Recent Gas News/GasBuddy Blog

the auto blog -- Hydrogen faces a number of challenges when it comes to supplanting gasoline as the world's transportation fuel of choice, one of the largest of which was underscored by two small explosions at a Rochester, New York refueling station yesterday. According to reports, two people were injured when a spark ignited the fuel during a tank exchange. Praxair driver Robert Scruggs was transported to Strong Hospital with second-degree burns to his hands and face as a result of the incident, and a female Burger King employee was treated for ear pain in connection with the explosions.
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Medill Reports -- Drivers pay extra to pump midgrade or premium gas into their tanks nearly 15 percent of the time, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

No figures track the exact number of people who fill regular tanks with premium gas for a perceived performance bump. But as the country increasingly looks for big ways to conserve energy, smaller targets also beckon. Shifting gears away from premium gasoline is an obvious move.

Patrick Kelly — a policy adviser at the American Petroleum Group, the country’s largest trade association for producers of oil and natural gas — offers a crash course in “Gasoline 101,” explaining what gasoline octane means, what makes premium gas “premium,” and whether overusing it takes an added toll on the environment.  (go to article)

Calgary Herald -- A campaign to boycott Alberta-sourced gasoline has gained momentum after trendy clothing manufacturers and a major U.S. drugstore chain announced they would be avoiding oilsands-related fuels.

Clothiers The Gap, Timberland and Levi Strauss, as well as Walgreens, have joined a growing list of corporations choosing to avoid using gasoline refined from Canadian bitumen, according to reports Friday.

The move to less carbon-intensive fuels was sparked by an ongoing campaign by San Fransisco-based environmental group Forest Ethics, said Walgreens spokeswoman Tiff ani Washington.

"We have had very little exposure to tarsands fuels to start with, so it was a simple process," Washington told the Herald.

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Sympatico -- The green vehicle revolution is well and truly underway. There's just one problem: it means a whole new category of vehicles with a new set of technologies and terminologies (what the heck is an E-REV anyway?) for Canadians to get their collective noggins around.
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To help out, we've created this short guide to sussing out the differences between three of segments all-star vehicle: the Toyota Prius (a Full-Hybrid; FH) on sale now, and the coming Chevrolet Volt (an Extended-Range Electric Vehicle; E-REV) and Nissan Leaf (a purely Electric Vehicle; EV). Surprisingly, they're all compact-to-midsize hatchback, but take their own green-hued road from there.
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Reuters -- (Reuters) - Canadian developers are plotting a small revolution in the still-tiny market for electric cars, with a concept vehicle made from hemp set to debut at a specialized auto show next month.

The four-seat car, called the Kestrel, has an outer shell of a hemp-based composite, which developers say is lighter than glass fiber and more resilient than steel. It will debut at the EV (Electric Vehicles) tradeshow in Vancouver.

"The first vehicle comes out next year, and it will take four to five years for it to take off, but we hope that by that point electric vehicles will no longer be an 'alternative option'," said Nathan Armstrong, director of development firm Motive Industries, a small Calgary-based company that's looking at new options for the automotive sector.

The global el  (go to article)

Reuters -- (Reuters) - BP Plc aims to retrieve a failed blowout preventer from its ruptured Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico Tuesday or Wednesday next week, the top U.S. official overseeing the spill response said on Friday.

The failure of the blowout preventer set off the world's worst offshore oil spill and it will be critical evidence in criminal and civil investigations into the cause of the April 20 explosion that killed 11 men on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

Efforts to remove pieces of a drill pipe inside the blowout preventer -- a giant stack of pipes and valves -- have failed this week so the company will move on to recovering the blowout preventer whether or not pipe remnants remain stuck inside, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said at a briefing in Washington.

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CNN -- London, England (CNN) -- The oceans have become so depleted by over-fishing, pollution and climate change that they can only be saved by a large global network of reserves, according to a growing consensus among marine scientists.

Campaigners say that sea life -- particularly at the top of the food chain -- is suffering to such an extent that there will eventually be no fish left if action drastic action is not taken to protect the oceans.

More than 70 percent of the world is covered by oceans. There are currently more than 4,000 marine protected areas covering just over 1 percent of the oceans, but the vast majority of reserves have only limited protection.
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CNN -- (CNN) -- In rural communities of Africa -- where more than 95 percent of homes have no access to electricity -- solar energy has the power to transform lives.

