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In Sustainable Energy - without the hot air, one of my main conclusions is "electrify everything" - in particular, I recommend electric vehicles. At a recent talk, someone in the audience said, yes, maybe electric cars are now viable. But surely you couldn't electrify freight? Leaving aside two possible answers (namely 1: for local freight deliveries, electric trucks are already genuinely in use, and are manufactured by a couple of companies in the UK; 2: we could make electric freight like eletric trolley buses, using overhead lines), I thought it would be interesting to investigate, using the same model I used for cars in my book, the possibility of making long-distance freight vehicles with on-board batteries.

A new approach to selling and recharging electric cars could overcome some of the basic issues that have kept them from being widely adopted. A startup called Project Better Place, which had the largest of any venture-funding round in 2007, raising $200 million, recently announced plans to install recharging infrastructure in Israel and Denmark and to sell electric cars using a business model much like that used today with cell phones.

Project Better Place, owned by Israeli-American entrepreneur Shai Agassi, will provide lithium-ion batteries to power the cars and the infrastructure to refresh or replace them. One battery will enable the cars to travel 124 miles per charge. Project Better Place will install parking meter-like plugs on city streets and construct service stations along highways to replace the batteries. [2] Renault-Nissan will build the new cars and will offer a small number of their existing electric models, such as the “Megane” sedan, at prices roughly comparable to gasoline models. To promote this form of environmentally efficient transportation, the Israeli government cut the tax rate on cars powered by electricity to 10 percent (from 79 percent on ordinary cars) to encourage consumers to buy the vehicles once they become available. [3] This initiative will offer consumers an inexpensive car for which they will pay a monthly fee based on expected mileage.

Hybrids, plug-ins, and extended-range electric cars are hitting the market. Use this interactive primer to learn how they work.

At Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), as a complement to our work on renewable energy hedges, we are working to transform energy use on campus. One project underway is a system of grid-tied electric vehicles (Vehicle to Grid or V2G) combined with a solar photovoltaic charging system and smart computer control.

Six of 11 autonomous vehicles finish 90-kilometer course with no major accidents

I can say one thing, however. As an avid reader -- and generator -- of news related to clean technologies, there is considerably more hype and excitement these days about the potential for electric vehicles powered by batteries/ultracaps than fuel-cell vehicles powered by hydrogen. The recent announcement from Shai Agassi re:

With a range of approximately 60 miles (100 kilometers) the all electric Micro-Vett Fiat Doblò 5 seat station wagon, powered by a 18 kWh Altairnano NanoSafe® battery pack is undergoing field trials in Oslo, Norway. The battery pack was  recharged three times, in less than ten minutes using a high voltage rapid charging system

A new process for using aluminum alloys to generate hydrogen from water could make fuel-cell vehicles more practical, says Jerry Woodall, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue.

For this special report, PM crunched the numbers on the actual costs and performance of each major alternative fuel. Before we can debate national energy policy--or even decide which petroleum substitutes might make sense for our personal vehicles--we need to know how these things stack up in the real world.