It's too darn cold to go in the shop, and I have a lot of work to do. To hit our goal of 100 miles per gallon, we have to get MAX's drag down by about a third, and the only way to get there is streamlining. And to hit my personal budget goal (I want MAX to be a car you can reproduce at home for less than $10,000), MAX needs a simple body.

Jack McCornack

The practical problem with a slick sleek full fiberglass body is it's going to blow the budget — maybe not for me, 'cause I've built car bodies before and I'm willing to pay myself 35 cents an hour to build another one, but the Michelangelo technique (take a big rock and knock off everything that doesn't look like David) works better on paper than it does in practice. A full body from a commercial fiberglasser is going to cost at least few thousand, and if you don't live on the West Coast, how are you going to get it home? So we're going to try simple first ... or to quote Albert Einstein, “as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

The idea is fiberglass fenders — which have to be a bit complicated — with complex curves to direct the air over and around them, joined together by sheet metal body panels with simple curves. And thanks to the miracle of modern technology, I can work out the details in a warm house instead of a cold shop.

This particular miracle is Rhinoceros, a 3D modeling program with a funny name. When I build a real body to match the electronic/virtual body, I'll know the parts fit before I fit them.

Another advantage of working electronically ... you remember a couple months ago when I mentioned the crew from the Science Channel shooting a Brink segment about us? It'll be on tomorrow (Friday, Jan. 30), and they wanted some graphics right away of what MAX will look like when it's done. Well, maybe it'll look like this, kinda. Except with a roof.

P.S. I saw an ad for the Brink episode and it looks like it'll be fun. To look up when it will show in your neck of the woods, visit the Brink website.

Browse previous MAX Updates.

Read the introductory MAX article, Here Comes the 100-mpg Car.

Visit the Kinetic Vehicles website for more technical details on MAX.

Attainable changes are headed our way. A decrease in energy consumption rates is now in the foreseeable future as long as the United States follows current energy efficiency programs. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) released an analysis this week concluding that the United States could potentially decrease its energy consumption growth by 22 percent in the next 20 years. The analysis took into account the existing market patterns, funding complications and the United States’ increasing energy consumption.

According to the EPRI’s press release, the study used projections of growth in electricity usage by residential, commercial and industrial sectors collected by the Energy Information Association (EIA).

Arshad Mansoor, vice president of Power Delivery and Utilization for EPRI, explains that the institute’s study will provide vital information for policymakers, utility companies and regulators when it comes to making important decisions about how to make effective changes in our energy systems.

You can download the EPRI report and its executive summary at www.epri.com.

While they provide a beautiful, clear picture, plasma screen televisions are a huge detriment to the environment, and California could be the first state to ban them. Earlier this month state regulators in California began drafting a plan to remove all plasma screen televisions from retail shelves. Plasma screen and LCD TVs gluttonize electricity and account for 10 percent of all Californians’ electric bills, according to the Los Angeles Times. The new rules, which are expected to go into effect by mid-2009, would only give consumers the option of choosing a more energy-efficient model.

Last year California was ranked number one in energy efficiency by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. Officials say the standards, once fully in place, would reduce the state's annual energy needs by an amount equivalent to the power consumed by 86,400 homes. The LA Times says that during peak TV viewing times, such as during the Super Bowl, the electricity used to power those TVs is the same amount used to power the San Onofre nuclear power station at full capacity. 

But California isn’t the only place banning plasma screens from stores. The European Union is also putting a ban on certain energy-draining plasma screen televisions. The Daily Mail says the legislation should pass this spring and will remove the most energy-consuming televisions from store shelves and will place a label on all other TVs encouraging energy efficient choices.

President Barack Obama signed an executive order Monday morning, asking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reconsider California’s request to create its own limits on automobile carbon dioxide emissions. The state’s goal is to reduce emissions by 30 percent by 2016. To make that goal, automakers would be required to manufacture automobiles that get better mileage. While the state’s requirements would be stricter than any national standard, 13 other states may follow California’s lead.

In his address on the executive order, he said, “I want to be clear from the beginning of this administration that we have made our choice. America will not be held hostage to the dwindling resources, hostile regimes and a warming planet.” Along with the EPA request, Obama asked that automakers enhance their fuel efficiency standards nationwide for 2011. He also is looking for more ways that federal agencies can save energy.

According to Union of Concerned Scientists President Kevin Knobloch, "This is the first of a number of campaign promises President Obama needs to fulfill when it comes to bolstering our economy and protecting the environment. Cleaner cars will strengthen our domestic auto industry. Cutting emissions from the transportation sector is critical to avoiding the worst consequences of global warming. By directing the Department of Transportation to revisit federal fuel economy standards, Obama has an opportunity to make even greater gains in cutting our oil consumption and saving consumers money at the pump.”