Globally, 1.5 billion people, one quarter of the world's population, live without electricity, according to a United Nations report.

Those who can afford any power at all spend large proportions of their income on kerosene for lamps or travel to larger towns to charge their batteries several times a week.

Burning kerosene contributes to indoor air pollution, which is estimated to kill 1.6 million people each year. Kerosene lamps also lead to fires that cause severe burns and deaths.

Solar energy saves families money as well as allowing children to study in the evenings and giving families access to information through rad  (go to article)

nytimes.com -- Federal regulators are nearing final approval of what would be the largest solar power plant in the world, a milestone that sets a new standard for the industry and marks a major advancement in the Obama administration's efforts to expand renewable energy production nationwide.

The Bureau of Land Management has issued a final environmental impact statement (EIS) for the Blythe Solar Power Project in southeast California. When fully operational, the solar thermal power plant would have the capacity to produce 1,000 megawatts of electricity -- enough to power roughly 800,000 homes.

The final EIS, which is considered the last federal regulatory hurdle before a record of decision authorizing construction, is open for public comment through Sept. 18. The California Energy Commission, whi  (go to article)

New York Times -- HOUSTON — More than four months after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, there appears to be no single smoking gun that implicates one person or company in the disaster. Instead, several missteps and oversights by the crew are being explored by federal investigators as possible triggers of the emergency.

By Friday, nearly all of the main witnesses, from roustabouts to senior vice presidents, had testified before a federal panel that is drafting a report about the lessons learned from the catastrophe, which killed 11 workers. The 75 witnesses had been grilled by an armada of lawyers and government experts about complex engineering procedures and pressed about yellow pod solenoid failures and lower marine riser packages. But the government has released no conclusions, and many questio  (go to article)

Bloomberg -- Crude oil may rise next week after failing to break through a technical support level, a Bloomberg News survey showed.

Twenty of 49 analysts, or 41 percent, forecast crude oil will increase through Sept. 3. Seventeen respondents, or 35 percent, predicted that futures will be little changed, and 12 projected a decline. Last week, 39 percent of analysts forecast a drop.

October oil in New York fell to $70.76 a barrel on Aug. 25, the lowest intraday price for the contract since May 25. The failure to drop below the May low of $70.35 was a signal for technical traders to purchase futures.

“The market was oversold, and when we failed to take out the May lows the buyers came back in,” said Richard Ilczyszyn, a Chicago-based senior market strategist at Lind-Waldock, a division of MF Global Inc  (go to article)

SF Chronicle -- Oakland drivers may want to take a closer look at their owner's manuals this week. The city's first biofuels vending station opened Tuesday, offering fill-ups for any engine that can run using renewable alternatives to gasoline.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/inoakland/detail?entry_id=71075&tsp=1#ixzz0xroreSko
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New York Times This article is by Clifford Krauss, Henry Fountain and John M. Broder. -- HOUSTON — Richard Lynch was walking down the hall in BP’s crisis command center in early May when some engineers rushed up, bearing bad news.

“We’ve lost the cofferdam,” they said.

In fact the cofferdam, a 100-ton, four-story-high steel dome that the company had lowered to try to contain the flow of oil from its out-of-control well, had become clogged with icelike crystals and was rising in the water, full of flammable gas and oil.

“I said: ‘What the hell do you mean you’ve lost the cofferdam? How did you lose it? Don’t give me that!’ ” Mr. Lynch, a BP vice president and a leader of the effort to kill the well, recalled. “This thing has taken off like a damn balloon.”

Had the dome hit one of the work ships, another inferno like the one that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon d  (go to article)

By Tony Tagliavia WoodTV -- MARSHALL, Mich. (WOOD) - Federal investigators looking into what caused an estimated 819,000 gallons of oil to spill in Marshall have found corrosion at points in the part of the pipeline where the spill happened, a National Transportation Safety Board spokesman said.

Those investigators also found problems with the adhesion between plastic coating along the pipeline and the pipe itself, according to the spokesman.
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Gas 2.0 -- A new study published by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has found that more and more Americans are warming to the idea of driving electric vehicles, citing environmental concerns as the main reason for making the change.

