanced-powertrain technology patents, though just a fraction of its nearly $2 billion in research and development spending between 2006 and 2010 was related to advanced powertrains.

Picture the scene: You're in a quiet place; a forest. The grass is green, the sky a perfect shade of blue. It's sunny; the temperature is hovering somewhere near perfect and a gentle breeze wafts by. You look at the pretty flowers – bend down to reach one... then, BAM!

No, we're not talking about Bambi versus Godzilla – though we do offer Marv Newland a healthy round of applause. What's we're talking about is the Lexus GS Hybrid. Or, more specifically, the car's Italian advertising campaign as seen in the video below.

Lexus claims its 2013 GS 450h can accelerate from 0 to 60 in just 5.6 seconds, courtesy of its 3.5-liter V6 engine and electric motor hybrid powertrain that puts out a combined 338 horsepower. Combine that level of thrust with rear-wheel drive and a professional driver and you've got yourself some fun at the race track.

Lexus decided to put this combination together, mixing in a blend of new-car shoppers to see what effect its hybrid sedan had on the heart. Scroll down below to watch it all unfold.

Want a new Nissan Leaf for $23,000? It's no longer California Dreamin'.

Some West Coast Nissan dealers are cutting prices on the Leaf, offering some for as much as $5,000 less than the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) of $37,250, Green Car Reports says.

Both the North Bay Nissan in the San Francisco Bay Area and Fontana Nissan in Southern California are making these price cuts, which puts the Leaf's bottom-line cost, after factoring in $10,000 in federal and state incentives, at about $23,000. That's

Meanwhile, Seattle's Campbell Nelson Nissan has cut the downpayment out of its 39-month lease altogether, pricing it at $369 a month, inclusive of a Level 2 charging station. Last month, Nissan cut the monthly lease payment for a Leaf by $60, to $289 a month, even as it extended the term to 39 months from 36 and hiked the downpayment by $1,000 to $2,900. Back in 2011, Nissan raised the Leaf's price. We have to assume that the California price drops are meant to encourage more sales of the EV, which have lagged this year. Nissan sold 3,148 Leafs in the U.S. through June, down 19 percent from a year earlier.

Daimler's Car2go carsharing program has been in Vancouver for a year now and, aside from some hockey riot vandals to start things off, things have been quite positive. In a press release talking about Vancouver Year One, Car2go offers up the following numbers:

• 15,000 members (up from 2,000 at the start)
• An average of 12,000 drives a week (up from 1,500)
• 320 cars (up from 225)
• 70 square kilometer "home" area
• 25 percent more Car2go-designated parking spaces
• Three all-electric Smart Fortwo EVs (most of the Car2go cars in Vancouver burn gasoline)

Vancouver is where Car2go started in Canada (after successful launches in Europe and the U.S.), and the company now also operates in Toronto, Ontario and starts service this week in Calgary, Alberta.

Honda let the cat officially out of the bag today, revealing details about its new HondaLink infotainment system that will be featured in the new 2013 Accord. The new midsize sedan doesn't launch until the fall, but the Japanese automaker is clearly eager to start building momentum for its long-awaited new model by addressing one of the company's long-running deficiencies: connectivity.

HondaLink will feature Aha Radio, a cloud-based digital content service that uses the driver's smart phone data connection for streaming through the vehicle's audio system. The interface uses a radio station model, with users creating content presets. Besides music, news, podcasts and other traditional audio content, Aha will allow drivers to listen to Facebook and Twitter feeds.

For cars with plugs (the Fit EV and the upcoming Accord Plug-In Hybrid), there is HondaLink EV, which includes "unique applications designed specifically to maintain connectivity to their vehicle." You can probably guess what that means: ways to remotely see and control charging status, as well as the ability to pre-heat or pre-cool the cabin, so as to save battery energy. HondaLink EV launches tomorrow when Fit EV becomes available for lease in California and Oregon.

While the video Honda released today plays more like a commercial than a tutorial, we're looking forward to getting our hands on the system. The big question is whether it can vault Honda to the front of the mainstream infotainment pack, or merely put them where Ford was three years ago.

Scroll down to watch the video and read the full press release.

The U.S. Energy Department has spent a lot of time and money researching hydrogen vehicles, and just announced $2.4 million more to move H2 refueling station technology forward. The $2.4 million will be spread out among five projects in three states:

• The California Air Resources Board will get $150,000 to "analyze an operating hydrogen refueling station that uses natural gas to produce hydrogen."
• California State University and Los Angeles Auxiliary Services, Inc. gets $400,000 to "collect data from hydrogen refueling architecture deployed at California State University - Los Angeles."
• The Gas Technology Institute in Des Plaines, IL also gets $400,000 to "analyze operational, transactional, safety, and reliability data from five hydrogen fueling stations."
• Finally, Proton Energy Systems in Connecticut gets money for two projects, one to "provide operational data from two existing stations that integrate hydrogen generation, compression, storage and dispensing" for $400,000 and the other to "deploy an advanced high-pressure electrolyzer at an existing hydrogen fueling station and nearly double the dispensing capacity of its storage tanks" for $1 million.

The DOE's release doesn't specify if these monies are grants or loans, just "investments" and that the recipients need to match them.

Along with the funding announcement, the DOE released the "National Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle Learning Demonstration Final Report," which gives the results of six years of H2 vehicle testing. Some numbers: 180 vehicles, 500,0000 trips, 3.6 million miles, 33,000 hydrogen fill-ups from 54 online H2 stations in the U.S. (as of January 2012). For more, download the PDF.

In the hyperbolic political atmosphere of America today, left-leaning liberals are seen as tofu-eating, Toyota Prius-driving communists, while right-leaning conservatives are depicted as gun-toting, pickup-driving patriots. Thankfully, the real world is a lot more diverse than those caricatures.

Take George Shultz, for example. He served as both Labor and Treasury secretary for Richard Nixon and went on to become Secretary of State for the majority of Ronald Reagan's two terms. Pretty solid conservative bona fides, we think.

And yet, he drives an electric car. A Nissan Leaf to be precise. On top of that, he generates his own electricity with a tidy little solar array. (No word on whether he wears sandals, but we suspect not. At least, not when anyone's looking.)

Now, one might imagine his motivation for choosing clean energy and transportation has something to do with a strong dislike of mid-east oil. They would be correct. "I'm driving on sunshine. Take that, Ahmadinejad!", he states in the video we have waiting for you below.

However, he is also concerned about the disastrous environmental effects our fossil fuel habit is causing. He supports a (gasp!) carbon tax as a way to combat the problem and his car and solar panels are his way of walking the talk. You can hear more of that talk by scrolling below to that aforementioned video. For a more in-depth look at his take on energy, check out this interview over at the Stanford University website.