photo: Mini USA

You probably heard or read about last week’s announcement that applications for the Mini E field test had been opened and that 500 people in the Los Angeles and New York metro areas would be participating.

photo: Native American Biofuels

Considering that many of its higher profile vehicles really suck fuel like there’s no tomorrow, you may not think that the US military concerned itself much with reducing fuel usage, but based on a recent announcement that’s apparently not the case.

Electric Porsche 911
Ruf Automobile GmbH, a German automotive company that has been tuning Porsches for a long time, will make an electric version of the Porsche 911 called the eRUF Model A.

Under the hood, a 150kW (201hp) brushless three phase A/C electric motor that can generate an impressive 480 lb.-ft. of torque and a lithium-ion iron-phosphate battery pack made of 96 160Ah Axeon cells and a sophisticated monitoring system to make sure it doesn't overheat.

photo: Maury Landsman

While I’m not sure that the claims by the owners of Castello Monte Vibiano Vecchio olive oil farm that they will be the first farm anywhere to reduce their net carbon emissions to zero, without using offsite carbon offsetting projects, are be entirely true—I’d be surprised that some small farm hasn’t tried to do the same thing, just not publicized it as well—the efforts by the owners of this Umbrian farm are pretty interesting: ...

Update on BMW's Plans
Back in July we reported on BMW's plans to make 500 electric Mini Coopers available in the California market.

photo: Matthew McDermott

Though most of the time when TreeHugger covers electric cars, we’re talking about hybrids, plug-in electric concept vehicles—basically substitutes for vehicles now powered by fossil fuels—some of which even putting the Porsche 911 to shame in terms of speed.