Over a quarter of the people surveyed described themselves as familiar with electric cars while 42% of respondents said they were likely to follow news reports about electric vehicles. Nearly a third of respondent described themselves as familiar or very familiar with hybrid vehicles.

Of those who said they would consider buying an electric car, nearly 80% said their greatest advantage was the fact they run without gasoline, while 67% cited the reduction in pollution.

However, when it came to reasons not to buy an electric car the survey showed that a defin  (go to article)

Gas 2.0 -- Last time I reported on the topic of using termite guts to make next generation cellulosic ethanol cheaper and easier, it was 2008. Back then a team of researchers from the University of Florida had just started on the path to analyzing the more than 7,000 genes associated with the production of special enzymes within the termite guts that can break down woody fibers so that the termites can digest them and use them for energy.

This process that goes on in the bellies of hundreds of millions, perhaps trillions, of termites all around the world, day-in and day-out—a process that many homeowners fear in the depths of their hearts—is exactly what the next generation ethanol crowd needs to make fuel from woody waste such as thinned forest debris and agricultural residues.

In a paper publish  (go to article)

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES -- General Motors Co. on Friday announced a recall of 59,714 Agile model cars in Brazil to replace a faulty fuel hose.

Due to a faulty production process in the 2010 and 2011 models, the hose may develop cracks, leaking fuel which could cause a fire in the car's engine, GM said in a statement published Friday in Brazilian newspapers.

The recall is at least the eighth major recall this year by auto makers in Latin America's biggest economy.

A worldwide problem, recalls have plagued the Brazilian auto industry this year. Other Brazilian manufacturers hurt by recalls this year were local units of Ford Motor Co., Toyota Motor Corp., Fiat SpA, Volkswagen AG and Honda Motor Co.

Altogether, including Friday's GM announcement, recalls have affected some 700,000 Brazilian-made motor vehicles...
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CBC -- Irving Oil announced Friday it has been selling premium gasoline below specifications for more than two years.

The company said that octane levels on its premium gasoline have been lower than expected since the beginning of 2008.

Irving Oil had already been offering rebates to drivers who bought its Plus or Supreme gasoline during 2010 after it discovered a problem Aug. 13 at the Irving Oil refinery in Saint John, N.B.

That reimbursement program opened Aug. 17 and closes Friday afternoon. Around 8,000 people took advantage of it, the company said.

That refund was equivalent to just over three cents per litre purchased since Jan. 1. Customers were to be sent a gift card for that amount.

Friday, Irving Oil concluded its review of the problem — a valve malfunction — and det  (go to article)

AP -- The federal government said engineers will start work Monday to remove the temporary cap that stopped oil from gushing out of BP's blown-out Gulf well so that crews can raise a key piece of equipment from the seabed.
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Truthout.org -- An Alyeska Pipeline Service Company engineer sent a letter to federal regulators and BP's Office of the Ombudsman claiming internal company documents were altered following a 4,500-barrel oil spill May 25 to cover up the fact that Alyeska allegedly failed to perform maintenance on a key piece of equipment.  (go to article)

Bloomberg -- Deep-water drilling engineer John Guide helped orchestrate BP Plc’s climb during the past decade to largest producer of Gulf of Mexico crude.

Then the Macondo well erupted on his watch, killing 11 workers and triggering the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

After months of hearings and media reports focusing on other participants in the April disaster, Guide, 52, is emerging as one of the critical decision-makers. According to internal company memos and testimony at recent hearings, it was Guide who vetoed a proposal to install equipment that may have kept explosive natural gas from seeping into the well and jetting up to the floating rig.

“As they continue their investigation and more evidence surfaces, he may find himself asked to return and provide additional answe  (go to article)

CNN Money -- A new law requiring oil companies to disclose all payments made to governments has sparked a sharp debate, with Big Oil saying it will put it at a big competitive disadvantage.

The law, attached at the last minute to the financial reform bill last month, applies to extractive industries - basically all U.S.-listed oil, gas and mining companies.

These companies pay hundreds of billions of dollars each year to governments in the form of royalties, taxes, and other fees. The problem, say some, is that these payments are often not transparent. Now firms must disclose these payments.

