One of the ways that auto makers are trying to squeeze a few more miles per gallon into their vehicles are with improvements to tires. But tire makers have long been constrained by a principle that says any improvement to rolling resistance (the ability for tires to overcome the resistance they face as they roll over the road) would lead to lower tire durability and lower ability to grip the road in wet conditions.

Some companies are putting that principle to rest, or at least tweaking it a bit, by increasing rolling resistance along with bettering or not harming the other parts of what is called the “magic triangle of tire technology,” as detailed by Chemical & Engineering News.

From our colleagues at the Wheels blog:

Mercury, the only metal element that is liquid at standard room temperature, is notoriously hard to handle — in more ways than one. Until 2003, automakers used highly toxic mercury in switches that controlled trunk and under-hood lights, as well as antilock brake systems. Since then, carmakers have switched to benign alternatives, but an estimated 38 million mercury switches still remain in cars.

The 2010 Ford Flex will include the auto industry’s first use of wheat straw, a waste byproduct of wheat production.

Wheat straw will make up 20 percent of the vehicle’s two third-row storage bins, lowering the bins’ weight by 10 percent, reducing Ford Motor Company’s petroleum use by 20,000 pounds a year and lowering its carbon dioxide emissions by 30,000 pounds a year.

• Fuel economy ratings for all cars and light trucks sold in the U.S. back to model year 1985
• Annual fuel cost estimates
• Annual petroleum use (barrels of domestic and imported petroleum)
• Carbon footprint (tons of carbon dioxide emitted annually)

2010 Annual Fuel Economy Guide Now Available
Source: U.S. Department of Energy

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy today unveiled the 2010 Fuel Economy Guide, which gives consumers important information about estimated fuel costs and mileage standards for model year 2010 vehicles.
…
Fuel-efficient models come in all types and sizes, so consumers can save thousands of dollars over a vehicle’s lifetime without sacrificing performance. Model year 2010 fuel economy leaders include a wide range of hybrid models, from compact cars to sport-utility vehicles.

Each vehicle listing in the Fuel Economy Guide provides an estimated annual fuel cost. The estimate is calculated based on the vehicle’s miles per gallon (mpg) rating and national estimates for annual mileage and fuel prices. The online version of the guide allows consumers to input their local gasoline prices and typical driving habits to receive a personalized fuel cost estimate.

+ Full Document (PDF; 530 KB)

Chemical maker Toray Industries has begun mass production of its plant-and-petroleum fibers for use in automobiles. The fibers mix polylactic acid (which comes from plant sources) and plant-derived polyesters with petroleum-based materials.

As part of the sponsorship, EPA will provide mentoring, technical advice, and dynamometer emissions testing on competition vehicles at EPA’s lab in Ann Arbor, Mich. EPA will also serve as a competition judge.

More information on EcoCar: http://www.ecocarchallenge.org

In the wake of General Motors‘ bankruptcy and reorganization, funds for a partnership that takes mercury-containing parts out of vehicles headed for the trash could be drying up.

The End of Life Vehicle Solutions (ELVS), an auto industry partnership, was created in 2005 to support the removal of mercury switches from vehicles before they get shredded. If left in the vehicles when they are destroyed, the mercury leaks out, posing a danger for humans, animals and the environment.

ELVS works with the National Vehicle Mercury Switch Recovery Program, and has collected 2.5 million mercury switches and 5,600 pounds of mercury. ELVS is scheduled to run until 2017.

The program, which offered cash to people who traded in old cars for ones with higher fuel economy, was said to have exhausted its available funds, leaving its future in question.

Ford Motor Co. and researchers at the University of Liverpool are developing a car ignition system that swaps spark plugs for a laser beam to start vehicles while generating fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

On May 19, the response to the Obama Administration’s national fuel efficiency policy — requiring an average fuel economy standard of 35.5 mpg in 2016 — seemed supportive all around.

