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The next time you travel, travel green. Miami Van
Rentals has thrown its hat into the
sustainability ring by offering a "Green Collection" of
cars. The selection of four models, the Toyota Camry,
Ford Fusion, Buick LaCrosse and Hyundai Sonata, get at
least 28 mpg; most of the Camry's, Fusions and LaCrosses
also carry EPA's
SmartWay certification, indicating lower emissions
of air pollutants and greenhouse gases. It's not easy
being green, according to Kermit the Frog. It's a good
bet he'd also find it difficult to rent a green, or
environmentally friendly, car.
Environment-conscious auto renters need to think ahead.
The clerk behind the counter might not know a green
machine from a gas guzzler. So do your homework.
Start with the Environmental Protection Agency's list of
likely candidates. If you're renting In Florida or the
New Jersey, Connecticut or Washington, D.C., areas,
you'll probably find some of the listed vehicles at EV
Car Rental Cars, which specializes in natural gas,
electric and hybrid rentals.
But elsewhere, hybrid cars are more difficult to find
and likely to be smaller and more expensive than
conventional cars. E. Rent-A-Car and A. don't offer them
at all, according to representatives of both companies.
H. offers a few hybrid cars at some California
locations, but renters can't specifically reserve a
hybrid car, says spokeswoman Paula Stifter. Where they
are available, the prices are comparable to other
compacts, she says.
B., A., rents hybrids through a marketing arrangement
with EV Car Rental. Locations are limited, however, and
renters will pay full-size prices for the smaller Toyota
Prius or hybrid Honda Civic, according to Budget
spokeswoman Alice Pereira.
"It's definitely more expensive," says E.B., director of
marketing and operations for the Better World Club, an
environmentally focused travel club.
But don't despair. In the next few years, the selection
will improve, says Ron Cogan, editor and publisher of
the Green Car Journal, a quarterly report on autos and
the environment.
The industry plans to put five more green vehicles on
the market next year and twice that many the following
year, says Cogan, meaning green rental choices should
expand, too.
People want to go GREEN
and hybrid manufacturers are reaping the
benefits
Environment, Peta, animal welfare is
hot and the movement is growing.
Hybrid car manufacturers are leaving
no stone unturned to reap the
benefits of this growth. With the
growing prices of fuel more and more
people are opting for hybrid
vehicles for its financial benefits.
According to a survey conducted by
Mintel Comperemedia, 35 million
Americans are "True Greens" who
regularly buy green products which
also includes environmentally
friendly vehicles.
Recently several
companies which have no direct
relationship with hybrid car
manufacturers are providing rewards
for purchasing hybrid vehicles.
Insurance companies like Travelers
are giving a discount of up to 10%
to hybrid owners. Other companies
like Bank of America and Google Inc.
also recently jumped in the foray of
hybrid car promoters by providing
aid in hybrid car purchases.
Gas prices have
pushed people to buy hybrid vehicles
to some extent. However, the real
push in the sales of these vehicles
is all because people are looking
for ways to positively contribute to
the environment and buying a hybrid
car seems one of the easiest
options.
Hybrid car
manufacturers are further cashing on
the sentiments by highlighting their
commitment to the environment in
their promotions and thus portraying
themselves as green companies. Let
us have a look at the ways other
then the technology that is going to
drive the sales of hybrid cars:
- Hybrid cars
have become a fashion/status
symbol
- Increase in
prices of fuel
- Aggressive
campaigns
- Green
marketing
- Tax
deductions on hybrid cars.
- Oil
Dependence
- Other
benefits like car pool lane
entry, free parking etc.
If you are planning to rely on public methods of
transportation while traveling in Miami Florida,
then you are not making your trip the best it can be.
Miami Airport Miami Beach Palm Beach Orlando Fort Lauderdale Airport Florida
is designed for personalized travel and a
cheap car rental &
Cheap Minivan Rentals
& 15 Passenger Vans provides ideal travel conveniences for
all of your transportation needs.
Almost all tourist attractions, shopping centers, and
entertainment facilities rely on the assumption that a
traveler has access to a rental vehicle.
New York Cheap
Car Rental recognizes the implications of this
assumption by providing you with excellent customer
service and affordable rates that put you where you want
to be.