The law is very specific, requiring information about each individual project in countries where they operate, not simply a lump-sum figure.  (go to article)

U.S.NEWS AND WORLD REPORT -- Imagine spending thousands of dollars on a new car, only to find out later that an even better model will soon be available for roughly the same price? That situation stinks, and it happens all the time.
More and more automakers are attempting to get a leg up on the competition by releasing vehicles from their 2011 lineups early. While that can mean great discounts on current-year models, the savings only make sense on cars that hardly change from one year to the next. Redesigned ones are usually worth waiting for.
To avoid buying a car that you’ll want to kick yourself for later, you’ll need to check out how the car you want is expected to change in 2011. What you learn may save you from feeling duped. Start with the list below. You would have to be nuts to buy any of these  (go to article)

Associated Press -- Prices at gasoline stations across the country should keep dropping as travelers hit the road for late-summer trips.

The national average pump price has declined for 17 days in a row, reaching $2.682 for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline on Friday, according to AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service. The price is 6.3 cents lower than a month ago and about 6.2 cents higher than it was last year at this time.

Motorists in the West are paying the most for gas, ranging from $2.815 to $3.521 a gallon. The cheapest prices are in Texas, parts of the Midwest and the Gulf Coast area, where the range is $2.446 to $2.537 a gallon.

The price pullback comes after a plunge in wholesale gasoline prices earlier this month continues to filter into the retail market. In addition,  (go to article)

Downstream Today -- The world is running out of oil.

This prediction could be made today, of course, but it also has been stated with moral certainty numerous times since 1909, Princeton researcher Roger Stern said Monday night at the University of Tulsa. The problem is not only that the forecast has been wrong, but that this "oil scarcity syndrome" has driven U.S. national security policy in the Middle East for most of the past century, he added.

"U.S. policy is detached from market realities," Stern told a crowd at Helmerich Hall. "So it has been led by allies such as the Saudis."
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Reuters -- (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co> is recalling about 575,000 Windstar vans in 21 cold-weather U.S. states and Canada from model years 1998 to 2003 because of the possibility that the rear axle may fracture due to corrosion, federal regulators reported on Friday.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a preliminary investigation of the problem on May 13 after receiving 234 reports of rear axle fractures and two minor crashes. The number of complaints has risen to 950.

NHTSA said the design of the axle appears to allow it to collect road salt slush, leading to rust.

The recalls total about 463,000 in the United States, and the remaining in Canada, a Ford spokesman said.

Windstar owners will be asked to bring their vans into Ford or Lincoln-Mercury dealerships for insp  (go to article)

GasBuddy Blog -- In the last part of our series on car insurance, we'll cover the extras that some motorists like to add to their policy- such things as towing, roadside assistance, and car rental.

Now, these may seem like things you don't need- but they certainly become nice luxuries once you've needed or used them. They typically don't cost much every month, but can save you a lot of headaches and bills if you have more than a claim or two every year.

Rental reimbursement will pay for your rental car if your vehicle is damaged or stolen. Basically, until your car is done being repaired, you get a rental. If the car is stolen, you can drive the rental until you've determined your next car and the insurance settles your claim. Make sure...  (go to article)

NY Times -- Mercedes-Benz, as part of its collaboration with Tesla Motors, will produce 500 battery-powered “E-Cell” versions of its small A-Class, introducing the car at the Paris auto show in October.

According to Shirin Emeera, a Daimler spokeswoman, details of the electric car will be announced on Sept. 15. She said the car would be produced at the Mercedes Rastatt plant, near Stuttgart, Germany, where the A-Class (which is not sold in the United States) is produced. Delivery of the cars will begin early next year.

Tesla’s components, which include the battery pack and controller, will be shipped there to be integrated into the car.........  (go to article)

NY Times -- In a plume of salt crystals, students from Ohio State University’s Center for Auto Research witnessed their electric-powered racer make history on Tuesday. The Buckeye Bullet 2.5 averaged 307.7 miles per hour in back-to-back runs on Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats, obliterating the previous record of 245.5 m.p.h., set in 1999............  (go to article)

Herald Democrat -- Texas-based KiOR, a company with plans to produce a crude oil substitute from wood chips and other biomass, will locate its first three facilities in Mississippi.

