After the engineering side of Lotus has spent over a decade working on electric vehicle technology, the production side finally looks ready to take advantage of it.

Lotus CEO Michael Kimberley recently told the Financial Times, "Don't be surprised to see an electric Lotus shortly," which could appear as a concept car at the Geneva Motor Show in March.

As an Oklahoma corn farmer who is also a racecar museum owner, Brent Hajek knows all about the general perception of ethanol-based fuel.

He sees signs at gas stations that boast "no alcohol in our gas,” and he knows that a lot of people believe it doesn’t perform as well as pure gasoline.
It’s to those people that Hajek offers a challenge.

"You say it cuts your performance?” he asks. "Why don’t you go out there and see if you can go faster than we did.”

Subaru Ireland announce the introduction of the new Impreza Boxer diesel range to the Irish market

Subaru Ireland announced today the introduction of the eagerly awaited Impreza Boxer diesel range.

Using the now proven Boxer diesel the Impreza comes with a six speed manual transmission, AWD and of course the turbo two litre engine producing 150 Bhp.

The Impreza Boxer diesel range will be in Irish Dealer Showrooms from the start of this year, starting at €21,495 excluding dealer charges.

Following the report on Friday that Lotus was planning to introduce an electric car of its own, we contacted Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk for a comment.

Tesla and Lotus collaborated on development of the Roadster and Lotus builds the rolling chassis at its Hethel factory. The FT story did not come as a surprise to Musk.

Lotus apparently let Tesla know of its plans in advance and Tesla is hoping to sell some powertrain components to Lotus for the new car.

Toyota Motor Corp. is secretly developing a vehicle that will be powered solely by solar energy in an effort to turn around its struggling business with a futuristic ecological car, a top business daily reported Thursday.

The Nikkei newspaper, however, said it will be years before the planned vehicle will be available on the market. Toyota's offices were closed Thursday and officials were not immediately available for comment.

Hyundai will use the L.A. auto show in November to show its first hybrid vehicle, says John Krafcik, vice president for product development at Hyundai Motor America.

Hyundai has already said it plans to start selling an Elantra in Korea in July 2009 as the automaker’s first LPG-electric hybrid vehicle. That will make it the first hybrid powered by “liquid petroleum gas” (or just plain old gas!) and the first to use what it calls “advanced lithium polymer” or Li-Poly batteries.

Edison Mayor Jun Choi now drives a hybrid Ford Escape -- one of the 26 fuel-efficient vehicles the township bought for its fleet, which touts more hybrids than any other Middlesex County town.

Sanyo, the Japanese electronics giant, said today that it is in talks with six car makers about the supply of batteries for fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles — one of few growth areas in the automotive industry.

A HYBRID car will give students studying motor vehicle training programmes at Grantham College the chance to learn more about the environmentally-friendly vehicles.

ELECTRIC and hybrid cars, long heralded as saviours of a greener future, are now being labelled as potential killers.

Their near-to-silent running has been identified as a risk to pedestrians, children, cyclists and blind people who do not hear them approaching.

The Pedestrian Council of Australia has called for immediate changes to the Australian Design Rules to set a minimum noise for the vehicles. Similar standards are being considered in the US.