In attendance at the announcement were several C-level automaker executives; the United Autoworkers’ president; Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, and California authorities; U.S. legislators, and Leaders of League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, and Union of Concerned Scientists.

See also: Fact Sheet: Cash for Clunkers

Driving less, biking more, paying attention to vehicle fuel efficiency, and looking for economical transportation options are all worthy endeavors, especially right now. American’s love affair with cars, however, and their utility as a platform for studying environmental engineering challenges is far from over. Two springtime events– Indiana Super Mileage Challenge (SMC) and the 2009 Green Grand Prix in Watkins Glen promise to highlight advances in auto engineering to make them run better, faster and farther on less.

Two new bills that would pay American consumers to get rid of their old gas guzzlers in exchange for new, more fuel efficient cars are picking up steam in Congress. The cash for clunkers bills have garnered wide bipartisan support and could reward new car buyers up to $5,000 for getting their pollutin’ jalopies off the road. But would the plans work?

In a Jan. 7 statement, the U.S. Department of Transportation said that the Bush Administration will not finalize its rulemaking on Corporate Fuel Economy Standards.

Amory Lovins, a renowned author and big thinker on energy, specializes in making the impossible real.

His 4,000-square-foot Colorado home has no furnace, uses a few dollars’ worth of electricity a month, and features an indoor tropical garden with banana trees and papaya plants. In conversation, he’s quick to pull out his iPhone to show a car prototype inspired by the Hypercar, which is three to five times more efficient than conventional cars.

He’s the chief scientist and co-founder of nonprofit advisory firm Rocky Mountain Institute, which develops environmentally friendly solutions using business as a lever. Among the organizations it advises are Ford Motor, Wal-Mart, and the Pentagon.

On Tuesday, Lovins spoke to investors and entrepreneurs at a forum on clean tech organized by Xconomy, where he was interviewed by venture capitalist Paul Maeder about energy and the environment. (On Wednesday, he spoke at Harvard University.)

While two of the Detroit Three have no new models to unveil at this year’s Los Angeles Auto Show, Ford Motor Co. stayed in and will show off a revamped midsize car that is an example of how serious it is about gas mileage and about clawing its way back into the car business.

The 2010 Fusion and its Mercury counterpart, the Milan, get new aerodynamic front and rear sheet metal, more powerful yet more efficient engines, six-speed automatic and manual transmissions and vastly improved interiors as Ford aims at the top-selling Toyota Camry and Honda Accord.

In today’s fuel-conscious automotive market, Honda is reaping the rewards for its commitment to building fuel-efficient, environmentally friendly cars.

Chrysler and three lead wheel weight makers agree to the phaseout in a settlement of a suit brought by an environmental group, which contended the car parts threatened drinking water.

Chrysler plans to spend $1.8 billion retooling a Detroit factory that builds Jeeps so that it can start making a more fuel-efficient, car-based crossover vehicle there.

Volkswagen Group of America Inc. is planning a coast-to-coast tour of its hydrogen fuel cell car, the HyMotion Tiguan.

Mapping a route from Portland, Maine, to Los Angeles, the Herndon-based car maker said the road show will wind through 31 cities to showcase a new environmentally friendly fuel that emits nothing more than water vapor.

Volkswagen is making the trek with more than two-dozen partnering organizations and companies, including other auto companies such as BMW, Honda and Nissan and entities like the National Hydrogen Association, Army and Environmental Protection Agency.

The company known for supplying the “blue book” value of cars is turning green.

Kelley Blue Book on Thursday introduced a section to its Web site for sorting through the many options for buying fuel-efficient cars.

An EU research project has concluded that it is possible to build cars to order within five days – dramatically cutting waste and emissions from transporting the goods.

The Intelligent Logistics for Innovative Product Technologies (ILIPT) project involved 29 partners including BMW and the UK’s University of Bath.

It concluded that this method of manufacturing would also free up large amounts of capital that car companies could invest in new green technology, encourage manufacturers to make changes more quickly, and help to keep production in Europe.

