The Nissan Leaf, the much talked about Zero Emission Electric Car, has won the Green Car Vision Award at the 2010 DC Auto Show.

The Washington Auto Show states that:

To be considered for the Green Car Vision Award^™, vehicles must be in their early stages of commercialization but not yet on sale, in small volume production with more than one functional prototype in existence, or operating as part of a demonstration fleet. A nominee may be an all-new model or an advanced adaptation of an existing model, such as a conversion to another type of power like electric drive.

“Nissan’s move to offer a stylish battery electric vehicle as part of its model line is significant,” says Ron Cogan, editor and publisher of the Green Car Journal and editor of GreenCar.com. “This coming electric model will provide the features, the styling, and the driving experience that will meet the needs of a sophisticated and demanding market, while producing zero localized emissions and requiring no petroleum fuels.”

Nissan doesn’t have exact price figures yet, but says that the car should be in the range of other typical family sedans.

We’ve seen the Volt and the Leaf, but there’s a new player in town and its an Electric Minivan.

Taiwan’s Luxgen claims that the Luxgen EV+ has performance even beyond the ACP technology being adopted by BMW (MINI E) and the Mercedes-Benz joint venture TESLA.

Luxgen goes on to say that 180kW motor can demonstrate 240hp horsepower and 265 Nm of torque at a top speed of 90 mph.

Hippie Soccer Moms Rejoice!

Photos courtesy of Luxgen

Toyota’s first hybrid; Smart Grid Market Projected to Double; Surge in Electric Cars; No Health Impact From Wind Turbines; Solar Air Purifier

Toyota’s first hybrid from 1977 This cute little sportscar had a gas turbine connected to a generator that fed an electric motor with two speeds. The concept was a one-off model built for the 1977 Tokyo Motor Show, and the standard 2 cylinder air-cooled 790 cc engine and glorious aerodynamics managed to get the little bullet to 31 km/liter (73 mpg U.S.).

Smart Grid Market Projected to Double by 2014 By 2014, the U.S. smart grid market is expected to double from its 2009 value of $21.4 billion to $42.8 billion.

The Surge in Electric Cars Why should anyone buy an electric car? That’s going to be a critical question for the auto industry—and the best answer may not be “Because they’re green.”

Study: No Health Impact From Wind Turbines A detailed literature review published on Tuesday by the American and Canadian wind industry associations found no medical basis for the health complaints that often arise near large wind-farm projects.

Portable Motorless Solar Air Purifier The Solar Air Purifier is an easy to use portable device that cleans the air giving you a healthy, odor neutralised environment. By simply placing it near any window the Solar Air Purifier will clean the air silently using its high-efficiency photo-catalysis and active carbon filter to scrub the air of any smoke and smells.

Networked EV Charging Stations; Solar Window Thermometer; 800hp concept hybrid; Mitsubishi i; Boston-Power Teams Up With Saab, Swedes for Electric Cars

First Networked EV Charging Station Installed in Canada Coulumb Technologies was due to open Canadian charging stations in the first quarter of 2009. It looks like they fell a little behind schedule, but the first networked charging stations in Canada are now open for business. And more are planned soon.

The Solar Digital Window Thermometer This thermometer sticks to the window and can easily be removed when you want to clean the window. It’ll let you know the current temperature, as well as stating the high and low temperatures for the day. It’s solar powered and stores away the energy so that it’ll continue to work even at night or in low light situations.

800hp concept hybrid Wow. How’s this for a car of the future: a sleek hybrid with a carbon-fiber chassis, active suspension, a seven-speed transaxle, and a total of 800 horsepower?

Mitsubishi i is a good car with a bad name I love this little car. The badly named i (sorry, it’s true) is an award winning kei car that’s been wildly popular in Japan ever since it was released in 2006. Mitsubishi had a couple on hand – one gas, one electric – during a recent press event and they were kind enough to let us take the gas-powered model 3,000 feet up a mountain.

Battery Maker Boston-Power Teams Up With Saab, Swedes for Electric Cars Boston-Power, a battery maker, has joined a new coalition of companies funded by the Swedish government to develop electric vehicles. The coalition — which includes struggling auto brand Saab, electric power train developer Electroengine in Sweden, project incubator and manager Innovatum Technology Park, and Swedish power industry trade group Power Circle — has built a small number of demonstration models and plans to produce more than 100 vehicles in 2010

Penny Saved Is Penny Earned: Unplug Reminder; Lowe’s Markets Home Energy; Mayor Bloomberg Looks to Danish Offshore Windfarms; Mercedes-Benz begins testing electric SLS supercar; Copenhagen Lights Christmas Tree With Bikes

Penny Saved Is Penny Earned: Unplug Reminder The Ace Plug is like an eco-voice that makes sure you do a job out of it; otherwise it will annoy the hell out of you with its pesky noises, till you yank out the plug.

