Free Republic

While most ebikes on the road today will come with a battery pack, some are riding down the hydrogen fuel-cell cycle path. HydroRide not only has fuel-cell ebikes available, but also a compact refill station to top up H2 canisters. The global ebike market is estimated to grow in value to almost US$120 billion by 2030, and it's not surprising. Whether commuting or leisure riding, pedal-assist bikes take some of the strain out of the journey while also opening up routes for older riders. The vast majority of ebikes on the street roll with Li-ion batteries, but they can spend...

At the Los Angeles Auto Show, Honda today unveiled the FCX Clarity, a production hydrogen fuel cell vehicle based on the FCX Concept. Honda will lease the vehicle to customers in selected areas of Southern California beginning in summer 2008. The lease will be three years long, with a monthly cost of $600 per month, including service, maintenance, and collision insurance. Customers will be able to drop off their vehicles at a Honda dealership for service, and Honda will then transport the vehicles to a dedicated service facility. Honda declined to disclose the amount of FCX Clarity vehicles that...

The EV1 may be dead and buried, but the electric car that once roamed California freeways is still haunting General Motors Corp. The Detroit auto giant is the reluctant "star" of the biting documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" which chronicles one fateful slice of California's effort to force automakers to develop cleaner vehicles for the state's smog-afflicted residents. The film, which opened in limited release last month, takes aim at several major automakers including Ford Motor Co., Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. But GM receives by far the worst bashing for its decision to terminate the EV1...

I love going to Apple's website and watch the trailers for upcoming films. The other day, I ran across one for a documentary that's opening June 30th called Who Killed the Electric Car? According to the trailer, GM came out with what would hopefully become a commercially viable electric car in 1996. But after a few years, it pretty much disappeared, never to be heard from again. No surprise, the trailer flat-out accuses the oil companies and George W. Bush (is there anything this man isn't guilty of in the minds of liberals?) of quashing the electric car in the...

US vehicles would require a million wind turbines, economists claim. Wind power might be green, but it is unlikely to power the hydrogen revolution. Converting every vehicle in the United States to hydrogen power would demand so much electricity that the country would need enough wind turbines to cover half of California or 1,000 extra nuclear power stations. So concludes a British economist, whose calculation is intended to highlight the difficulties of achieving a truly green hydrogen economy. "This calculation is useful to make people realize what an enormous problem we face," says Andrew Oswald, an economist from the University...