If Green Cars are only as Good as the Charging Options Available...

Electric cars happen to be the cleanest and greenest cars there are. As enthusiastic as people seem about them, they seem to not entirely be aware of how the transition to green cars won't come about just because manufacturers make cool new car models. Electric cars, to make any sense, need public charging stations - infrastructure that anyone can plug into for a quick charge while on a run. And there are all kinds of ideas in place that plan to bring this infrastructure about.

The Tennessee Valley Authority has a new kind of charging station prototype out in Knoxville - called the TVA Smart Station Initiative. The concept happens to be a pretty interesting one. You take your car to one of these charging stations and you see what looks like a huge carport - big enough to park several cars in. The top of the shade is actually a huge field of solar panels. Of course, since green cars need a considerable amount of power draw, a set of solar panels the size of six cars will never be able to actually charge six cars. They will only be able to supply a small fraction of the power needed.

The idea is that most cars that come by to get charged can get their power directly off the grid; but the solar panels, that will produce electricity whether or not there are cars charging at the station, will be feeding the grid for as long as there is sunlight. It happens to be a cute way in which to offset the kind of power that these cars draw. To make the power available at these charging stations extra cheap, there is a battery pack at each charging port that charges up on cheap power in the middle of the night when off-peak rates apply. Of course, each charging station costs hundreds of thousands of dollars; and cheap electricity is certainly not going to make enough of a profit for anyone. These are just experimental projects.

Now assuming that owners of green cars would be willing to actually plug their cars in and wait around for at least a half hour to be able to get a useful charge, there are other intriguing ideas out there as well. A new Silicon Valley startup with an iPhone app called PlugShare wonders if all this expense put into the building of charging stations could really be a bit unnecessary. Since every home has 117 V power, they wonder if they can get people to set up a little charging station in their driveways (which would amount to little more than a $1 power outlet) and sell power to anyone with an electric car who wishes to plug in. Owners of electric cars could just look up on their PlugShare app where they could find the nearest home with power outlets to share, and then drive over to plug in.

People who allow you to share their power outlets won't really be spending much - just about 15 cents an hour. If they want to charge a driver for it, they could do so.

If you're trying to go Green Cars that use Hybrid Technologies can be a Bad Idea

When the hybrid car revolution started out, people just took these cars on face value. If you wanted to go green, cars that used hybrid technology were obviously the way to go - they were specifically engineered to use gas more frugally. What was not to like about them? What could be better than the 40 mpg that the Prius was badged for? Well, in all kinds of ways, if you're trying to go green, cars that use hybrid technologies can be a bad idea.

We aren't really talking about inefficient hybrids like the Nissan Altima Hybrid or the Camry Hybrid either. The Prius, the granddaddy of them all, while it does actually deliver 40 mpg, only does that driving in a crowded city. On the highway, it's a completely different story.

Now this is the complete opposite of what it is with every other regular car. With any ordinary car, you get the best mpg ratings on the highway where the car can keep going smoothly without hindrance. In the city, as the engine in any regular car needs to keep working at a high basic RPM just to keep working, it needs to waste a lot of gas. On the Prius or any hybrid though, in stop-and-go traffic, the electric motor either takes over completely or it assists the gas engine all the time. In city traffic, the Prius and other hybrids like it are definitely very efficient.  On the highway on the other hand, they get no assistance from their puny electric motors and they have to depend entirely on their gasoline engines. And they become less efficient than your standard gas powered modern car. The Prius on the highway is far less efficient than a Corolla.

If you want to go green, cars that use hybrid technology are not a no-brainer. You have to think long and hard about what kind of use you'll put your car to. Now why on earth is spectacular technology like the hybrid system used on the Prius not good for the highway? Well, to begin with, a hybrid engine is only any use at very low speeds. At normal speeds, the electric motor just doesn't kick in. The electric motor and the big fat battery pack do sit in the car all the time though. And those highway speeds, all that is just so much dead weight that isn't good for anything. Your internal combustion engine has to work that much harder to lug all that dead weight around on the highway. Of course, it's going to be less efficient.

Hybrids make great sense for taxis and town buses that putter about town at low speeds stopping and starting all the time. They make no sense whatsoever for people who need to travel on freeways and highways regularly. Not to mention, if your reason for choosing a hybrid is that you wish to save the environment, hybrids really aren't the way to go. Those batteries are an environmental hazard. Their manufacture requires nickel that comes from a terrbly environmentally unfriendly mining process. And batteries are a nightmare to dispose of once you're done with them in eight years.

The Trend Future Cars will Take - Talking to one Another

People have certainly been talking about the flying car for long enough. There was a segment in Entertainment Tonight about 10 years ago about how the designers of the flying car were taking orders and Michael Jackson and Jay Leno had put their names down for one. People find it unreasonably entertaining to speculate on the kind of cars we might have in the future. The flying car isn't fantasy of course; that car is almost certainly going to be here soon. But what else are the designers of future cars doing? What other kinds of wondrous transportation solutions are we going to have over the next 10 years, short of a garbage-powered time-traveling DeLorean? If the cars of the future as speculated upon by Steven Spielberg in AI and by Paul Verhoeven in Total Recall didn't really float your boat, take a look at these models that follow. You'll find that real car makers really are more creative than movie prop car makers. And better still, these cars really are slated to hit showrooms sometime over the next 10 years.

A lot of the change that's coming over the next decade, as you might expect, will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. One of the trends you're likely to see in future cars is that hybrids and electrics are going to go mainstream. Ferrari, Porsche and Rolls-Royce are developing their own hybrids and battery powered cars; manufacturers do consider hybrid technology to be rather awkward and inelegant - the weight of two separate propulsion systems and power sources on one car can be rather bothersome. But there is very little choice that they have. They need to comply with the government's strict new emission norms. But future cars aren't merely going to be about the greenness. They are also going to be about how their driven.

