By Scott Doggett, Contributor Ask a Tesla Roadster owner why he drives one and invariably you'll be told it's for the environment. Mother Nature, you think. Climate change. Polar bears. And that's half true. Maybe even three-quarters true. But drive a Tesla Roadster – especially the 2010 Tesla Roadster Sport – and you soon learn about the other environment, the one few motorists know. Here are a few examples of what that environment looks like: In the next lane, at a stoplight on a road that skirts Stanford University, a smirking Corvette ZR1 owner revs his otherworldly 638-horsepower 7.0-liter V8. You twist the key in your ignition forward an eighth of a turn, which instantly switches the drive mode from Standard to Performance. The traffic signal changes, you and the 'Vette driver floor it. Three seconds later the powerful Chevrolet is occupying space in your rear-view mirror. Traction-control limitations. The Chevy salesman probably forgot to mention them to the now-frowning ZR1 owner. Then there's the blue Infiniti G37 Sport 6MT with the close-ratio six-speed manual transmission and the short-throw shifter, one lane over on the 101 Freeway approaching San Francisco, Candlestick Park on the right. He's playful, as are you, and just like the Corvette driver soon he, too, is a shrinking part of the landscape behind you despite his best efforts to outpace and then just keep up. And then there's the Miata owner, poor thing, taking a sweeping onramp as quickly as possible, white…

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2010 Tesla Roadster Sport Gives Driver More Torque for His Environmental Causes

The fleet of new cars and trucks sold to U.S. consumers averaged 21 miles per gallon in the 2008 model year, a modest increase over the previous year, with Honda and Hyundai having the most fuel-efficient fleets in America, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported Friday. New vehicle fuel efficiency improved 2 percent in 2008 from 20.6 mpg for the 2007 model year. The government projected it will improve slightly to 21.1 mpg in the 2009 model year. The EPA figures are based on real-world estimates for city and highway mileage found on window stickers at dealer showrooms, instead of mileage values developed through laboratory testing. Honda Motor Co. led the industry in 2008 with 23.9 mpg, followed by Hyundai Motor Co. and its affiliate Kia Motors Corp. with 23.7 mpg, and Toyota Motor Corp. with 22.8 mpg. Volkswagen AG's fleet averaged 22.3 mpg, followed by Nissan Motor Co. with 21.9 and BMW AG with 21.2. General Motors Co. led U.S. automakers with 19.7 mpg, followed by Ford Motor Co. with 19.4 and Chrysler Group LLC with 19.3. The EPA projects Ford will increase its fuel efficiency by more than 1 mpg in the 2009 model year and overtake GM.

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EPA: U.S. Fleet of 2009 Cars, Trucks Only Slightly More Efficient Than 2008 Models

BMW's announcement this week that its ActiveHybrid X6 crossover utility vehicle will carry a U.S. sticker price of nearly $90,000 was disappointing, but even more disappointing is the fact that the model isn't alone among hybrids priced well out of reach of most people. Toyota offers a Lexus LS 600h L for $107,300. The 7-Series Hybrid from BMW will surely be a six-figure car when it becomes available this spring. The Cadillac Escalade Hybrid starts at $73,425. The list is frustratingly long. Our hawk-eyed colleagues at Edmunds' AutoObserver.com picked up on the trend and wrote about it in a piece that's as well written as it is informative. We encourage you to use your turn signal, pull to the side of the road and give it a read

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Another High-Priced Hybrid Won’t Do Much to Hybridize the Automotive Market

The California agency that sets the American standard for automotive emissions today unveiled a much-improved Website that helps consumers choose the least polluting cars on the market. ———- Click on art to enlarge. ———- The California Air Resources Board Website, using information collected for vehicle certification in the golden state, offers a practical and easy to use system that ranks vehicles according to their emission characteristics and provides tools to compare models. The site allows visitors to view models by technology/fuel type, smog score, global-warming score and engine family. And there's a very smart tool that, with a click of your mouse, allows you to view all the tax incentives available for a particular model. Last year, the agency adopted a state regulation requiring automakers to affix the Environmental Performance Label to California showroom models that convey the vehicle's smog and greenhouse-gas emissions. The simply illustrated graphic has two rankings, from one to 10, that depict vehicle emissions. The higher the