You can watch more of what Obama said in the video below.

Passive House is a specific approach to energy efficient homes, originating in Germany (Passivhaus). It has lead to far more units of housing, at lower energy consumption (verified by measurement), than for any other design movement in recent history. Estimates range from 6,000 to over 15,000 units built worldwide, with a handful completed in the United States so far, under the guidance of the Passive House Institute. The approach combines the Passive House Standard, which is the most stringent residential energy efficiency standard in the world, with the Passive House Planning Package, calculation software that accurately predicts the energy use of the proposed design while greatly simplifying the process.

Passive House Design Principles

Although the Passive House standard addresses a home’s total energy consumption, the core focus of its approach is to greatly reduce energy demand for heating. In Germany, heating is the bulk of the problem (as it is in most of the United States), and it’s the issue that building design can do the most about (as opposed to electricity consumption by appliances).

Passive House is not limited to one climate type, and recent efforts are expanding its application to cooling climates. Heating energy savings are achieved using simple passive solar design principles (in fact, much of the research behind Passive House was conducted on passive solar work in the United States). The basic measures are:

• Superinsulation, with careful attention to eliminating weak spots (thermal bridges)
• Extreme air tightness, at about one-third the air leakage of current U.S. best practice
• Window selection and orientation for passive solar heating in winter
• Mechanical ventilation with highly effective heat recovery

The use of these simple, passive measures means that a Passive House is quite affordable compared to its peers. It also means that it won’t “break.” In the event of an extended fuel outage, it will maintain survivable — if not downright comfortable — temperatures.

The Passive House Standard

The heating energy aspect of the Passive House standard is that the building shall demand no more than 15 kWh per square meter of heating energy annually (4.8 kbtu per square foot). Compared to existing housing in the Northeast, this is a savings of around 90 percent.

Why this metric? A common approach to making energy-efficient building more economical is to reduce heating needs to the point that some of the heating equipment can be eliminated, winning back some of the extra costs for insulating, air tightening, etc. This approach takes many forms, but the specific target for the original Passivhaus concept was to reduce the worst-case heating load to the point that it could be met simply by putting a small heater in the main supply duct of the fresh air ventilation system (not all Passive Houses are heated this way today). The outcome of meeting this target was that the annual heating energy demand of the house would end up around the 15 kWh mark. The resulting heating system is, in a typical German home or mid-20th century American home, equivalent in power to a small hair drier (or two small hair driers in a contemporary American home, ahem...)

David White practices consulting, design, and teaching on energy efficiency and related topics in buildings. He lives in New York City. You can contact him at

Look for additional blogs in the future when he'll write more specifically on a variety of topics related to Passive Houses. Do you have a topic you'd like him to cover? Suggest it in the comments section below.

PHOTO BY ISTOCKPHOTO/OLAF LOOSE

Sure, most people know that you can produce electricity with photovoltaic (PV) panels. But have you ever wondered exactly how solar cells generate electricity?

There’s a great, very detailed explanation of the whole process on the How Stuff Works website.

Or, here’s another idea. You can skip the article and jump straight to this solar cell quiz (also from How Stuff Works). You can learn a lot just by guessing, because the quiz format explains the answer right after each question.

If you're brave enough to share your quiz score (and whether or not you read the article) post it in the comments section below. My quiz score was 7/10 after reading the article. Think you can beat that? Go ahead, give it your best shot!

There is a reason to stay hopeful about the economy even though people across the country continue to get laid off. Last week, the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) released a detailed study on the reality of green jobs. It reports that up to 37 million jobs from renewable energy can be found in the United States by 2030. Of course, these jobs will only open up if the necessary leadership, research, development and public policy falls into place. For now, read the report here. And maybe you’ll be able to sleep a little easier tonight.

PHOTO BY OWEN GEIGER

Owen Geiger of Earthbagbuilding.com built an earthbag dome with a green roof and wrote an article about it for Mother Earth News. Green roofs have several positive aspects:

• They retain water from precipitation instead of creating problems with runoff.
• They reduce the cooling load on a building and reduce the "heat island effect" in cities.
• They provide extra insulation.

The Huffington Post asked readers to submit photos of green roofs. Geiger submitted a photo of the earthbag dome, and it made the top 10! Now it's time to make it No. 1! You can vote for your favorite here (hint: the earthbag dome is photo No. 9).

Earthbag construction is a low-cost method of making sturdy, long-lasting buildings. The do-it-yourself article explaining the process of this method is scheduled for the August/September 2009 issue of Mother Earth News.

The Saturday before The EG, Mother Earth News sent a photojournalist down to make sure MAX was for real (it's amazing the things I can do with Photoshop... ). Katherine Loeck is a couple of generations younger than me, so sports car nostalgia isn't part of her program (nostalgia isn't what it used to be, I'll tell you...) but she dug MAX anyway.

