Alt Fuels

As a vehicle fuel, natural gas holds considerable promise but faces a number of challenges. Overcoming those challenges is the goal of recent funding granted by the U.S. Department of Energy for a handful of research projects. Among them are the challenges of incorporating high-pressure natural gas...

Aston Martin has achieved its target of completing a racing lap around one of the world's toughest tracks--on hydrogen fuel. The hydrogen-powered Aston Martin Rapide S made its debut at a four-hour ADAC ACAS H&R-Cup VLN series race, at the infamous Nürburgring Nordschleife circuit in...

There are many reasons for wanting to wean ourselves off oil, but environmental issues and measuring out dwindling resources are two fairly significant ones. The trouble is, oil is incredibly convenient. It's energy dense and in cars, we can replenish it in minutes. So how do you take those...

Natural gas passenger cars have never really taken off in the U.S. like some thought they might. While the fuel is hugely popular in countries like Brazil, gasoline has always reigned supreme in North America. Or diesel, if you're a long-haul trucker--though that could be about to change. Natural...

Fiat-Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne isn't known for his love of electric vehicles. We really rate the company's first offering, the 2014 Fiat 500e electric car, but Sergio himself doesn't--speaking at the Society of Automotive Engineers 2013 World Congress, he reiterated that the company is losing...

Our planet may have only gained 27 hydrogen filling stations in 2012, but California is hoping to have nearly 70 of its own in total by 2016. So says the California Air Resources Board (CARB), which provides a list of government-funded hydrogen stations in California on its website. Around third of...

Whatever the future energy mix, it's becoming apparent that coal and gas are both hugely consumptive and not entirely great for the environment--even if they provide large swathes of the world with their energy. Renewable energies like solar, wind and hydro on the other hand supply only a small...

Sometimes there comes an idea so audacious, so inspired, so downright jaw-dropping that it's worth covering even if it doesn't directly involve cars. You may know Earth Day is coming up on Monday, April 22. Localities and groups all over the country celebrate it. So, how has the Utah Department of...

For those readers living in one of America's big cities, concrete jungles strewn across the North American landscape, it's easy to forget that hundreds of thousands of acres are set aside in some states as National Parks. Isolated from the bustle of busy cities they're idyllic spots, precious for...

Given millions of years of adaptation to conditions, it's no surprise that nature is pretty good at doing what it does. Each leaf on a tree, and indeed the shape of a tree's canopy, is the work of refinements over millenia to capture the most sunlight possible to ensure the tree's growth. Why not...

It appears that the U.S. Department of Energy has had a change of heart. Four years ago, then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu was widely known as a skeptic about hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. Last summer, he appeared to relent--and now the DoE has said it will launch a campaign to promote hydrogen...

Say "carpool lane" or "HOV Access" or "white sticker" or "green sticker," and most California commuters will begin to drool uncontrollably. The ability to drive in relatively uncrowded High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes with just a single person in the vehicle is a privilege that Californians will...

Leave it to the Germans to be blunt. Volkswagen Group CEO Martin Winterkorn has rendered his company's verdict on the future of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles: They're not viable. Fuel-cell cars suffer from a lack of infrastructure, he said, will be far too costly for consumers, and use a fuel that...

For fans of fuel efficiency, the New York Times has good news and bad news. The good news is: drivers in the U.S. are using less gas these days. The bad news is: that's driving up the cost of gas. To anyone who's taken Econ 101, that probably seems counter-intuitive -- mostly because it is. To...

The sequester is now with us, and Congress has lower approval ratings than South American death squads, but President Obama is doggedly pursuing his green agenda nonetheless. Today, he will announce a plan to divert $2 billion of Federal oil and gas lease revenues over the next decade from general...

Air travel is currently the only realistic way of covering huge distances in very short spaces of time. Unfortunately, it's not a particularly green way of doing so either--airliners use large quantities of fossil fuels and emit plenty of pollutants as they whizz you to a far-flung destination...

For a century, we've gotten almost all our gasoline and diesel fuel from petrochemicals. Now Silicon Valley startup Solazyme [NSDQ:SZYM] is testing diesel fuel derived from refining renewable oils--produced by specialized algae--in two Volkswagen turbodiesel models. Since July 2012, the VW Passat...

Fuel cells aren't the only way to use hydrogen as a fuel in vehicles--burning it works too. That's exactly what Aston Martin will be doing at the Nurburgring 24-hour race later this year, when it fields a hydrogen-fueled version of its Rapide luxury sedan. According to our sister site Motor...

Debate over the slow rollout and potentially damaging effects of gasoline with 15 percent ethanol blended in just continues to roll on. The latest to pile on are members of the Science Committee in the House of Representatives, which held a hearing Tuesday on the progress of EPA efforts to roll out...

No, that's not a misprint--Audi really is launching an A3 g-tron next to its A3 e-tron at the Geneva Motor Show. While the e-tron is a plug-in hybrid using Audi's in-development electric vehicle technology, the g-tron uses a different alternative fuel--natural gas. The 2014 Audi A3 g-tron is set to...