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It's called New Urbanism, and Christopher Leinberger, an urban planning professor at the University of Michigan, visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution   and author of The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream  , says the movement is changing the American dream:

Direct drive, mechanically integrated,weather sealed 6kW permanent magnet generator

The Tindo bus is the stuff of car-free, green, geeky dreams: It epitomizes efficient urban transportation and energy use, and to top it all off, it’s free. Our friends at EcoGeek first tipped up off to the story.

The air quality of urban areas would greatly improved if we could replace the thousands of diesel delivery trucks currently in use with zero-emission vehicles. In this vein, a company called  Smith Electric Vehicles will be introducing their electric trucks to the U.S.  Their Newton truck (pictured above) can be recharged via an regular electric socket. They have some pretty impressive features, including a range of up to 150 miles when fully charged. The battery system is rated at 120 kilowatts, and trucks have a maximum speed of 50 mph. The trucks also use regenerative braking to recover energy from the braking process.

The 1958 television episode looks toward the future of American transportation. Once you dig past the kitschy sci-fi aspects, this auto-pian vision terrifyingly reveals the values which have led us to our current predicament. Everything becomes super-highway accessible – from the steepest mountains of the U.S. to the Sphinx in Egypt.

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

Vertical urban agriculture offers a potential silver BB in this domain ... with a new concept from Seattle offering one of the most integrated and interesting approaches that I've seen to date.

There is an urban legend that goes "car companies are withholding the 100 mpg car". It might not have been true before... and now while not withholding it, the 100mpg is ready - they're just being very very slow to make it and sell it!

Naturally, the electricity used by consumers in urban and suburban homes can't be derived directly from a specific source.

The effects of combined driving and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) usage on the lifetime performance of relevant commercial Li-ion cells were studied. We derived a nominal realistic driving schedule based on aggregating driving survey data and the Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule, and used a vehicle physics model to create a daily battery duty cycle. Different degrees of continuous discharge were imposed on the cells to mimic afternoon V2G use to displace grid electricity. The loss of battery capacity was quantified as a function of driving days as well as a function of integrated capacity and energy processed by the cells. The cells tested showed promising capacity fade performance: more than 95% of the original cell capacity remains after thousands of driving days worth of use. Statistical analyses indicate that rapid vehicle motive cycling degraded the cells more than slower, V2G galvanostatic cycling. These data are intended to inform an economic model.