She was having so much fun in the passenger's seat that I said, “You should drive.” Then she said she'd love to, but she didn't know how to drive a stick shift.

“Really?”

Yes, really. She'd tried driving her dad's 'Vette once but that hadn't gone well.

I would imagine it hadn't. A Corvette does not seem like an ideal driver's ed car. It's heavy, the clutch is heavy, and there's only a small difference in throttle pedal position between too-little-and-stalled-the-engine and too-much-and-smoking-the-tires.

“Perfect!” said I. “MAX is a perfect way to learn to drive a stick. Every high school should have one.”

MAX is light, the engine puts out huge torque at low rpm, the clutch is easy to push, and with the governor limiting the engine to 3000 rpm and 32 horsepower, it's not going to get away from you if you give it too much throttle. So Katherine and I swapped seats.

Photo by Jack McCornack

“Don't bother with the throttle, just let the clutch out slowly.”

She did. Chug chug chugchugchug, MAX pulled forward smoothly, idling at walking speed.

“Good, push in the clutch and do it again,” I said. “Uh, push the brake to make it stop.”

She did. She did it again. And again and again, 20 times without stalling the engine. She was wowed by how easy MAX is to operate. I tried not to look surprised but I'll tell you, it was sure different from when I was first learning the clutch/throttle/brakedance some 44 years ago. We moved on to first-to-second shifts, second-to-first downshifts, not bad for Lesson 1.

She's not ready for the street yet, but she will be soon enough; I'm sure we'll do a follow-up to this update when the weather warms up again.

Browse previous MAX Updates.

Read the introductory MAX article, Here Comes the 100-mpg Car.

Visit the Kinetic Vehicles website for more technical details on MAX.

A bill introduced in Congress Wednesday would help drivers retire their old, inefficient cars in exchange for money to help them buy public transportation passes or newer vehicles with better-than-average gas mileage.

The Accelerated Retirement of Inefficient Vehicles Retirement Act of 2009 (ARIVA), introduced by Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), would offer vouchers of up to $4,500 for drivers to retire any vehicle still in drivable condition that has a fuel economy rating of less than 18 miles per gallon.

These vouchers would help make fuel-efficient cars, such as hybrids and electric cars, more affordable for everyone, but especially for those who can least afford high gas prices but also can’t afford to buy a newer vehicle with better mpg.

The bill would require that retired cars be scrapped and that the voucher go toward the purchase of a new or used car that exceeds federal fuel economy standards by at least 25 percent, or toward the use of public transit.  

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) has commended the bill, estimating that 575,000 cars would be retired through the program each year, and that oil savings would reach 46,000 barrels per day by 2013.

You can follow the progress of this bill, H.R.520, through Thomas, the Library of Congress’ legislative information website. And you can read more about ACEEE’s endorsement of ARIVA here, as well as the group’s full report on the bill, Accelerated Retirement of Fuel-Inefficient Vehicles Through Incentives for the Purchase of Fuel-Efficient Vehicles.

If you’d like to speak up in support of ARIVA, contact your state senators and representatives and encourage them to co-sponsor the bill. You can find their contact information on the United States Senate and House of Representatives websites.

PHOTO BY ISTOCKPHOTO/JOEY CHUNG

Here in Kansas we got some unexpected good news this week. There’s new momentum at the state level to pass new regulations to promote renewable energy. (Kansas has lagged behind most other U.S. states on this.) For any fellow Kansans out there, here’s an article from the The Lawrence Journal World with more details.

For others in the United States, here’s how you can find out more about what your state is doing to promote renewable energy. Follow the links below to see how your state compares in two key areas:

1. Does your state have a net metering law?

These laws affect the price homeowners get paid for any electricity they produce. Check out the Department of Energy’s EERE Website for more on how net metering policies work, including this handy map which shows which states have net metering laws. (Hint: All but eight states do.)

2. How about a renewable portfolio standard?  

These are goals the states set to mandate how much of their electricity must come from renewable sources. So far, 24 states have RPS policies. You can find out which ones by checking out this map, as well as this table, to see which states are setting the highest goals. (As usual, California is at the head of the class on renewable energy, but many other states have set ambitious goals.)

I’m looking forward to the day that Kansas is on these lists.

To find out about other renewable energy-related activities that are happening in your state, check out this EERE page of State Activities and Partnerships.

On Monday, Secretary of the Army, Hon. Pete Geren will host an unveiling ceremony for the Army’s new neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs) in Fort Myer, Va.

The NEVs are the first six of 4,000 being leased by the U.S. Army as part of an energy security initiative. The Army will eventually have electric vehicles on 40 bases.

