Solar statistic of the day

A plug-in hybrid Prius is parked under the solar-powered plug-in station at the Orlando Utilities Commission building in Orlando, Fla.

ORLANDO, Fla. - The City of Orlando has entered into a partnership with Renault -Nissan to make the city EV-friendly by installing a network of public and private charging stations – including a solar-powered one.

The solar-powered charging station -- Orlando’s first -- gets its electricity from an array of 16 photovoltaic panels that generate up to 2.8 kilowatts of electricity. It is being used to charge plug-in hybrid vehicles in the Orlando Utilities Commission (OUC) fleet.

You might not know his name and you probably have never met him, but chances are that if you’ve ever done a little bit of searching for information on electric vehicles on the Internet you’ve landed on his web site.

Meet Darell Dickey, self-described “EV Nut” and founder of the highly trafficked website EVnut.com.

The recently installed solar system at the Santa Barbara Airport rental car facility helps to shade cars while providing energy.

The Santa Barbara Airport’s recently completed rental car service facility is covering about three-quarters of its energy use via an on-site 159 kW solar carport system consisting of 816 photovoltaic panels.

The system not only provides energy for the rental car facility but also shades cars from the sun.

Cleaner air translates into fewer ear infections -- and less suffering -- for children, according to a recently published study.

Here's another reason to solar-charge your next car: Cleaner air means healthier ears for kids.

A new study by researchers at UCLA and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston suggests that improvements in air quality over the past decade have resulted in fewer cases of ear infections in children.

What other drivers see when they're behind our 1992 Integra: An ad for pollution free driving!

Okay, so I didn’t quite manage to center the words and some of the letters are a bit crooked, but the advertisements I recently stuck onto the back of our two cars using weather-proof sticky letters do what they need to do: Advertise the revolutionary solar-EV/PHEV synergy to the world.

Well, maybe not to the entire world, though I wish I could do that!

While there's a lot of hype about the Chevy Volt's upcoming release in the U.S., GM might do better to focus its push to sell PHEVs in China instead based on the results of a recent survey.

How green a car is matters considerably less to American consumers than consumers in China and Japan, according to an international study recently published by Survey Sampling International (SSI).

The study found that China had the highest interest in moving toward alternative energy vehicles - hybrids powered by both gasoline and electricity. Half of those interested in purchasing an alternative energy vehicle said they will definitely select an eco-car for their next automobile purchase.