Tesla Model S Price Increase Coming; Honda Accord PHEV Now Most Efficient PHEV On Market; Beautiful Japanese Electric Chopper (+ More Clean Transport News)

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Here are some more big clean transport stories from the past week or so for you:

Bikes & Motorbikes

Bicycle Culture By Design: “Mikael Colville-Andersen is a world-leading urban planning / transportation planning consultant. His focus is on human-powered transport, especially the bicycle, and humanizing cities (at least, that’s how I would summarize it). His blog, Copenhagenize, is one of the few urban planning blogs I follow, and I am pretty much always eager to check out his new posts. Recently, he was a speaker at a TEDx conference in Germany. Of course, it was an interesting presentation and I think well worth a watch.” (Commentary on the video via the link above.)

Lighted Bike Safety Zone Created With Bike Light Concept: Bike lights are great, but they’re rather small and can sometimes be easily missed. Wouldn’t it be great if the lights gave a better message to drivers to watch out and give the biker his or her deserved space? Heck yeah!

We Can Dream: Above’s a cool idea/image I recently ran across on reddit. We can dream….

NextBike bike-sharing station in the Wrocław city center. (Credit: Zachary Shahan)

Seven Ways to Make Bike-Share More Accessible: “Bike-sharing has been one of the most rapidly spreading transportation innovations in American cities over the past few years; scarcely a month goes by without a new city announcing its intentions to develop a system. And with good reason: Bike-share doesn’t cost much to install and operate, and it’s healthy — for cities and people…. But one cloud looming over this happy development is that not all residents have benefited equally from bike-share, which has tended to generate a disproportionately affluent ridership.”

Electric Delivery Bike/Trike From Matra: “Electric bikes have taken off a bit… as I predicted (about 5 years ago) they would. While I think normal bikes must be better for people in 90-99% of cases, I do think electric bikes are pretty cool and have their place. One place electric bikes might make a good fit is as delivery vehicles.”

The Elf: “Here comes the cleanest, most efficient vehicle on the planet. The ELF is a solar/pedal hybrid vehicle suitable for commuting, deliveries, and other local transportation needs. This three-wheeled electric assist velomobile fills the niche between a bicycle and a car and offers advantages over both.”

Credit: Bicitoro
Credit: Badger Gears

10 Great Examples of Winter-Friendly Bike Gear: “Fair weather cyclists be warned: Winter cycling gear here is so great you may be tempted to get your bike out of winter hibernation. Or how about the perfect holiday gift?”

An Electric Chopper Straight Out Of Japan: “With shows like American Chopper highlighting just how much time, money, and effort goes into the highly-customized motorcycles with long handlebars and low ground clearance. Yet as American as choppers may seem, over in Japan choppers are even more popular. Well-known custom shop Shiun Craft Works recently rolled out an all-electric chopper that is as green as it is awesome.”

Electric Cars

Tesla Increases Model S Price To $59,900: “While many of us seeing an automobile price increase might get critical and spiteful. However, a little logical analysis (by Tesla) shows that the price increase is actually less than it ‘should’ be….”

GM Opens Research Center In China, Unveils Sail Springo EV At China Auto Show: “GM made a couple of big EV announcements in the past couple weeks. The automobile giant announced on Thursday that it had opened a global research center in China. The research center’s focus is on electric vehicles…. About a week before the above announcement, GM unveiled the Sail Springo EV at the Guangzhou Auto Show in China. This is the first EV developed by Shanghai General Motors.”

2014 Honda Accord Plug-in Hybrid Now Most Efficient Plug-In Hybrid On The Market, 115 MPGe: “In October, we noted that the Ford C-Max Energi Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) had become the most fuel-efficient PHEV on the market. It has a combined rating of 100 MPGe. Well, the 2014 Honda Accord PHEV has just trounced that, with an EPA rating of 115 MPGe. (Note that the popular and trendsetting Chevy Volt has a 98 MPGe rating, and the Prius Plug-In landed a rating of 95 MPGe.)”

Ford: November Should Be Best Hybrid Month To Date, Market Share Increases 5x In One Year: “It’s no secret: electric vehicle (including hybrid electric vehicle) sales are expected to rise a ton in the coming years. So, we can expect to see many record-breaking months, but I certainly haven’t gotten tired of them yet, and the increases noted by Ford below are pretty impressive.”

car2go Finishes 1st Year Of EV Carsharing In San Diego, Adds 30 Charging Stations: “car2go (which is part of Daimler North America Corporation) has just finished its first full year in San Diego (its home base). car2go is North America’s first all-electric carsharing service.”

Ford’s New Hybrids Falling Far Short Of MPG Expectations: “As the only American automaker to avoid the much maligned government auto bailout, Ford has found itself in a strong position to gain market share and credibility with consumers. So far, Ford has done a great job with arguably its strongest product lineup ever…but nothing good can last. There’s a bit of trouble in paradise over the real-world fuel economy of the Ford C-Max Hybrid and 2013 Ford Fusion Hybrid, which are delivering less-than-expected mpg numbers for many consumers and reviewers.”

Trains, Smart Growth, & Helicopters(?)

VYCON Wins $3.6 Million Contract To Capture Braking Energy Of Trains With High-Speed Flywheel Technology: “Electric cars aren’t the only electric vehicles out there. And, arguably, electric trains are a whole ‘nother level of awesome. While still not the norm, capturing the braking energy of trains and turning it back into electricity has been growing in popularity. The latest news along these lines is that VYCON (‘designer and manufacturer of environmentally friendly, high-speed energy storage flywheel systems’), to do just that, ‘has been awarded a $3.6 million contract by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) to install a Wayside Energy Storage Substation (WESS) at the L.A. Metro Red Line Westlake / MacArthur Park Station.'”

Credit: San Diego Chapter of the American Planning Association

EPA Honors 7 Outstanding Community Sustainability Projects: “[Last week], the US Environmental Protection Agency announced seven winners of its 2012 National Awards for Smart Growth Achievement. As I have noted in the past, the smart growth awards are given for creative, outstanding initiatives that protect the health and the environment of our communities while also strengthening local economies.”

NoOpe! Do Not Want: Single-seat Electric Helicopter (w/ video): “There are lots of things that might seem dangerous to people, that just aren’t. Riding a bike through city traffic, for example, can be perfectly safe if you’re not an idiot and you obey the traffic laws and wear a helmet. Motorcycles and scooters are the same way – I’ve never heard of anyone dying on a motorcycle in high-visibility clothing with a full face helmet and proper body armor. It doesn’t happen. Shark diving? Even that might seem safe to someone. This single-seat electric helicopter?… No. Thank. You.”


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Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

Zachary Shahan has 7324 posts and counting. See all posts by Zachary Shahan