Quiet Revolution:  A steady quiet revolution is starting to happen in more than 100 cities worldwide.  More and more, people are turning in their cars and opting for car sharing program. You might have seen these shared cars with the ZipCar or City CarShare logo on them.  

How it got started: Car sharing first launch in 1987 in Switzerland, then came to North America via Quebec City in 1993. Car sharing is growing over 50% per year today as of January this year, there are approximately 50,000 fewer vehicles congesting our roads and environment, with over 200,000 people sharing roughly 5,000 cars.  

Cool Cars: BMWs, Prius, Volvo, Pickups, MINI convertibles, vans, and

How it works:  Reserve the vehicle you want - by phone or Internet (you can often see them on a map), 24-hours-a-day - that best suits your needs - BMW to van, and use it for a few hours, or a week. Pay per trip (typically $5 - 8 per hour), and never have to pay for repairs, insurance, gas, or monthly parking again.

Find out if a share car is right for you. We found is not only good to you personally, it's also supports your community and aids the environment.  Here's how...

Why Car Sharing is Good for You:
- Cheaper than owning a car if you drive less than 10,000 miles per year.
- Eliminates car payments, maintenance, insurance, and best of all, you don't have to shell out for ghastly gasoline prices; it's included! (AAA finds the typical medium size car costs around 60 cents per mile to operate.)
- Encourages you to chose healthier alternatives for transportation such as biking or walking
- Get to drive new and different models each time

Why Car Sharing is Good for Your Local Economy:
- Encourages you to shop locally
- Leverages local public transportation - decongesting the roadways and parking

Good for the Environment:
- Reduces energy inefficiencies by encouraging you to combine trips & plan routes since you are paying by the hour
- Typically takes 6 cars off the road (and parking) per share car
- Typical share-car drivers reduce their driving 50%
- Less greenhouse gas emissions and particluates due to the phase out of older cars in exchange for more stringent pollution controls
- Preserves more green spaces because fewer parking spaces are required for the same number of people

Find a share car near you here.

Tags: Car Sharing, Vehicle

The year is 1907. The city is London where a fleet of 20 electric powered buses glides silently between the horse-drawn past and the noisy, dirty and unreliable future. Shortly thereafter, they disappeared despite being popular with passengers, more reliable and cost effective than motor buses. Why?

Yet a full century later, remarkably similar buses using similar "battery swap" technology from EVAmerica and others are just beginning to be used in American cities such as Chattanooga and Santa Barbara.

As this week's Economist points out, buses could have been predominantly be electric if the Electrobus Company had not been managed with WorldCom-like ethics complete with a failed IPO, payments to fake patent holders and insider dealing.

Why now? Electric buses require less energy because it is generated in more efficient plants than gasoline or diesel motors. Electric buses have always had lower maintenance costs because they don't have conventional transmissions and braking is electric. But new battery technology is now giving electric buses greater range than the 40 miles achieved by Electrobus in 1907

Trolley bus fleets powered by overhead wires are also growing once again with San Francisco's MUNI operating a fleet of 333 mostly new Czech-built buses city wide, up from 270 just a few years ago. This is part of MUNI's goal to achieve zero emissions by 2020.

Tags: Electric Vehicle, Vehicle