Hybrid cars could have some competition from another eco-friendly vehicle, the electric car, in the coming months if Mitsubishi has it’s way. Of course it depends on you, as Mitsubishi plans on brining a only a few of their electric cars to the US to see if there is a viable mass market for them here in the states.

This is pretty exciting considering that there is only one company selling electric cars in the US these days, Tesla. They make the 100,000 dollar Roadster, which is no doubt out of most folks price range. In Japan, Mistubishi’s MiEV, goes for between 45,000-50,000 (not counting a 15,000 government incentive) which seems much more reasonable.

Also getting ready for the electric car market is Nissan and General Motors, who plan on releasing “the volt” in 2010.

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Ah, SUVs. As much as they get a bad rap, I’ve got no complaints with one that emits zero emissions, particularly when they’re as cute as the new Phoenix Motorcar. Just look at that thing! Tell me you can’t see yourself driving to Malibu in it with a giant beach ball in the back.

Phoenix uses a lithium titanate, non-toxic battery pack to fuel their new line of sport utility vehicles, which are completely electric, can achieve freeway speed, AND will travel over 100 miles on a single 10-minute charge. Move over Tesla Roadster! Here’s green hero Ed Begley giving his seal of approval at a Phoenix Motorcars event.

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If you want to do a little reading about the oil crisis before you fire up your car and hit the gas, I reccommend heading over to TomDispatch to read Dilip Hiro’s piece called The Current Oil Shock : No Relief in Sight. In it Hiro, author of Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World’s Vanishing Oil Resources, looks at how the “the present oil shock can’t be compared to the three shocks that preceded it and then explores just where the planet is likely to look in the medium term for energy (and global warming) relief.”

He also explores why it is so important for the West to take charge:

When it comes to energy conservation, there is a far greater opportunity for saving in the affluent societies of the West than anywhere else in the world. An average American uses twice as much oil as a Briton, a Briton twice as much as a Russian, and a Russian eight times as much as an Indian. It was therefore perverse of U.S. energy secretary Sam Bodman to focus on the way the Chinese and Indian governments subsidize oil products to provide relief to their citizens — and to urge their energy ministers to cut those subsidies to ‘reduce demand.’

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We all know that Matt Damon likes his car chase scenes fast and furious. (Bourne Ultimatum scene | Damon talking about those stunts) So it was no surprise that Damon was one of the first in line to buy a Tesla Roadster — the soon-to-be-released electric car that also happens to be one of the fastest-accelerating street-legal vehicles on the planet.

“Next year I’m getting a Tesla Roadster,” he told press last year, “Which I’m very, very excited about. It’s an electric car, gets about 250 miles to the charge and is fast as hell!”

Damon got to test drive one on Sunday. A blogger from Autofiends.com happened to be on hand when Damon pulled up to a Coffee Bean in Studio City (North Los Angeles), CA in a light blue Tesla prototype. Cool part: Damon was stoked to chat about his new joy ride. (click for story and more pix)

(via Ecorazzi)

Energy reporter for The Economist, Vijay Vaitheeswaran, says that cars are the solution, not the problem, in our battle against global warming. Vaitheeswaran doesn’t think getting Americans to give up their vehicles is the answer, and in fact, says a world without cars would be a “a dim, joyless place with much-diminished freedom, mobility, and prosperity.”

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Oh, no! I just spent, like, the last forty years idolizing Neil Young, and now he says he doesn’t think music can really make a difference in the world. At the Berlin film festival today, where he presented the documentary “CSNY/Déjà Vu”, about his 2006 anti-war concert tour, he told the AFP:

“I know that the time when music could change the world is past. I really doubt that a single song can make a difference. It is a reality.”

He may””unlike Pete Seeger–be pessimistic about the power of song, but Young doesn’t really seem ready to give up on being an agent of change. He’s working on a new film called “Repowering The American Dream,” a documentary about the ‘59 Lincoln he’s converted to a plug-in hybrid, according to the Daily Green, which quotes a more optimistic-sounding Young:

“By drawing on entrepreneurial companies’ advanced technology and good old American ingenuity, we intend to transform one of the largest and heaviest gas guzzling vehicles of our generation into a highly energy efficient vehicle, and demonstrate to the American public that we can re-power the American dream by demanding environmentally-friendly vehicles now.”

Sounds like Young is just looking for new ways to electrify the electorate. Long may he run.

Young gives other musicians who want to express their opinion on the war and related topics a chance to be heard on his Living With War website; give them a listen here  if you’d like to hear from folks who still believe music can make a difference. 

Andrew Angellotti lives about an hour north of Detroit, but he’s light years ahead of General Motors when it comes to electric cars. Angellotti, who’s 16 years old, took the $6,000 he saved up working as a lifeguard and, following instructions he found on the Internet, spent it converting a 1988 Mazda pick-up truck to run on golf-cart batteries.

General Motors hopes to have an electric vehicle on the market by 2010. Of course, they already had an electric car, the EV1, but they pulled the plug on it for all the nefarious reasons spelled out in that true-life tale of vehicular homicide, Who Killed the Electric Car?

As Angelotti told The Environment Report, “the message I’m trying to send is, if a kid can build an electric car, why isn’t GM doing it? They can do it. They’re just not.”

To learn more about electric cars, check out electricvehiclesite.com.