Gov. Haley Barbour and KiOR CEO Fred Cannon announced details of the venture Thursday, a day before lawmakers were set to return to the Capitol to approve incentives for the company.

Cannon said KiOR will become the first ever to use the catalytic conversion technology to produce the biofuel and sell it commercially. The process allows biomass, such as wood products and agricultural waste, to be converted to a high-quality renewable crude oil that can be used by refineries and to power vehicles, Cannon said.  (go to article)

Sympatico -- Ever wonder what royalty drives around in?
Or, at least in some cases, presidents with a lot of cash to burn?
Let's take a journey, from Brunei to Russia, to see what some of the world's most powerful people drive around in.
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CBS Money Watch -- Buyers of luxury cars crave their style, power and prestige. Paying luxury prices also typically gets you an additional perk: top-of-the-line safety equipment. And for 2011 models, that means new signals beeping warning of an impending rear-end crash or that you are drifting out of your lane. The new Mercedes-Benz E-class vehicles even sense if you are getting drowsy and caution that you need a break by watching your steering patterns and turning on a dashboard light.

From a style standpoint, the 2011 luxury roster features redesigned versions of the top-end Audi A8, the BMW 5-series, the Infiniti M sedan, and the Volvo S60. The Cadillac CTS adds a new coupe while Mercedes-Benz E-class is offering coupe, wagon and convertible variations. And Hyundai introduces its brand-new Equus, whi  (go to article)

The Globe and Mail -- While much attention has been given to the deep oil well being drilled by Chevron hundreds of kilometres off the coast of Newfoundland, the Save Our Seas and Shores Coalition has been trying to stop similar exploration in shallower water much closer to the mainland.

Corridor Resources Inc. has been given the license to explore oil and gas resources in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in what is known as the Old Harry prospect, located midway between the Magdalen Islands and Cape Anguille in western Newfoundland.

And the folks who depend on fishing and tourism in the Gulf are not happy – especially as they watch the United States cope with the aftermath of the biggest oil spill in its history.

When federal Liberal MPs arrive in Badeck, N.S., next week for their annual summer caucus meet  (go to article)

Financial Times -- Major ship deliveries over the next two years could threaten the balance of the market for crude oil tankers, the sector’s biggest operator has warned as the earning power of tankers slumps.

Frontline, whose largest shareholder is John Fredriksen, the Norwegian-born tycoon, also warned in a results statement on Friday that third-quarter earnings would be “materially below” the $81.3m net income on $356m revenue achieved between April and June this year.

The daily rates earned by crude oil tankers have collapsed since the end of June, forcing many operators to lay ships up out of use, as the segment has become the latest area of shipping to be hit by a combination of weak demand and excess ships.

Frontline is particularly exposed to movements in rates because, like other companies  (go to article)

theautochannel -- CHICAGO--Intertek (LSE: ITRK), a global leader in testing, inspection and certification, announces that it has made significant investments in new battery/energy storage test equipment throughout Europe, North America, and Asia. Recently the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) indicated a move toward "next generation" batteries which allow longer and faster run times, reduce dependence on other sources of energy, lessen the environmental impact of modern technologies, and lead to smaller and lighter electronics. Next generation batteries are predicted to impact nearly every industry, including solar energy, electric vehicles, wind energy,  (go to article)

theautochannel -- SHANGHAI--2010 Shanghai International Alternative Fuels & Vehicles Summit will be held at Shanghai New Energy Automobiles and Key Parts Industrial Base on October 19-22. This event is cordially supported by China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), National Energy Administration, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Shanghai Municipal Government.  (go to article)

AFP -- NEW YORK (AFP) - Japanese automaker Toyota announced Thursday the recall of 1.13 million of its popular Corolla vehicles in North America due to an engine fault.

Toyota, the world's largest car manufacturer, said the recall was issued for Corolla and Corolla Matrix vehicles built between 2005 and 2008 "to address some engine control modules (ECM) that may have been improperly manufactured."

It said in a statement that there was a possibility that "a crack may develop at certain solder points or on the electronic component used to protect circuits against excessive voltage" on the ECM?s circuit board.

The crack can result in the engine not starting or, in some cases, stopping while the vehicle is being driven, it said.