Brooklyn's efficient and safe modes of
public
transportation, most
tourist attractions and wilderness
wonders can only realistically be reached by car. This
leaves you with the choice of traveling on a crowded
tourist bus or choosing a cheap car rental that is
always at your fingertips no matter where you end up In
Florida! Obtaining a car
rental In Florida makes your
journey both cheap and convenient. It is also much
quicker and safer than the hassle of public
transportation!
EPA
SmartWay Grow & Go is a program
developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) to promote the environmental benefits
of renewable fuels, and provide a renewable fuel
component for EPA's existing SmartWay Transport
Partnership.
This program will help reduce U.S. dependence on
petroleum, and help improve our environment by
reducing emissions of harmful pollutants and
greenhouse gases. EPA will work with its
public-private partners to implement the goals of
SmartWay Grow & Go. Read more
Basic Information.
August 24, 2007 - At the Great American Trucking
Show,
SmartWay recognizes its new Grow & Go Partners for
their use of renewable fuels and for their
commitment to our nation's energy independence and
concern for the environment..
SmartWay Grow & Go program helps launch first E85
pump in the District of Columbia
June 28, 2007 – The District of Columbia’s first
public E85 pump went into service today thanks to a
collaborative effort between the SmartWay Grow & Go
program and other private and public organizations.
These efforts will help pave the way for other E85
pumps planned for the metropolitan Washington area.
SmartWay participates in
IndyCar® event: To promote
renewable fuels such as ethanol, SmartWay Grow & Go
participated in the 2007 annual Ethanol Summit
hosted by the
Ethanol Promotion and Information Council (EPIC).
This year's Ethanol Summit celebrated that 100
percent fuel-grade ethanol has been used in an
IndyCar® Series.
Ever since we
first
saw Honda's FCX fuel
cell concept, we've been
dreaming of the day that
it would finally enter
production and hit the
streets. They've told
the world to
wait a few years for
production and have
been teasing us by
intermittently
showing it off; now
the latest word on the
street is: limited
production in Japan and
the US in 2008. Hey,
that's next year!
Wallpaper*
magazine, of all places
(if it's in there, it's
gotta be cool)
tells us that, "Honda
hopes that with a little
helping hand from
legislation, plus their
ongoing experiments into
a viable 'Home Energy
Station', the FCX
Concept will finally
make it to the American
and Japanese markets -
albeit in a heavily
subsided,
quasi-experimental form
- in 2008." Whether or
not
hydrogen cars are a
viable personal
transportation option
is sort of another
story. Check out
Honda's concept site
for more, and keep your
fingers crossed.
::Honda FCX via
::Wallpaper.com
In the early 1930s, Henry Ford walked into his
company's research lab with a bag of chicken bones,
dumped them on a desk and proclaimed, "See what you can
do with these." He later urged his staff to try out
cantaloupes, carrots, cornstalks, cabbages and onions in
his search for materials with which to build an organic
car body.
Ford didn't give up, and eventually hit upon his
dream material: soybean stalks. In 1940, Ford scientists
discovered that soybean oil could be used to make a
high-quality paint enamel, and also molded into a
fiber-based plastic. The company proclaimed the material
had 10 times the shock-resistance of steel, and Ford
himself delighted in demonstrating that strength by
pounding on a soybean deck-lid with an ax. We might be
driving soybean Fords today, if not for the fact that
the new material was found to need a long time to cure,
and did not mold well.
Unfortunately, the reputation for innovation that
pushed Ford to the peak of industrial production in its
early years didn't survive its messianic founder, and
the company slumbered through the 1940s and 1950s. Even
such groundbreaking cars as the 1964 Mustang were
technically rather pedestrian.
But now Ford is changing, and many of the changes
seem to be green. In late 1997, Ford announced that it
would invest $420 million in a global alliance to build
automotive fuel cells with Daimler-Benz and Canada's
Ballard Power Systems, a pioneer of the technology. Fuel
cells, which produce electricity from hydrogen without
combustion, are still in the developmental stage, but
they're considered a prime, nearly-pollution-free
candidate to replace the internal-combustion engine in
the 21st century. "This is real progress," says Jason
Mark, a transportation analyst at the Union of Concerned
Scientists. "A nearly half-billion-dollar investment is
nothing to sneeze at."