Titanium, a protean element with applications from pigments to aerospace alloys, could get a new role as an environmentally friendly additive for automotive oil, thanks to work by materials scientists from Afton Chemical Corporation (Richmond, Va.) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In a recent paper, the researchers established that a titanium compound added to engine oil creates a wear-resistant nanoscale layer bound to the surface of vulnerable engine parts, making it a credible substitute for older compounds that do not coexist well with antipollution equipment.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is funding a $900,000 research project at UC Davis to learn what emissions millions of alternative-fuel vehicles might produce and how climate change might affect those emissions. Alt-fuel vehicles to be studied include E85 vehicles; hybrid-electric cars; plug-in hybrid electric cars; and heavy-duty trucks fueled with biodiesel.

Lotus will unveil its “Eco Elise” technology demonstrator at the upcoming British International Motor Show, 23 July – 3 Aug in London. Unlike some of Lotus’ other initiatives, this demonstrator focuses less on tailpipe CO2 and more on materials, manufacturing and design.

Toyota acknowledged that, like its rival automakers in Detroit, it misjudged the drastic swing in the American market away from larger vehicles.

Designer Gordon Murray, best known for his work on Formula One racing cars, detailed on Monday a new city car design called the T.25 that is aimed at reducing congestion and lowering pollution.

Designer Gordon Murray, best known for his work on Formula One racing cars, detailed on Monday a new city car design called the T.25 that is aimed at reducing congestion and lowering pollution.

To lower the car’s carbon footprint, the company has rethought the cradle-to-grave lifecycle of the car. For example, many of the parts, including the capacity and body, can be recycled and the manufacturing process is being set up with a minimal number of parts to reduce energy use during fabrication.

Toyota plans to install solar panels on the roof of the next generation of Prius hybrid cars, according to a report in Monday’s edition of the Nikkei newspaper.

Get up and close and personal with the UK’s hottest eco motors in this video from the Sexy Green Car Show. We nipped down to Cornwall’s Eden Project to see the show and ferret out today’s greenest cars and tomorrow’s coolest low carbon concepts. Features Axon’s carbo-fibre lightweight car, Lotus’s Tri-Fuel sports car, Saab’s Bio Hybrid and Ford’s high MPG diesel, the Focus Econetic.

With the Chevy Volt, General Motors — battered, struggling for profitability, fed up with being eclipsed by Toyota and the Prius — is out to reinvent the automobile, and itself.

Rising oil prices and improvements in battery technology are fueling new interest in electric cars. Many car companies — including industry giant General Motors and small start-up Tesla Motors — are planning to release new vehicles in the next two years. Tonight on the NewsHour, Spencer Michels looks at the future of the electric car.

Toyota has promised two more hybrid models, which will mark the company’s venture into Lithium-Ion technology, PCMag reports.

Toyota’s head of R&D Masatami Takimoto said the new hybrid will be “a totally new car,” larger and will likely get a Li-ion pack in 2010.

Honda has begun the first commercial production ever of a hydrogen fuel cell-powered car.

The Japanese auto manufacturer ceremoniously launched production of its first hydrogen-powered vehicles on Sunday in Tochigi, Japan, and announced its first customers.

With no end in sight for elevated gas prices, G.M. announced drastic cuts in production of sport utility vehicles and pickups and stepped up plans for smaller cars.

Hybrid models of Detroit’s 5,500-pound S.U.V.’s get better mileage, but consumers have been slow to embrace them.

The LaFontaine Automotive Group has spent about $15 million in the last two years building a sprawling, multibrand auto dealership in Highland, Mich., investing $2 million in “green” initiatives.

The hydraulic lifts in the service bay are lubricated with vegetable oil. Eighty-five skylights dot the ceiling. Doors are made of pressed corn. A costly geothermal heating system warms the building. Salespeople will wear organic shirts and water for car washes will be reused when the new dealership opens next month.

