Renault Announces New dCi Energy Diesel

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It seems like there are new diesel engine programs being announced every week these days – with everyone from over-the-road European truck builders to American automotive icons getting in on the act.  Today’s new diesel – the Energy dCi 130 – is the latest offspring of the Renault-Nissan alliance. The new Renault engine develops 130 [...]

Wave Disk Engine Receives $2.5 Million in Federal Funding

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The Wave Disk Engine could revolutionize the way we power our automobiles, and the Department of Energy awarded this design $2.5 million in Federal funding. For details about exactly how the Wave Disk Engine works, check out my previous post about it. Developed by Michigan State University researchers, it’s the size of a cooking pot [...]

Finally, A Nissan Leaf Race Car: The NISMO RC

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The old saying goes that the first race occurred as soon as the second car (ever) was sold. Electric cars are the next frontier in auto racing, so it only makes sense to build a Nissan Leaf race car Called the Nissan Leaf NISMO RC (did they have to make it sound like a toy?) [...]

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Video: The Finnish-Built, Wood Burning El Camino

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Truth is stranger than fiction, or so the saying goes. And I could not make this story up if I tried. A Finnish politician has converted his American-built El Camino to run on woodgas. How’s that for awesome? Juhas Sipilä’s 1987 El Camino, affectionately dubbed “El Kamina” (The Stove), features a very steampunk-like woodgas generator [...]

Sergio Marchionne Confirms Diesel V6 for Jeep Grand Cherokee

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The proverbial cat is out of the bag, as Autoblog reports it heard straight from the mouth of Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne that by 2013, the new Jeep Grand Cherokee will get the European 3.0 liter turbodiesel V6. The European Grand Cherokee is already slated to get this oil-burning powerplant, what with its 241 horsepower, [...]

Canada vs. Electric Cars, Round 3

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The Canadian province of Quebec has announced plans to offer government rebates of up to $8000 (Canadian) on high-capacity electric vehicles in a bid to place 300,000 plug-in electric vehicles on Quebec’s roads by 2020.  With up to $50 million in funding already set aside for the program, the province hopes that – by doing [...]

Video: Hybrid-Electric Truck to Enter the 2012 Dakar Rally

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There’s no race in the world as punishing as the 5,500 miles of the Dakar Rally. It’s not a place to be testing new technology, but a Latvian team aims to enter a hybrid-electric truck in the world famous rally. For the uninitiated, the Dakar Rally is a long-running race that recently moved from the [...]

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Liquid Salt Could Clean Up Canadian Tar Sand

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Despite being called “the world’s most destructive project“, the tar sand extraction fields in Alberta, Canada export over one million barrels of oil each day – mostly to the US.  Greenpeace, National Geographic, and Canada’s own governmental agencies consider Alberta’s tar sands to be serious environmental threats, and I think you’d be hard pressed to [...]