There were three "unconfirmed" accidents allegedly linked to  (go to article)

this was on Yahoo news yesterday, it's been on the news this past July also. -- "It's the next 'wow' vehicle," said Terrafugia vice president Richard Gersh. "Anybody can buy a Ferrari, but as we say, Ferraris don't fly."

The plane is designed to fly primarily under 10,000 feet. It has a maximum takeoff weight of 1,430 pounds, including fuel and passengers. Gas mileage on the road is about 30 mpg.

Terrafugia says the Transition reduces the potential for an accident by allowing pilots to drive under bad weather instead of flying into marginal conditions.
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American Spectator -- Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency issued another one of those announcements read exclusively by government bureaucrats and green policy wonks. The EPA decided to delay a decision to increase the concentration of ethanol legal in gasoline from 10% to 15%. So-called E15 fuel would have to wait for approval until November.

It was a little-read regulatory decision that barely made a splash in the media. But it was also a rock thrown at Washington's hornets' nest of food and agricultural lobbyists. "We are disappointed," warned food giant Archer Daniels Midland. "We find this further delay unacceptable" and a "dereliction of duty," harrumphed ethanol lobbying group Growth Energy.

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Marketplace -- A Beijing suburb has announced it will soon begin testing out a new futuristic bus that would be built on tall legs -- allowing passengers to drive above the cars on the highway. No, this is not a joke. China bureau chief Rob Schmitz reports.

A nearly two week-long traffic jam in Beijing, China, is starting to ease up. Drivers can now get through in a few hours -- as opposed to a few days.

In the midst of that, a Beijing suburb has announced it will soon begin testing out a new futuristic bus that would be built on tall legs -- allowing bus passengers to travel above all the cars on the highway. No, this is not a joke.

The vehicle travels on rails and straddles two lanes of traffic, allowing passengers to drive 15 feet above the cars.  (go to article)

CLICK ON DETROIT -- If you're in the hunt for a new car, stay away from these lemons. It takes a lot to be named one of the World's Ugliest Cars... but these vehicles make it look so,  (go to article)

Bloomberg -- Panasonic Corp. and Samsung SDI Co., the world’s two largest makers of rechargeable batteries, may deepen price cuts this year as overproduction worsens a glut in the industry, analysts said.

Lithium-ion battery prices may tumble 19 percent in 2010, the biggest drop in five years, said Hideo Takeshita, an analyst at the Institute of Information Technology Ltd. in Tokyo. Shiro Mikoshiba, an analyst at Nomura Holdings Inc., said the worsening oversupply may push prices down as much as 25 percent.  (go to article)

AP -- (Additional Information on the recall mentioned in a previous post)

"...Toyota said Corollas and Matrixes equipped with 1ZZ-FE engines may contain a defective engine control module, the computer that regulates the performance of the engine. In some cases, a crack may develop on the module's circuit board, which could prevent the engine from starting or could cause harsh shifting or an engine stall.

Separately, General Motors Co. is recalling 200,000 Pontiac Vibes in North America due to the same problem, GM spokesman Alan Adler said. The Vibe is similar to the Matrix and was built under a joint venture between Toyota and GM at a now-closed factory in Fremont, Calif.  (go to article)

EarthTechling -- Leave it to the good folk at MIT to come up with this - researchers at this institution for higher learning have developed a robotic prototype that can autonomously navigate the surface of the ocean to collect surface oil and process it on site. This robot, called Seaswarm, could come in quite useful in oil spill situations, especially should we ever see another one on the magnitude of the BP spill this past summer.

MIT said said this fleet of robotic vehicles make use of a conveyor belt covered with a thin nanowire mesh to absorb oil. The mesh, developed by associate professor Francesco Stellacci, "can absorb up to twenty times its own weight in oil while repelling water. By heating up the material, the oil can be removed and burnt locally and the nanofabric can be reused." One robot alo  (go to article)

green.autoblog.com -- Not so long ago, it was common for automatic transmissions to be referred to as slushboxes, since that's how they often behaved. Rather than use a mechanical clutch, traditional automatic transmissions use a fluid coupling between the engine and the gear-sets to transmit drive torque. This provides some benefits, but isn't a perfect system.