By 2011, Toyota Motor Corp. expects to have 100 “green” dealerships like the family-owned LaFontaine operation, a little less than 10% of its U.S. dealer network. Toyota has already drawn up a prototype store design that dealers can follow to automatically gain environmentally friendly certifications. On Thursday, Toyota will announce an effort under which the company will help about a dozen dealers build new, highly energy-efficient facilities.

About one in five vehicles sold in the U.S. in April was a compact or subcompact car, while sales of pickups and S.U.V.s fell sharply.

Fuel efficiency standards for both passenger vehicles and light trucks would increase by 4.5 percent per year over the five-year period ending in 2015 – a 25 percent total improvement that exceeds the 3.3 percent baseline proposed by Congress last year – under a new proposal announced April 22 by U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters.

Nissan will issue new green procurement guidelines, a set of environmental protocol to augment The Nissan-Renault Purchasing Way, in April, Auto Spectator reports. The guidelines replace the previous green procurement standards issued in 2001 and will apply to all its global auto-parts and materials suppliers.

Nissan wants to talk about more than a way to drive at its soon-to-be-finished Americas headquarters.

The Japanese automaker is showing off “green” features of the $100 million project as a kind of image signpost for car and truck buyers increasingly focused on environmental concerns.

Toyota’s Prius hybrid has been more successful than GM’s hybrid offerings. Today at the International Geneva Motor Show, GM announced its intention to upgrade the battery packs in its basic hybrid system to deliver more power. Maybe that will help improve sales.

The world’s top automakers’ leaders finally woke up, looked around, and realized what many experts have been saying for years: hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles don’t make much sense. At the auto show in Geneva yesterday, Bob Lutz, GM’s vice chairman, the global-warming skeptic who is nevertheless leading the charge at GM in promoting cleaner vehicles, seems to have come close to conceding that the company’s much advertised fuel-cell program is little more than a marketing gimmick.

Fifty international teams will vie for the Automotive X Prize, building vehicles that are energy efficient, clean, and safe

A national program that has cut more than one ton of mercury has reached a major milestone: 1 million switches have been removed from scrapped vehicles. The millionth mercury switch was removed through the National Vehicle Mercury Switch Recovery Program, a collaboration among EPA, automobile manufacturers, steel makers, scrap recyclers, automotive recyclers, states and environmental groups.

Information on the mercury switch program and directions on how to join
http://www.epa.gov/mercury/switch.htm
http://www.elvsolutions.org/

According to Autocar’s Hilton Holloway, BMW is seriously considering starting up a new brand to produce and sell a line of green vehicles.

Green technology might save you a buck and even help save the planet, when automakers actually get it on the road…But safety technology can save your life. Safety, though, lacks the buzz of an electric car like the gull-wing Dodge Zeo concept or the egg-shaped Chrysler ecoVoyager fuel-cell minivan (both are miles away from actually hitting the road). “Green is in right now,” says Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. “And safety is taking a back seat.”

Rick Wagoner isn’t likely to win applause from a Greenpeace audience–at least any time soon.

As the head of General Motors, Wagoner runs one of the biggest auto companies in the world. But more to the point, he directs the company most identified with big, gas-guzzling SUVs. GM also tends to come out with energy-efficient ideas, such as hydrogen cars or electric vehicles, that never seem to make it.

However, Wagoner says the Detroit giant is serious about fuel efficiency.

So far, GM has sold millions of flex-fuel cars that can run on E85 ethanol and is working with big box retailers to expand the supply of ethanol stations. GM also has invested in Coskata, an ethanol company whose technology promises to deliver ethanol from nonfood sources. At the same time, GM says it’s on track to deliver the Chevy Volt, an electric car that runs primarily on batteries, by 2010.

Wagoner met with CNET News.com (and some other media outlets) at CES 2008 last week–and just ahead of this week’s big Detroit auto show–to discuss these issues and some of the other concepts being touted inside GM.

EcoMotors is working on a futuristic diesel engine that’s similar in concept to something Charles Lindbergh may have once used.