Can anyone spot a pitiful, power-less elephant anywhere?

Yes indeed, it' s time to break the deafening silence as, all too predictably, not one of the fifty or so Agassi-Israel January news reports we' ve read has connected those most inconvenient of dots ....

Project Better Place : Gaza strip - can you not imagine a 'better place' ?!

See (end of) January reports: "Israeli ' Economic Warfare' to Include Electricity Cuts in Gaza",

"Israel's Supreme Court Upholds Gaza Fuel, Electricity Cuts" and
"New Electricity Cuts Beginning February 7"

To take a leaf out of President Carter' s book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid:
  - if, under apartheid, the South African regime had announced a green, ethical initiative for the production of..er.. organic goats' cheese on Robben Island - just how excitedly and apolitically would you have wanted the world' s media to report the wonderful news?

And one other question that begs to be asked but which no journalist has so far dared to put to Agassi and his Israeli backers:   namely, will the Project' s recharging infrastructure extend to Israel' s 200-plus settlements and outposts in Gaza and the West Bank?
Ooops...

But we can of course imagine a far better place for Shai Agassi's grand EV Project:

Hawaii for instance.

EV Rapid Charge point on Hawaiian Island of Oahu

It's surely a no-brainer:   Hawaii is much closer to home, ever-so slightly less politically charged and a tad more peaceful than Israel and again, unlike that country, is officially an American state(the 50th).
What' s more, the Hawaiian islands did once have an outstanding record of EV enterprise and (pro-)activism - until, that is, electric cars and EV programs were famously killed off in the US around 2003 - eg. see for instance Honolulu Clean Cities Electric Vehicle pages, map of proposed Honolulu Rapid Charge Network and Hyundai-Enova Hawaii EV joint venture.

And Autobloggreen' s Sebastien Blanco agrees with us - see "Why electric car companies should be focused on this one ideal EV market: Hawaii".

(For more on the media' s self-censorship, invisible elephants, non-conspiratorial silences etc
- see Media Lens)

January, 2008

Tata Air? EVUK's Moira G. inspects MDI Air Car in S. France... in 2001(!)

But so much has been said and written about the Tata Nano already
- although, strangely, three weeks "after Bali" no-one seems to be probing the car's precise CO2 emissions -
we'll limit ourselves to reminding everyone that Tata are also planning to manufacture both Guy Negre's MDI Air Car(click image for MDI press release) as well as hybrid and pure electric versions of the Indica saloon over the next couple of years.
Exactly how many "Nanos"/Lakhs each vehicle will sell for is yet to be revealed however.

In the meantime - while a (bio)diesel version of the Nano is in the pipeline, blogs are naturally a-buzzing with calls for a state-of-the-art, price-busting electric version of the Nano.
But so far Ratan Tata has only said this much:

"Down the line, as we widen our range, we will have dressed-up versions with higher-powered engines, diesel engines, automatics and the like. We have a whole bunch of innovations coming along on this platform." (Source Tata.com "The Making of the Nano")

And as the Solartaxi and Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior arrive in Edmund Hillary' s famously green homeland of New Zealand, it's probably not surprising that one of the most balanced Tata Nano reports we have read thus far(and we've browsed at least fifty ) appears in both The Independent(with video) and the New Zealand Herald: "Environmental Concerns Over Cheapest Car".

January, 2008

we've ever clicked on...)

Eco Solutions(Mondays 23.00 GMT) - the new title almost promises the earth - even more so than its earlier incarnation, "Global Challenges".

But one chronic problem with so many erstwhile "green" TV shows has been their conspicuous reluctance to examine environmental(technological, corporate,political) solutions, challenges, roadblocks here in the industrialised West for fear of ruffling corporate and political feathers at home..

Instead, what we are usually offered is a mix of environmental colonialism and eco escapism - BBC World's "Earth Report" being a typical example - where TV crews happily head off to endless exotic locations to preach the green gospel elsewhere - preferring to train their cameras on environmental enterprise and activities in developing countries - solar ovens in Madagascar, micro-finance in India, sustainable farming in Mozambique, irrigation projects in Tanganyika - sound familiar ?
Anyway, we hope this time round viewers will do what they can to prevent CNN' s "Eco Solutions" taking the familiar "third world" route by emailing ideas to:  ecosolutions@cnn.com

Here are a few suggestions we recently dispatched to CNN :

"We'd like to see you putting the spotlight first and foremost on eco solutions and challenges here in the West - in Europe, the US, Australia etc. where per capita carbon footprints are typically 10-20 times what they are in developing countries.
A few suggestions(from 100' s we could rattle off..and may later) :

1) Eco Vox Pop: how about taking a selection of electric bikes and electric scooters/mopeds out into the streets of one or more of Europe's less environmentally futuristic towns and cities - Swindon, Athens, Naples, Benidorm for instance - and asking pedestrians, cardrivers, even people waiting(..and waiting) at bus stops, if they know anything at all about electric 2-wheelers. Have they ever considered them as a logical, fast, low-cost, low-energy(both muscle and grid) transport option - and if not, why not?