The spokesman for Ford's electric vehicle program,
which includes fuel cell cars, is John Wallace, a tall,
thin man with a background as a computer engineer.
Interviewed in Dearborn, Michigan, not far from where
Henry Ford I wielded his ax, Wallace got right to the
point. "Yes, Ford has fuel cell prototypes right now,
and we'll show them when they make good public relations
impact. But I'm not interested in non-drivable
prototypes --I need real road-ready vehicles."
The Ford fuel cell cars could run on methanol, or
carry tanks of hydrogen. Ford consultant Sandy Thomas
believes strongly that cars can carry hydrogen gas
instead of running on fossil fuels, eliminating the need
for costly and bulky "reformers" to extract the
hydrogen. "You could argue that methanol is the worst of
both worlds," Thomas says. "There has to be an on-board
reformer, and you have to build a new infrastructure.
But there is excess generating capacity for methanol,
and it's the least expensive to transport."
Thomas conjures up a truly spectacular zero-emissions
system of "solar hydrogen" in which the fuel is produced
from a combination of photovoltaic thermal collectors,
wind generators and biomass. "Imagine," he says, "a
motor vehicle fuel so clean-burning that you could drink
the effluent from the tailpipe, with urban smog a
distant memory.
Ford wants to go into production with a fuel cell
family car based on the aluminum-and-composite P2000,
which looks like the current Contour model, but weighs
1,000 pounds less. Would people buy a high-efficiency
P2000? Cheap gas has made such cars a hard sell. Ford,
in fact, may build a hi hybrid sport utility instead.
And fuel cell SUVs are another likely possibility:
Chrysler showed off a fuel cell Jeep, a product of its
Daimler-Benz alliance, at the 1999 auto shows.
The process of cleaning up the sport utility has
already begun, but it's a bumpy ride. In early 1998,
Ford stunned its competitors by announcing that its
Explorers and Expeditions would henceforth meet the
California low-emission vehicle standard. That decision
may well have come from the company's new chairman,
William Clay Ford, Jr., a committed environmentalist who
is the first family member to serve in the company
leadership since the days of Henry Ford II. The younger
Ford has alarmed some financial analysts who fear, as
The New York Times put it, "that the scion of a
billionaire family could put environmental causes ahead
of profits and undermine the industry's traditionally
united front against pressures from environmental
groups."
Bill Ford has to reconcile two widely divergent
missions, cleaning up the company and keeping it
profitable. Sometimes these warring impulses surface
simultaneously, as in a 1998 Dearborn speech in which he
proclaimed both that his interests were "fully aligned
with those of all shareholders" and that he wanted Ford
to become "the world's most environmentally-friendly
automaker." It may not be easy to have it both ways.
Ford's best-selling but gas-guzzling Expeditions and
Lincoln Navigators are also its profit center, earning
the company as much as $15,000 each. From just one
Wayne, Michigan factory making sport-utility vehicles,
Ford earns approximately $3.7 billion a year, enough
money to pay for its recent $6.5 billion purchase of
Volvo in two years.
Related Sites:
Miami Florida Tourism
and Visitors Center -
Miami Accommodations, Avents, Shopping, Attractions -
Miami Museum
- Miami Academy of Music
-
Miami Florida Travel Guide -
I Love New York -
New York Travel
-
Florida Miami Airport Service -
Miami Restaurants -
Miami Events & Attractions -
Moving Companies In
Orlando NYC
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1. Fuel cell generates electricity w/o any moving pars.
2. Hydrogen as a gas (stored compressed) enters an ICE
Of the two, the most promising of course is a full EV with some batteries or capacitors for storing breaking / slowing down energy temporarily.
With X number of fuel cell cartridges, you have some "charged" in your car, the spent ones, filled with pure water and being recharged at home from a Utility, Solar, Wind.
Someone had commented on how using water to obtain hydrogen, will deplete water eventually, as it is finite.
With the quantity available, and the fact that water is produced in the explosion, the total loss is quite tiny.
Anyone know what the environmental cost of producing a large fuel cell for a EV car is? I would assume it's much higher than the Prius HV NiMH battery everyone is so fond of bashing.