What’s your carfun footprint? Don’t know what a carfun footprint is? Well, me neither until Blair showed me this AMAZING MINI ad in the September issue of Ode.

From the insert:

“At MINI, we believe that the letters RPM can play nice with the letters MPG. That it’s possible to hug trees and corners at the same time. And that adrenaline is a renewable resource. We believe having fun on the road it not only still possible, it’s responsibly attainable. It is our MINIMALIST philosophy of doing more with less that has led us to what we like to call the Carfun Footprint.”

Brilliant.

And your Carfun Footprint is just that: the measure of how fun your car is versus its environmental impact. Let’s a test drive…

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In Danville, California, a construction company is building a tract of green luxury homes - so green, in fact, that there’s a Prius waiting for you in the garage if you buy one of these properties.  Clarum Homes is building 10 homes all valued around $2 million, and are being certified by LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), a set of standards from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The Contra Costa Times tells us that, “The homes use solar power, with solar hot water heaters, special heating and cooling systems, Web-based irrigation controllers and a host of other features.”  And, did we mention, they’re just throwing in a Prius?  This kind of reminds me of how these days Ticketmaster gives you a free iTunes download if you buy a ticket.  Sure, we’ve tacked on 168% in convenience fees, but here’s a 99 cent download.

Regardless, the fact that there’s enough of a demand for these homes in the top one percent is a good thing.  And, somehow, I doubt there’s actually a lot of similarities in paying $32 for a $13 concert ticket, and $2 million for a 3,600 square foot home.  Anyhow, you can takepart here to learn some various ways you can green your home, just in case you don’t have the money to drop on a luxury home/Prius combo.

Earlier this week, we mentioned that Toyota would be making a solar-powered Prius starting next year. In other exciting and related news, Toyota has also announced that the first Prius plant in the United States will be operational in 2010. At the same time, the automaker has announced that production on trucks and SUVs will be suspeneded for three months in order to clear out a backlog of unsold vehicles. From the Reuters article:

The unusual and costly moves by Toyota, now the global auto sales leader, underscored the pressure across the industry as major automakers scuttle truck production and take steps to ramp up output of passenger cars to keep up with a dramatic shift in US buying patterns.

These two news items point to the increased value consumers are placing on greener cars as the price of gas climbs ever higher.

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It’s official: Toyota will offer a solar panel-powered Prius in 2009. In these days of high fuel prices and environmental concerns, this silver lining in the cloud of car-created CO2 is long overdue. According to Gizmodo, the solar panels will be offered on the next generation of the high-end Prius hybrid model. Interestingly enough, the panels will even power the air conditioning. Toyota will be the first major automaker to go solar with their vehicles.

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A 100 Mile Per Gallon automobile is being tested by scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado. The car is basically an after market assembly of Toyota Prius in which scientists added extra Lithium Ion batteries capable of being plugged into the power grid for recharging along with solar panels on the roof of the car for some extra juice. These two add ons will serve to power the Prius along with its already existing batteries and gasoline tank in its hybrid motor power system.

The result yields a car that barely consumes any gas whatsoever for its first sixty miles on the road, yielding gasoline mileage of approximately 100 mpg per tank. Plus with the average commuter spending only 30 miles on the road per day, the experimental model would hardly ever need to be filled up at all as long as it was plugged into the wall each night for recharging.

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The green consumer movement is taking markets by storm, proving that eco-conscious purchasing is anything but a passing fancy. Curious about how Americans rank their top green brands? A 2008 ImagePower Green Brands survey shows which companies American consumers think are the “greenest,” and how they stack up against one another. Body care and grocery products came out on top, with travel and energy corps struggling a bit to keep up. Check out the complete ranked list here:

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If simply owning a Prius isn’t enough satisfaction these days because now everyone else has one (I hear it’s actually a law in Los Angeles you have to own at least one), now you can Prius to the max by replacing your hybrid’s roof with solar panels to get that extra boost of non-gasoline power.

The roof panels are made by a company called SEV, and are compatible with the 2004 through 2006 models of the Toyota car.

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If you’ve ever ridden in a hybrid car, I’m sure you’ve noticed the peculiar silence when the engine starts, and the way it simply “rolls” onto the road ““ but are hybrids too quiet for their own good? Some pedestrians, and particularly blind pedestrians, say that they are.

Jana Littrel, who is blind, had her foot run over by a Toyota Prius while walking through a bank parking lot in the East Bay town of Albany a year ago. Although she managed to avoid injury, Jana says the incident has put her on edge. So far, no deaths or serious injuries have been attributed to hybrids. Still, The National Federation for the Blind is currently working toward getting hybrid automobile manufacturers to install a “noise emitting device” so that blind pedestrians, as well as joggers, children, animals, and cyclists can be made aware of the oncoming vehicle.

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