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Greener cars for 2010: Here are 11 to watch

Chevy Volt. Photo: Green Right Now

The electric car is almost here. Hybrids abound. Diesel has cleaned up its act. Even conventional internal combustion engines can be tweaked to do a bit less harm to the environment.

A brighter, cleaner future is a mantra at the auto shows this year. Scratch beneath the surface, however, and a different sort of impression emerges: Change may be coming to the automobile industry, but progress is slow — even grudging — and the message can be murky.

Chevy has been hyping the much-discussed Volt, for example. The manufacturer’s new electric car – due later this year – can go up to 40 miles on a single charge before a gasoline engine kicks in to keep passengers from becoming stranded.

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Yes, that’s a ‘green’ Ferrari

The HY-KERS vettura laboratorio (experimental vehicle). (Photo: PRNewsFoto/Ferrari North America, Inc.)

By Tom Kessler

At the Geneva Auto Show this week Ferrari, a company whose products are normally associated with red, flashed a bit of green. And we’re not just talking about the paint job.

Ferrari’s HY-KERS vettura laboratorio (experimental vehicle) is a hybrid version of the 599 GTB Fiorano that slips in a high-voltage electric motor capable of producing 100 horsepower.  The test car reduces CO2 emissions by 35 per cent.

The iconic company says the hybrid project is aimed at ensuring that Ferrari will be in a position to comply with future CO2 emissions standards, particularly in urban environments. City driving is traditionally where sports cars typically become major fuel hogs because their engines are designed for maximum efficiency and performance at high RPMs rather than the low revs and low engine loads of city driving.

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Calling out cell phones on radiation

Motorola Droid is at the high end of the radiation scale.

From Green Right Now Reports

Whether cell phone radiation presents a human health risk remains one of those dangling  public health questions. Some studies have suggested that longtime users of cell phones face an increased chance of developing brain or salivary gland cancers. But many others have found no link, prompting some public health groups to give cell phone a clean bill.

In the absence of a clear signal either way, and in the  belief that we’d be better off to err on the side of caution, the Environmental Working Group analyzed the radiation from some of the newest model cell phones.

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Green goods: A smarter dimming switch

By Tom Kessler

Anyone who has gone to the trouble of installing dimmer switches because they can help cut your energy costs was probably chagrined to learn that they don’t work with the early generations of CFL bulbs. Even the newer CFLs that are said to be dimmable often don’t play nicely with slider controls — they hum, they buzz or they just don’t work at all.

So here’s a bit of good news: Leviton Manufacturing is introducing the first slide dimmer specifically designed for use with a wide variety of dimmable CFL bulbs. The company says its Leviton Decora CFL Slide Dimmer optimizes the performance of dimmable CFL bulbs and works with the widest range of dimmable CFL bulbs available.

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Greener consumer electronics emerge at CES

From Green Right Now Reports

The modern consumer’s penchant for buying the latest electronic gadget has certainly contributed mountains to landfills worldwide and led to other ecological sins, from chemical leaching to demand-driven, warp-speed obsolescence of products.

But the electronics industry once again showcased several eco-conscious items at the recent Consumer Electronics Association tradeshow. Aside from lower energy TVs, the newbie offerings foretell of a world where we will control the power we use, much like we control personal electronics now, but with more precision and far less waste.

Here’s a look at some of the most intriguing green offerings:

A 52” LED LCD TV by Sharp that consumes less power than any LCD TV on the market. In fact, Sharp’s LE700 series of full array LED LCD-TVs beat out competitors in all screen size classes for power consumption.

These TVs include sensors that measure the ambient light in the room and adjust color and brightness, delivering the appropriate picture for the setting, and saving energy.

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Green Goods: Desert Essence Organics debuts new hand washes

By Barbara Kessler

The last time I picked up some “natural” hand soap, I got burned. It turned out to be natural in only the most nominal way. It had a couple of herbal ingredients, but these were far outnumbered by a fleet of synthetic preservatives and unpronounceable components that included parabens.

Solutions have been coming. Many health conscious cosmetic companies are offering new, non-toxic hand soaps (see this list at Skin Deep) for those of us getting away from discredited antibacterial formulas and other unnecessary additives.

Desert Essence is among the latest to step up with a purer line of hand washes. The company’s new Organics hand washes that are moisturizing and free of parabens, sodium lauryl/laureth sulfates, phthalates, artificial fragrances or colors, silicones, EDTA, glycol or petroleum based ingredients.

The new hand washes come in four varieties: Grapefruit, Lavender, Coconut and Vanilla Chai. Each is affiliated with an outcome, with Lavender being calming and Grapefruit energizing, and so on.

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The Next Decade: An increasingly electric auto market

By Bill Sullivan

The German government hopes to get one million electric cars on the road by 2020, offering incentives for BMW and Volkswagen to get behind the push. France aims to have twice that many in operation by that same year. Carlos Ghosn, who heads up Nissan and Renault, expects 10 percent of the world’s automobiles to run on electricity before the end of the next decade.

Wait, wait, waiting for the Volt, shown here on a pre-production test drive

Is your good old fashioned gas guzzler going to be nothing more than a noisy, pollution-spewing bad memory by the time 2020 rolls around? That may be a bit overly optimistic, but it doesn’t mean we won’t see a significant move toward a more sustainable, environmentally-friendly kind of personal transportation in the years just ahead.

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Pomme Bébé delivers organic baby food

From KABC — Los Angeles

Pomme Bébé is an organic baby food store located in Newport Beach. With a team of professional chefs, Pomme Bébé peels, steams and purées wholesome fruits and vegetables making nutritious baby and toddler baby meals. For the busiest of parents, Pomme Bébé delivers nationally. By placing your order online, freshly made organic baby food will be delivered to your front door in environmentally friendly packaging.

For more information or to order online, visit: www.pommebebe.com

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Food gifts that make a difference — and they’re yummy, too

By Barbara Kessler

Food, it’s the perfect, practical holiday gift — and you can support the causes you care about with a gift of food that’s either Fair Trade, organic or comes from a shop designed to help workers gain job experience.

Here are some of our picks for the season.

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Audi’s clean diesel A3 TDI named 2010 ‘Green Car of the Year’

Audi's A3 TDI engine delivers 140 hp and a class-leading 42 mpg highway.

From Green Right Now Reports

Audi’s all-new A3 TDI, part of a new generation of clean diesel cars, won the title of 2010 Green Car of the Year yesterday at the Los Angeles Auto Show.

Ron Cogan, editor and publisher of Green Car Journal and editor of GreenCar.com, presented the award. The Audi A3 TDI was among five finalists nominated for the award, which began in 2005.

The 2010 Audi A3 TDI only began arriving at U.S. dealerships last month. Its TDI 2.0 engine delivers 140 hp and 236 lb-ft of torque, yet achieves an EPA-estimated 42 mpg highway fuel economy that is the best of any luxury car sold in America. The car achieves 50 percent better fuel economy than a comparable gasoline engine.

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