Is it a case of :

"Recycle OK! Cycle? No way - Jose !"
- even when an electric motor is doing most or all of the work?

Eco-logical Solutions - rarely seen on UK/EU streets or screens:
 

 
Videos - click images clockwise: Presteigne Ebike Rally 2006, 2.5 KW Spanish-Chinese Bereco scooter("built for two"), Presteigne Rally 2007, Maxdon Electric Motorcycle

And perhaps, CNN, you could arrange to have a petrol moped(preferably with a year or two's piston wear & tear) running and revving near the microphone so the passing populus can more easily see, hear and smell the point of this sidewalk Q&A ? (..a megaphone and oxygen mask may come in handy...)

Then perhaps you could ask - again vox pop-style - whether most people in the West are still making transport choices(ie. car) largely on the basis of such factors as self-image and status? Or perhaps from lack of eco-tech awareness or imagination?
And maybe you could ask this of passers-by:

"If your boss, head-teacher, local MP, vicar, etc were to swap his car for an electric bike or scooter would you see him/her as:

a) An eco hero - if more people were to do the same it would free up road/parking space for me and my car...
b) Odd - an eccentric sad loser who must be suffering fiinancial problems.
c) Someone who wheely walks the walk - who genuinely thinks and acts outside the box - even when outside the boardroom, classrooom etc ... "

2) Or perhaps, CNN, you could investigate, in-depth and fearlessly, why solar panels and solar hot water systems are a far more common sight in Austria and Germany than they are, for example, on the sun-drenched Spanish Costas or throughout most other Mediterranean countries. Are powerful vested interests(energy sector) and weak government still to blame for the gulf between eco rhetoric and eco reality?

3) Finally, CNN, can we propose a discussion involving media "experts" and independent media experts(a very different breed) examining why there are still so few TV shows anywhere in the world with titles like "Eco Solutions" ?

But then again, maybe it would be a whole lot easier just to pack the TV crew off to the airport in the 4x4's and transport them a few thousand miles to magnificent Madagascar to see what the natives(sorry - indigenous people) are up to and take another look at those wonderful solar stoves....

Eco-logical Solutions: where is the oxygen of publicity...the political support...public imagination?(Vehiculos con Ingenio, Malaga)

ecosolutions@cnn.com

September, 2007

  - Ok , it's all in German again of course - but Loremo CEO and founder Gerhard Heilmaier does confirm that an electric version with a range between 160-200 km "will be available at the same time(2010) as the diesel version. "
Yes - a disappointingly low battery range perhaps - but all that could change of course as global competition fuels further Li-ion advances and price reductions ...

Anti-gravity Loremo ?
Is that what it would take for our English-speaking media to break ranks and break their current silence?
Yes, the non-German media have so far conspicuously failed to report the rolling Loremo's Frankfurt debut. You too may have noticed that in the past 10 days or so a Google News search on "Loremo" has dished up nothing at all - nix, nada.
Even Channel 4 online - which did briefly preview the Loremo in August - is also now strangely silent. As are Auto Express and Autocar magazines - and much less surprisingly, our own post-Live Earth BBC.
But this collective silence seems particularly remarkable given the copious coverage devoted to the impressive-looking & sounding ReVolt - sorry ReCharge - and Flextreme concept-only offerings from Volvo-Ford and Opel-GM respectively. Especially given the fact that - like the ZAP-X and Lightning GT EV's - the ReCharge is dependent on PML's in-wheel motor technology actually delivering on its promise : so far only the Loremo has been tested, demonstrated and video' d on the open road and in the real world - but apparently English-speaking audiences just wouldn' t be interested...

September, 2007

"Time for evolution" reads the new strapline at Loremo.com - well ..
"Time for EVolution" has been our clarion call for nearly a decade - ah, yes..what a difference a couple of capitals could make..

Click for new official Blog and NOW ...watch latest video(Sept 8) of Loremo L1 'spied' on the open road..

In just a few days a working prototype of the 11,000 euro, 117 mpg(24% less than the original 157 mpg) (bio-)diesel Loremo L1 is scheduled to appear at the Frankfurt Motor Show(13-23 Sept) and EVeryone - well everyone at the newly revamped official Loremo Forum(English version) and sadly nowhere else - is talking and fantasizing expertly - and almost exclusively in German - about the potential for a long-range, low-cost, fast all-electric Loremo - or E-Loremo.

Click for English Loremo Forum

Many highly-informed and articulate advocates of an electrified Loremo have emerged at the Loremo Forum over the past year or so but none of them can quite match the technical expertise, caustic wit and all-round EV-worldly wisdom of Forum contributor "FourofFour" (don't ask!) whose 300+ km/charge, 200 km/h, quick-charge dream Loremo - battery-life 300,000+ km - would likely cost less than €30,000 Euros(£23,000 ) to put together - even less of course if Loremo could be persuaded to sell donor vehicles minus diesel engine and Heath Robinson ICE-support system(click on artist's impression, right, for details).

But precisely how many man hours it would require to build the Loremo dream