Unless a mechanical clutch is worn out and slipping, it transfers nearly 100 percent of the torque that goes in. Automatics use a torque converter that consists of three main components: the pump, turbine and stator all within a cavity filled with hydraulic fluid. The pump is connected to the engine and, at lower speeds, it spins within the fluid without driving the turbine. As the engine speeds up, the slippage within the fluid increases and the tur  (go to article)

autoblog.com -- The idea of a carbon tax has been floated for over a decade now as a way to more accurately represent the true environmental cost of energy. Many automakers have advocated switching from the current tax on each gallon of gasoline and diesel to a carbon-based tax on all energy sources as a way to help incentivize consumers to buy the cleaner, more efficient vehicles that automakers will be forced to build under new CAFE rules. The biggest advantage of a tax based on the carbon content of a fuel is that it is, at least theoretically, technology neutral. For example, diesel fuel would carry a higher carbon tax than gasoline because it contains 15 percent more carbon while the total cost of using diesel should be about 25 percent less because of its inherent efficiency advantage.

However, t  (go to article)

Fast Company -- Add Shell to the growing list of oil companies investing in alternative fuels. The oil company announced this week that it finalized a massive deal with Cosan SA Industria & Comercio, the world's biggest sugarcane producer, for a biofuel venture in Brazil.

Shell is expected to contribute $1.95 billion, along with 2,740 service stations. Cosan will throw in 23 sugar mills, power plants that produce energy from sugarcane waste, and 1,730 service stations. When all assets involved are taken into account, the venture is worth approximately $12 billion.

It's a fairly safe bet--Brazil's ethanol fuel program is 30 years old, and sugarcane ethanol represented 17.6% of the country's total energy consumption in the transport sector in 2008...  (go to article)

Daily Sun -- Fifty years ago, five countries initiated bold discussions on ways to increase the price of crude oil produced by their respective countries. The talks that followed lasted four days, from September 10 - 14, 1960.

They culminated in the establishment of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). At that time, few could imagine the profound impact the cartel would play in the international oil market and world geo-politics. Today, membership of the organisation, which began with five countries, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, has increased to twelve, with Nigeria as the 11th member state.
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MSNBC -- A highly-promoted feature in the 2011 Ford Explorer are its new inflatable rear seat belts. The not-so-highly-promoted working stiffs that helped make it happen? Human cadavers. Here's how automakers still quietly use dead people to make your car safer.

When automakers and safety advocates show off the results of crash tests, they inevitably run video showing empty vehicles or crash test dummies; back in the 1980s, they even turned the dummies into lovable cartoon characters. What the industry doesn't like talking about is how much of the safety innovation in vehicles was built around testing cadavers.
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AOL Autos -- You’d think a guy with almost 2.8 million miles on his car would want to stay put for a minute. But Guinness Book of World Records holder Irv Gordon, a 70-year-old retired science teacher who bought his 1966 Volvo P1800 new, is aiming to roll his speedometer over to 3 million miles in the next three years. “I got a full tank,” he says, as I climb into the passenger seat of the small red coupe outside a diner in Medford, NY, “And we can go anywhere you want.”
Not Ready For A Museum

I settle into a well-worn seat groove and acclimate myself to the rolling museum surrounding me, including the dash-mounted pushbutton radio, a Smith magnetic gas gauge that waggles wildly back and forth, and an assortment of toggle switches and knobs.  (go to article)

Detroit News --
By NICK BUNKLEY
Published: August 26, 2010

DETROIT — Toyota Motor, the Japanese automaker, said Thursday that it would recall 1.13 million compact cars, days after federal safety regulators upgraded an investigation into numerous complaints about the cars stalling.
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GasBuddy Blog -- I'll delay our last part of our series on car insurance- we'll cover that tomorrow. Back to the topic!

Supply? High. Economy? Lousy. Demand? Virtually flat. So what's driving the increase in wholesale prices today? One little report... about jobless numbers.

Jobless claims dropped more than expected and apparently that means that demand will increase, supply will somehow drop even while driving season is nearing its conclusion, and that the economy will grow at double digit rates. Oh wait- but its highly unlikely that any of that will even happen. We're in the midst of another knee jerk reaction by traders- buying at the first sign of promise... only to be let down later by another bad economic report.

Wholesale...  (go to article)