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California Launches Online Buying Guide That Rates Vehicles by Greenness

Idea Also Is Kicking Around in U.S, at State and Federal Levels It's been tested in Oregon, pondered in California, Florida, Maine and several other states, applauded in D.C. by the House Transportation Committee, and now pay-per-mile vehicle taxing is becoming a national reality – in the Netherlands. Yup, the Dutch government has approved a plan to drop vehicle sales and registration taxes and replace them with a tax on every mile – or kilometer, in this case – a car or truck is driven. The tax also would be variable, based on a vehicle's fuel efficiency and even the time of day the driving takes place. The…

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Dutch Are First to Adopt Pay-Per-Mile Driving Taxes to Cut CO2, Reduce Oil Use

BMW announced today that its U.S.-bound 2010 ActiveHybrid X6 crossover utility vehicle will carry a base price of $89,725 and reach American showrooms early next month on the heels of its North American debut at the Los Angeles Auto Show . The maker-described “one-of-a-kind Sports Active Coupe” (yes, BMW calls its

Concern among some taxpayer and environmental groups that Chrysler's recent decision to downplay development of fuel-efficient electric vehicles violated a pledge used to gain federal bailout funds are unfounded, an administration official says. ———- Chrysler, which based part of its federal bailout on promised development of electric vehicles such as this “EcoVoyager” concept, has pulled way back on electrification plans since emerging from bankruptcy. ——— “We obviously would be very happy if Chrysler and GM were making lots and lots of high mileage cars [but] it's not a prerequisite. It's not an obligation” of the bankruptcy bailout funding, auto industry restructuring task force chief Ron Bloom said

Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Corp. has unveiled its first self-developed electric vehicle, joining domestic rivals to tap potential demand for clean-energy cars. The zero-emissions model, known as the BE701, is capable of going 120 miles between charges and has a top speed of 100 miles an hour, BAIC said in a statement over the weekend. The company did not provide a timetable for mass production of the plug-in BE701. BAIC reps disclosed details of a new clean-energy-vehicle development and manufacturing facility it had just set up, involving total investment of $334 million. The funding would come from the government and other sources, the statement said without elaborating. The facility, just outside Beijing, will be able to make 50,000 electric vehicles and 100,000 hybrid models, it said but did not specify the timetable. BAIC, a partner of Daimler AG, meanwhile, has set up a company focused on clean-energy vehicles only. It has said it expects to make 20,000-40,000 vehicles a year starting in 2011. Other domestic automakers, such as Chery Automobile and BYD Co., are also investing in “green” cars. Chery unveiled in February its self-made electric car, the S19, which it said was capable of going 75 miles between charges and has a top speed of 75 mph. BYD Auto, a subsidiary of the Hong Kong-listed rechargeable battery maker, launched its plug-in hybrid car, the F3DM, in China late last year. Additionally, BYD has announced plans to ship the e6, an all-electric crossover, to the United States next year. That vehicle go reportedly go 250 miles per

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BAIC Unveils Electric Sedan, Announces Investment of $334 Million in EV Factory

Edmunds.com, parent of AutoObserver , late last week submitted a recommendation to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation to make fuel-economy information on new-vehicle window stickers more useful by shifting to a cost-of-energy figure rather than today's emphasized miles-per-gallon numbers.

Pricing has not been set yet on Nissan's Leaf electric car ( pictured ), which will see limited distribution next year, but the automaker's top marketing executive of North America told us today that the monthly cost to the consumer should be equivalent to the monthly cost of a fully loaded Honda Civic plus its fuel. That means the purchase price (about $17,500) or monthly payment for a high-end Civic plus the cost of the gasoline it would need to cover 1,200 miles (at 30 MPG and $3/gallon, about $120), said Brian Carolin, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Nissan North America. Although Nissan's global plan is to sell the zero-emissions car without battery and to lease the battery pack to the car buyer at a cost roughly equal to the $120 calculated above, both Carolin and Mark Perry, Nissan's director of product planning and advanced technology strategy for North America, told GreenCarAdvisor that Nissan has not yet decided how to price the package in the U.S. “We may sell the car and battery together, we may lease it as a package, or we may

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Monthly Cost of Leaf Electric Car Will Equal That of Fully Loaded Civic, Nissan Says