Lowe’s Markets Home Energy at In-store Destination Points Lowe’s new Energy Central destination points in 21 California stores are positioned to sell consumers on a range of energy saving products at one central location in the store. Competitor Home Depot also features “Eco Options” products and signage in its nearly 1,900 U.S. stores.

NYC Mayor Bloomberg Looks to Danish Offshore Windfarms for Inspiration As the world’s eyes zeroed in on this week’s COP15 climate change talks, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg gazed on a much more placid scene – Denmark’s 209 megawatt Horns Rev 2, the largest offshore wind farm in the world. Bloomberg admired the overhead view as he toured the farm by helicopter, and expressed his desire for the Big Apple to follow suit.

Mercedes-Benz begins testing electric SLS supercar The Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG is nothing if not an exciting car to drive, and the German automaker is reportedly hard at work making sure that the upcoming electric version of the supercar generates the same kind of reaction from its occupants. In an interview with Autocar in the UK, AMG head Volker Mornhinweg assures that the car is now testing on the road and will hit all of its targeted performance objectives.

Copenhagen Lights Christmas Tree With Bikes At the Danish capital’s City Hall Square, 15 to 20 volunteers can sit on stationary bikes located around a massive, decorated tree and pedal away to keep it light, at least during the day. The bikes are connected to electrical tie-ups that ultimately power hundreds of lights on the tree.

Plug-in Prius; Plastic Wrap from CO2; Geothermal waste into lithium; Green roofs suck CO2; “Smart” grid utility problems

Toyota aiming for a plug-in Prius in 2 years Toyota Motor said Monday that it plans to begin commercial sales of its first plug-in hybrid vehicle in about two years, aiming to meet growing demand for fuel-efficient cars. Good, can’t wait!

Kodak to Help to Make Plastic Wrap From CO2 Although it’s made partly from carbon dioxide, Novomer says that its plastic wrap will be better for food. The company’s polypropylene carbonate (PPC) – which consists of 50 percent fossil fuels and 50 percent carbon dioxide – provides a better barrier against oxygen than traditional PPC.

Geothermal waste water could be domestic lithium source Unlike wind and solar, geothermal tends to be a lot more consistent than the sun or flow of air. It now looks like geothermal power could have another potential benefit: waste water from at least one geothermal plant in central California is rich in lithium.

Green Roofs Suck CO2 There is a lot to like about green roofs; they help keep cities cool, create habitat for birds and insects, provide wonderful amenities and just look so good on google earth. But do they actually sequester any CO2?

‘Smart’ Electric Utility Meters Prompts Revolt Some consumers argue that the meters are logging far more kilowatt hours than they believe they are using. And many find it unfair that they will begin to pay immediately for the new meters through higher rates, when the promised savings could be years away.

Energy efficiency displays; Carbon Storage on Public Lands; Stoplight Timer for red lights; Honda P-NUT compact; Reduced-cost lithium-ion battery

Millions of homes to get energy efficiency displays The days of learning about your electricity consumption once a month are the on the wane. Driven by consumer interest in energy and utility smart-grid programs, home energy information displays are poised to enter people’s kitchens and living rooms in large numbers over the next few years.

Carbon Storage on Public Lands Government-owned land must play a greater role in limiting carbon emissions, both through carbon capture and storage and increased renewable energy generation, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said on Thursday.

Eko Stoplight Timer for Road Traffic Lights Industrial Designer Damjan Stanković has designed a simple, but very practical system for helping drivers to save fuel and drive a little more efficiently. The idea is a countdown timer that encircles a standard red stop-light. The idea means that drivers can tell how long it will be before the red light changes to amber and then green. This is a fantastic idea.

Honda P-NUT compact concept vehicle Honda took the wraps off its latest concept car this week debuting the new, hilariously named, P-NUT (Personal-Neo Urban Transport). The compact car is designed to accommodate a hybrid system or an electric engine for transport within major metropolitan areas.

