I saw "An Inconvenient Truth." It made me want to shoot my car. But with such a dizzying array of solutions to our oil addiction — hybrid, flex fuel/E85, bio-diesel, compressed natural gas, hydrogen, electric — the fetal position sometimes feels like the best response. Enter Yahoo! Autos' new Green Center, which will help the growing numbers of tree huggers among us easily research the pros and cons of various alternative fuel technologies.
The site is jam-packed with resources like car review videos, the latest news headlines, Yahoo! Answers content, del.icio.us links, myths debunked, and tools like gas-impact calculators, federal and state incentive programs, and alternative fuel station locators. Oh, and a cool new Green Rating system, which Yahoo! Autos developed with Environmental Defense, helps you gauge (on a scale of 1–100) how environmentally friendly your combustion engine is (or isn't).
To demonstrate that green can also be macho, the Yahoo! Autos team has built the world’s fastest peanut-oil-powered vehicle — a 3,500 horsepower truck with Boeing 747 rear wheels and a parachute for brakes. On November 12, at the edge of the Mojave Desert, they hope to hit 240 mph and set the record as the fastest "greasel" ever driven. Our monster truck needs a name. Can you help?
In honor of all this greenery, we sat down with Martin Eberhard, CEO of Tesla Motors, who recently came to show off his incredible cars as part of our TechDev speaker series. (Watch the video of his interview with Yahoo! Autos' Jon Guzik below). Martin's little company has resuscitated the electric car with a vengeance. The Tesla Roadster goes from 0 to 60 in about four seconds, yet gets the equivalent of 135 mpg. And you can drive 250 miles on a single charge. The only catch is there aren't many available (they only have a few 2007s left), and they go for $100,000. But hang tough until 2009 when the Tesla sport sedan will debut for less then $50,000 in mass production. I'm saving my nickels.
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3/4" styrofoam: $15
Precisely color-matched purple paint: $10
Small dowel-like strips of wood: $5
Tape: $3
Seeing your co-workers' faces when you dress up as a 6' x 5' version of the company logo for Halloween: priceless
Jeremy Johnstone
Technical Yahoo, Platform Engineering
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