Tagged: automobiles

Earlier this month, the New York Times published a scathing article about Tesla’s Model X…the article has since stirred up controversy on the web and in media and auto industry circles, and it’s a story that doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon. Joining us with an explainer and an update on the latest developments in “Tesla-Gate” is Jamie Page Deaton, Managing Editor of US News Best Cars.

EarthTalk®
E - The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: I recently saw an article extolling the virtues of natural gas as an abundant, inexpensive and domestically produced automotive fuel. Is this going to be the automotive fuel of the future and how green is it? -- Jason Kincaide, New Bedford, MA

Modern advertisers will put commercials and billboards just about anywhere, but they’re not nearly as intrusive as depicted in the futuristic 2002 Steven Spielberg thriller Minority Report, where street side billboards address city-goers by name, and holographic spokespersons are literally projected into your path.

Paul Schubert and his wife decided to buy a new car last summer — a really fuel-efficient one. After a lot of research, they settled on a Toyota Prius. But there was a problem: They couldn't find one.

The tsunami that devastated Japan in March had dried up supplies of the Prius, which is made in Japan, and a dealer told them they would have to wait — "about four months," Schubert says. "And we thought, well, it'd be, probably, end of November, early December before we were going to have a car."

The Schuberts still had a working car.

The "Taxi of Tomorrow" has arrived in New York City. On Tuesday night, officials unveiled the Nissan-designed cab that, over the next 10 years, will gradually replace the country's largest taxi fleet. It's the first New York taxi to be designed for the job since the city's iconic Checker cab.

For Nissan's designers, the process of putting the new cab together involved months of riding in taxis and talking to cab owners, drivers and passengers about what they did and didn't like.

It would be difficult for some people to let a stranger drive off with one of their most valuable possessions. But not for Stanford graduate student Katie Hagey.

Hagey is one of a growing number of individual car owners who have started renting their wheels to people they don't know through car-sharing startup companies resembling the better-known Zipcar.