Green Car is a webite that aims to be a "source for information on electric cars, hybrids and more."  This is an extremely helpful web site, especially for someone like me, who has not really kept up with environmental issues but at the same time knows that using too much gas is really bad.  To follow are some of the highlights, but before I get to those, I want to point out one extreme negative: there are so many ads that I initially can't distinguish them from the actual content.  I realize folks gotta make that cash, but come one.  How about some restraint?  Other than that though, this website is a great find.  The highlights are divided into their respective pages.  

Find a Car

Maybe you are overwhelmed by the flood of hybrids coming onto the market and don't even know where to start looking.  Maybe all of the political and ethical issues surrounding hybrids and the environment have sort of turned you into a binge gasoline user out of spite, and so you never even bothered to find out about them.  Now you can get some real information without commiting to worship mother earth!  You can search by make, model, type (small car, midsize car, suv, etc), year, fuel economy and EPA rating.  The results returned tell you the mpg (city, highway, combined), along with the EPA rating.  

Technology

"The desire to lessen environmental impacts and reduce oil dependence is spurring interest in alternative fuels and green technologies."  This is what it says at the top of the screen, and of course this is true.  But maybe you've heard all kinds of conflicting information about these different alternative fuels.  Do they really work?  And what's more, how on earth would you ever know amidst the slew of Hybrid cars currently on the market which cars were what?  Most of us just throw things like "green" and "hybrid" and "electric car" into the same utility junk drawer, but here each type is adequately explained.  Finally, what is best about this page is that clicking on each fuel type will also bring up a list of the cars that utilize each.  Now we can finally organize our green junk drawer!  

Fueling Stations

"Use our alternative fueling station locator to find stations offering biodiesel, compressed natural gas, electricity, ethanol, hydrogen, liquefied natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas."  If you've ever used a "storefinder" on a website, this will be familiar to you.  First you select your fuel type (listed above), enter the city, state, or zip, and select a radius within which to show the results.  Now you can find that hippy fuel you've been lookin for with ease, although if you live in certain areas you may have to expand your search quite a bit.  For example, there was only a UHAUL within 5 miles of my zipcode.  Suffice it to say, the alternative fuel scene is still in its infancy, as indicated by the word "alternative."  

So go to www.greencar.com and get your surf on!  This site is informative with lots of content (much more than in this review), and as any good website should do, provides a jumping off point for exploring many different avenues (alternative fuel research, car buying, gas station finding, etc).  

Americans are going to be holding onto their new cars longer, according to this article reporting from a survey by AutoPacific, "The number of new-car buyers planning to keep their rides more than four years has risen to 59 percent, according to a study released Tuesday by California marketing research firm AutoPacific. That's an increase from last year, when about 45 percent of new buyers intended to wait more than four years for their next purchase, and it's up from 2005's tally of 46 percent."  I don't know about anyone else, but these numbers are shocking to me.  Not because they are so low, but because they are so high!  I can't believe that ONLY 59% of people plan to keep their cars longer than 4 years.  Is it that normal to buy a brand new automobile?  Is it really cutting edge to hold onto a 4 year old vehicle?  In my world, a 4 year old vehicle is considered brand spankin new.  In fact, its not until a particular vehicle begins making appearances on syndicated television that it should be considered old...and even then its considered "vintage" and worth having simply to be seen in.  Its statistics like the ones mentioned in this article that make me realize two things: 1. How much money I don't have in comparison to most Americans, or at the very least how much more unwilling I am to buy a new car compared to most, and 2. How propped up the auto industry has been by consumer willingness/ability to buy new crap.  This of course is true of any industry nowadays, and as long as more is ALWAYS better, people (and industry) will suffer when there isn't much to speak of. 

Left Lane has a great feature for keeping up with whats coming down the pipeline on their "future cars" page.  

This is a neat video, and if you know anything about whats going on in here, and understand the narrator's thick british accent, maybe you can figure out something useful.  According to the title, you can add 143 miles to a tank of gas!

Roadloans is not responsible for any explosions related to any misapplications of what is described within this video.