Reduced-cost lithium-ion battery Ricardo and Qinetiq announced a new technology to produce cheaper lithium-ion batteries this week. Called Red Lion, the key to their claimed achievement is a new chemistry inside the cells. Instead of using cobalt cells, Red Lion batteries use iron sulphide which have an added benefit of weight reduction of about 20 percent

Solar Power System Tracks the Sun; Chevy Volts to arrive early?; Green Products at CES; Fuel cell boat; AT&T Sustainability Advisory Council

Solar Power System Tracks the Sun Mendocino College in Ukiah, California, will now be saving $14.9 million in electricity costs over the next 25 years, thanks to a just-installed solar power system with sun-tracking technology.

Chevy Volts to arrive early? Might the Chevy Volt get coaxed into customer hands earlier than November 2010? Could be, if a new deal to the Volt team worth $100 million from GM’s large cash fund (seriously, GM apparently has $46.2 billion to spend) works as planned.

Green Products at the Consumer Electronics Show The Consumer Electronics Show 2010 is in just a few weeks. It’s the biggest tradeshow for consumer electronics, and it’s dedicating more space this year for green innovation.

Fuel cell boat cruises Amsterdam’s canals Emitting only water vapour and gliding silently through Amsterdam’s centuries-old canals, a canal boat — a popular tourist attraction — powered by fuel cells made its debut cruise on Wednesday.

AT&T Forms Sustainability Advisory Council Fresh off hiring an energy director to help it reduce its carbon footprint, AT&T now is moving ahead with the creation of a sustainability advisory council. The new business advisory council will be comprised of AT&T staff, as well as third parties including the Carbon Disclosure Project, Cisco Systems, The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, the University of Colorado Denver, and University of Texas at Austin.

Solar plant in Md; Bolivia has Enough Lithium; Deep-Seawater Air Conditioning System; U.S. Patent Office to Speed Up Process for Green Companies; Audi e-tron

Constellation to build solar plant in Md. Constellation Energy Group, Inc. said Tuesday it would build a solar power plant in Maryland that will be the state’s largest when completed in 2012.

Bolivia has Enough Lithium for 4.8 Billion Electric Cars According to the USGS, Bolivia has 35% of the world’s lithium resources, and since in the coming years, electric cars and plug-in hybrids that use lithium-ion batteries are expected to greatly increase in numbers, this could mean big changes for Bolivia, South-America’s poorest country.

Deep-Seawater Air Conditioning System to Cool Honolulu Frigid seawater pumped in from the ocean’s depths will soon help cool more than half of the buildings in Honolulu’s downtown.

U.S. Patent Office to Speed Up Process for Green Companies The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will accelerate the process for obtaining a green technology patent in an effort to spur the development of a renewable business here. Right now, it takes about 40 months to get a decision from the USPTO. The office will try to reduce that to around 12 months.

Audi e-tron sales to be limited to 1,000 units Audi may not be positioning itself as a “green brand,” but it’s still putting a rather big toe into the environmentally-friendly waters of electric sportscars with its R8-based e-tron, which is reportedly headed for production in 2012.

To keep the weight of the car down, the chassis is tubular, as in racing car engines and motorcycles, to produce strength at a very light weight. And the body is composed of a fibre-glass or hemp fibre, which is also incredibly light. Refilling the car will take place at adapted petrol stations to administer compressed air.

From the website:

Two technologies have been developed to meet different needs:

* Single energy compressed air engines
* Dual energy compressed air plus fuel engines

The fruit of more than ten years of researches, MDI’s mono-energy engines operate on a totally eco-friendly basis using compressed air stored at high pressure.

These engines are used on vehicles designed for urban use, backup generators or industrial tractors. They are particularly tailored for applications where the torque has an importance and when an averagely moderate power is needed.

Together with the zero pollution engines, some other versions having the same technical basis have also been created by MDI, they are known as the dual-energy engines. In the case of dual-energy engines, an energetic adjuvant (petrol, diesel, oil, alcohol or gas) is burned in an external continuous combustion chamber. These dual-energy engines have more range and the amount of toxic gases released is very low.

* Less than two Liters per hundred Kilometers (at 90 Km/h for MiniFlowAIR)
* Zero NOx,
* 3 to 4000 times less unburned HC compared to conventional engines.
* 3 times less C02 emissions in comparison to classic engines.

From the looks of it, they have 3 car designs in mind, 1 camper, a bus/delivery van, and then concepts for tractor/generator uses. If they can make this work on a bigger, “whole world” scale, it will certainly be something.

The car is being planned to come in several different model sizes – Family, Van, Taxi, Pick-up, and Mini-Cat, the smallest of the bunch. And while kind of odd-looking compared to the cars on the road today, I would definitely drive one. Hopefully, MDI will get all their manufacturing and licensing permits lined up and start getting these vehicles out into the market!