London Unveils Sleek Zero-Emission Double Decker Buses

Recently the London Transportation Department held a contest to redesign the iconic Double Decker bus, and we’re excited to announce the winning entry by renowned architects Foster + Partners! They’ve created a zero-emissions, super accessible, and environmentally innovative double decker bus that heralds a new era of sustainable public transportation for London.

 London Unveils Sleek Zero-Emission Double Decker Buses

It's refreshing to see modern design embracing classic styles and familiar heritages. What would London be without the red double decker buses? Does this mean we might see a resurgence of the trolley car in San Francisco? I could see a push to make trolley cars that embrace the nostalgia of old San Francisco with the latest green technology.

Of course, this leads the discussion to the bigger question. What is the future of rail service in the United States? If we pumped as much money into high speed rail as we have to the airline industry, we could be the world leader in mass transit and a model of how to tackle greenhouse gasses. The measure of success could be measured by the number of vehicles you remove from the road in a day. Imagine how much you could reduce the number of long haul trucks with a dedicated high speed freight rail system.

The new rail service could be powered by alternative energy sources placed along the routes. The power options could be decided by local folks at the state level. If NY wants to build a nuclear power plant for their share of the system. That's great. If California wanted to use solar and Pennsylvania wanted to use gas or clean coal, more power to them. Pun intended...

We can't let ourselves be lulled into thinking the problem has been solved because the price of gas is lower. This whole rise and fall should be a reminder to us all just how dependent we are on fossil fuels. If we had headed the warnings from the last energy crisis in the 70's, we'd be a lot better off. As I recall, we heard back then that the technology was 15 to 20 years away and we would be less dependent on oil. Here we are 30 years later and we're hearing the same old crap.

New "People's Car" Gets 235 MPG!

Volkswagen's had its super-thrifty One-Liter Car concept vehicle -- so named because that's how much fuel it needs to go 100 kilometers -- stashed away for six years. The body's made of carbon fiber to minimize weight (the entire car weighs just 660 pounds) and company execs didn't expect the material to become cheap enough to produce the car until 2012. But VW's decided to build the car two years ahead of schedule.

According to Britain's Car magazine, VW has approved a plan to build a limited number of One-Liters in 2010. They'll probably be built in the company's prototype shop, which has the capacity to build as many as 1,000 per year. That's not a lot, but it's enough to help VW get a lot of attention while showing how much light weight and an efficient engine can achieve.

VW unveiled the slick two-seater concept six years ago at a stockholder's meeting in Hamburg. To prove it was a real car, Chairman Ferdinand Piech personally drove it from Wolfsburg to Hamburg. At the time, he said the car could see production when the cost of its carbon monocoque dropped from 35,000 Euros (about $55,000) to 5,000 Euros (about $8,000) -- something he figured would happen in 2012. With carbon fiber being used in everything from airliners to laptops these days, VW's apparently decided the cost is competitive enough to build at least a few hundred One-Liters.

Laugh at High Gas Prices With a 235-MPG VW

This is probably only the tip of the iceberg of supressed technology. Since the beginning of the automotive revolution, the automakers have been gobbling up any technolgy that would offer a major improvement to the consumer. The general view is that radical change hurts the bottom line. They would argue that the cost of manufacturing retooling would cost too much or that the technology would raise the price of the car to the consumer. In reality, many of the innovations in increasing fuel milage were purchased and shelved to protect the industry and their closely related breatheren in the oil industry. That's right, the greedy bastards in the auto industry have been screwing us for years! What a shocker....

In the movie "Tucker- The Man and His Dream", Jeff Bridges plays real-life automobile inventor/entrepeneur Preston Tucker. Tucker started his own auto company and in 1948, he built a car that made Detroit very nervous. Tucker had added things like seat belts and safety glass that the Big Three didn't offer. In fact they deemed them expensive and unnecessary items. In true DeLorean fashion (or perhaps vice-versa) the big three created a scandal and misinformation campaign that ended up bankrupting the man and his company.

There a million other stories like this out there, but we've just never heard about them. You can bet that critical technology that would help us end our oil dependance is sitting gathering dust on a shelf somewhere. I would be willing to bet that the technology exists today to bring an affordable vehicle to market that would run on no petroleum at all. They're just betting that they haven't milked every last penny out of oil yet.