Google has already been in the news about how they've successfully test-driven over 100,000 miles in California, an automatic car driving system that can completely handle everyday roads and traffic. While this system won't be displacing drivers anytime soon, a lot of the abilities that they've demonstrated should spin off into some important advances in car safety. One thing cars will do soon is communicate with one another to help drivers avoid areas with poor traffic conditions. Future cars are not going to be isolated systems like they are today; they could be like smartphones - completely connected and always talking to one another to smoothe traffic situations.

Case in point, is a car from GM that kind of looks like a blown-up plastic toy. It's the GM Electric Networked Vehicle. This little futuristic pod car is armed to the teeth with sensors and a radars to help it park itself, be aware of other vehicles on the street, and so on. And oh, it's completely clean - it's battery-driven. Remember when Mercedes had a subcompact hatchback called the A-Class? Well, they're bringing it back in about two years; and this time, it's going to have a radars all over the place to keep you safe from accidents.

The exciting part of course is that these cars aren't just speculation.

How Hybrid Cars Work without being Plugged In

It can surprise people how a car technology can go from completely new and unfamiliar to hot stuff in a mere 10 years; but that's exactly what's happened with hybrid cars. This is a technology that's just taken over the car industry really quickly. In fact, it's been so quick that many people are still unfamiliar with how hybrid cars work really. They do get that there is a battery in there that drives the wheels at times. What they don't get is, how a hybrid can have batteries that are charged up enough to actually move the car when the car doesn't get plugged in at all. Add to this the advertising that's surrounded the new plug-in Prius that's planned for next year, and some people feel really lost in the whole hybrid jungle. Let's set the record straight now, over how hybrid cars work.

Right now, in 2011, there are almost no hybrid cars around that you would need to plug into an outlet. The reality may be a bit more complicated than that, but this should be the nice working assumption. A hybrid car, as you probably know, is basically a vehicle that primarily runs on your regular gasoline engine. What makes it more fuel-efficient than the other regular cars is the fact that it also has a large electric motor powered by a large battery pack.

Take a look at your regular car; you notice that that engine RPM meter is always running at about 1,000 RPM even if your car is at a complete standstill. Start moving ever so slowly - at about 10 miles an hour, and your engine is still plodding along at 1,000 RPM. Go at 25 mph, and your engine barely registers any difference - spinning at about 1,200 RPM. One thing’s pretty clear with a regular gasoline engine - when you're moving at low speeds, the speed at which the engine runs pretty much has nothing to do with the speed at which the wheels spin.

The thing is, all gasoline engines need to tick over at a minimum speed to keep from stalling and shutting down altogether. It would be nice if you could use an engine ticking over at 1,000 RPM for moving the vehicle along at the right speed. But when you're stuck in traffic or something, there's pretty much nothing you can do to use all that engine power.

Hybrid car engine designers know that with a regular gasoline engine, it's either "spin at 1,000 RPM or shut down altogether". There's no in-between. They chose to shut it down altogether when you wish to go at slow speeds. They felt that an electric motor would be far better suited to slow speeds. Electric motors don't have to spin at a minimum speed - they can spin as slowly as you want. So they decided to put an electric motor in their cars and install computers in there to judge how fast you want to go and then to let the motor or the gasoline engine take over smoothly from each other. This way, they have two kinds of propulsion systems in one car, each one uniquely suited to a different purpose and speed.

But you're reading this article to find out how hybrid cars work on batteries when you don't need to plug them in. Actually, this is a question that even some hybrid car dealers find a bit confusing. The answer is simple - those batteries get charged the same way the battery in a regular car gets charged - the car’s charging system does the job. When the engine runs, it spins the charger, generates current and charges the batteries.

Why Buy Certified Pre Owned Cars if they are more Expensive?

We certainly live in strange times today. Buying used in some cases today, you could end up paying more for your car than you would if you bought new. You can certainly understand how that might be true for a fuel-efficient car like the Prius that's in short supply in the new car market. But why would a massive SUV like the Audi Q5 or the Toyota Venza cost more on the used market than in new car dealerships? Apparently, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Higher demand for low priced used cars has sent prices up there. And lower demand in the new car market has resulted in lower prices there. Unfortunately, the two markets aren't speaking to each other that they would know anything about what the other was doing. And as for certified pre-owned cars there are some interesting things going on there as well.

There's a lot to recommend certified pre-owned cars. They go through each used car with a tooth comb and give you a great new car-like warranty. If peace of mind is what you are looking for a car purchase, you couldn't do any better.

The warranty does cost money though. Certified pre-owned cars usually end up costing about $2000 more than regular used cars. Add to that and the fact that used cars are more expensive to finance, and most of the time, there is practically no difference between that and buying a new car. If you wanted to buy a certified pre-owned 2009 Toyota Tundra, you would actually pay $3000 more for it than if you went and bought a new car. One reason this upside down situation exists is that the new car comes with a big cash incentive. But if it weren't for that, the used car would still be more expensive.

There are lots of terrible deals on certified pre-owned cars out there today. All of these cars are great value in reliability and quality. They're just not good value for money when you can get a new car for less.

Consider the Toyota Land Cruiser. These aren't in demand these days. However, since they haven’t been selling well for many years now, there aren't that many on the used car market. And that sends prices up -- even if it makes them even less desirable. What really does it for the used Land Cruiser market is that if you bought a new one, it would only cost you only $1000 more than a two-year-old model. Go figure.

You could say this for all kinds of cars. With the quirky Nissan Cube and the tiny Nissan Versa, if you buy this year’s models, they cost exactly the same as the 2009 models. Depending on market forces sometimes….