Dirty Coal statistic of the day

Air pollution kills tens of thousands annually in smog-choked Southern California. [Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons Licensed Photo]

It often seems as if most people don't care about air pollution. This despite the fact that it kills tens of thousands of people in the U.S. every year.

This might be because people don't see air pollution -- although, of course, all it takes to see air pollution is a diesel powered truck roaring by.

Whatever the reason that the real dangers of air pollution don't appear to register for many Americans, there are some places in the U.S., and in the world, where air pollution is so bad, it's impossible to ignore.

A lifelong fan of solar, Phil Blackwood got a MINI E and then put up a 9.4 kW home solar system so that he could power it -- and his home -- with sun. [Photo Courtesy of Phil Blackwood]

Phil Blackwood had been celebrating solar from afar for years.

On the drive home from work, he’d eye homes with solar and wish he had a sleek, shiny PV array for his Lincroft, New Jersey home.

However, while many solar gawkers jealously eye others’ home solar systems from inside a gasoline-powered car, for the past year or so Blackwood wasn’t driving past local PV systems in an average vehicle. He was zipping by in a car that can actually run on the energy produced by a home solar array – a MINI E, an electric prototype version of BMW’s MINI.

This picture of a Roadster speeding by a wind farm is the first thing visitors to the Tesla Motors web site see. [Photo Credit: Tesla Motors]

The photo above, of a Tesla Roadster speeding by a wind turbine farm, captures perfectly the revolutionary potential of EVs.

Unlike gasoline powered cars, which will never have the capacity to plug into wind, solar, geothermal, hydro and other forms of renewable energy, EVs can tap these air pollution free sources directly.

This is a truly radical advantage for EVs.

The Venturi Buckeye Bullet.

Think electric vehicles are S-L-O-W, as in golf-cart slow?

Think again.

A high-speed battery electric vehicle designed and built by engineering students at Ohio State University recently hit 307 miles per hour in a test at the world famous Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.