NEVs are light-weight battery-powered cars and trucks with a maximum speed of 35 mph. The cars will be used exclusively on bases where the speed limit is 30 mph or less.

The Army released a statement that said switching 4,000 gas powered vehicles with electric vehicles will save 11 million gallons of fuel over their 6-year service life, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 115,000 tons.

The first six electric vehicles are made by Global Electric Motors (GEM), a division of the Chrysler Corp., but the total 4,000 will be leased from several manufacturers.

The Army Times reported that the Army’s electric vehicles sparked interest from other branches of the military.

“The good news is that the Air Force and Navy have come to us and said that they want to piggyback on the order,” said Paul Bollinger, deputy assistant Army secretary for energy and partnerships.

Bollinger also told the Army Times that the Army is putting decals on the doors of the electric vehicles that say, “Army Green, Army Strong.”   

For more information about Neighborhood Electric Vehicles, read Drive an Electric Vehicle and Never Buy Gas Again.

Here's a 12-step process to green transportation bliss. Check out this conversion of a beach cruiser bike into a 48 volt, 50 mph (at least!) electric bike. Watch the video below, and you'll be able to imagine getting around town in this bike.

Cost of the conversion was $2,400, according to Radioactive Legos, the whiz behind the plan posted at Instructables, an amazing website with DIY projects galore, of any variety you can imagine.

Step-by-step instructions for the 48V Electric Flat Tracker, aka the EV-12.

To learn more about Instructables, read Weird, Wacky & Wonderful DIY Projects.

Did you guess why the trip home was no fun? If you live in the Pacific Northwest, I'll bet you figured it out.

In the year 2050, when children gather around my feet and ask, “Grampaw, where were you during the Great Storm of Oh Eight?” I’ll answer, “I was driving a high-mileage sports car from California to Oregon, and even in that weather I got about 60 miles to the gallon.” And I'll show them this picture, of what the world looked like from MAX's driver's seat.

Photo by Jack McCornack

Depending on how things go between now and 2050, they'll reply, “Sixty mpg? They called that high mileage back then? Ha ha ha ho ho tee hee,” or they’ll ask, “What's a car?”

Then I'll tell them that even though I was dressed for foul weather, it was a challenging trip. And even with a top, MAX was really only good for nine months of the year back then. And there were times during that trip I'd wished I'd been somewhere else and doing something more sensible, such as running with the bulls in Pamplona.

To maximize fuel economy, MAX needs a fully enclosed cabin. There's just too much drag from the wind coming in, noodling around the driver and passenger, and wandering off again. We aren't going to get 100 mpg without separating the moving air in the inside of the car from the non-moving air on the outside of the car (or vice-versa, depending on where you're standing). But now I have another motive: I’m not going to drive through another storm without a weather barrier between me and the elements.

I don't mind driving in light rain — in Oregon, that's what we call “humidity.” But I'll never plan another unprotected road trip when the weather station is predicting Industrial Strength Humidity — Now Available in Chunky Style. My second biggest problem was that the windshield wiper couldn't keep up with the snow. My biggest problem was that when the road got slushy and trucks zoomed by, their wheels would throw buckets of slush through MAX's doorless doorway, drenching me from face to floorboard. When I had to stop to buy chains — chains! I had to buy chains for MAX! — even guys with snowmobiles were saying, “Man, you're hard core!”

So I won't have to embellish much to entertain the kids, And in 2050, when they say...

“Grampaw, I did the math, that makes you 102. That's really old.” I’ll then say, “Yes, and if I hadn't met your grandmother in 2009, I might not have made it this long.” So keep those cards and letters coming.

Browse previous MAX Updates.

Read the introductory MAX article, Here Comes the 100-mpg Car.

Visit the Kinetic Vehicles website for more technical details on MAX.

President-elect Barack Obama traveled to Capitol Hill Monday to gauge congressional support of his proposed $775 billion economic stimulus package. He met with Senate and House leaders from both sides of the aisle.

The stimulus plan includes billions in tax cuts for workers and businesses and billions in tax incentives for job creation.

The president-elect urged Congress to pass the stimulus plan within one month.

The Environmental Law and Policy Center (ELPC) is asking its supporters to mail their Senators and Representatives a letter requesting that the stimulus plan invest in green jobs.

The ELPC has a sample letter for supporters to copy and mail. The letter says, “As my representative, I ask you keep the stimulus clean by investing in public transit, passenger rail and smart growth solutions ...”

The letter encourages Congress to invest in green transportation rather than new roads, creating new jobs while ending the country’s dependence on oil. Of the $775 billion package, more than $100 billion is tax incentives for businesses with job creation. The ELPC is asking that those new jobs be green.

Visit the House and Senate websites to find the addresses of your Representative and Senators and tell them what you think about the proposed stimulus package.