Electric cars are a green movement that is finally moving. Shunted to the side as the public indulged its love affair with gas-guzzling SUVs and four-wheel-drive trucks, history has finally caught up with the plug-in vehicle.

The North American International Auto Show in Detroit is the domestic auto industry’s biggest annual showcase, and the new models have traditionally been brought out in a son et lumière of dancing girls, deafening music, and dry ice smoke. The few green cars that made it this far were usually for display only — very few actually made it to showrooms.

But not this year. It’s become a race to market for green cars, and soon you’ll be able to buy many of the electric vehicles that were on display last week in Detroit. The auto show featured one hybrid and battery electric car introduction after another. Although the only truly road-worthy, plug-in electric vehicle you can buy today is the $109,000 Tesla Roadster, by the end of 2010 it will be joined by such contenders as the Nissan Leaf, Coda sedan, and the Think City. (more…)

Speaking to a gathering of mayors in Copenhagen, London Mayor Boris Johnson announced plans to add 25,000 charging stations for electric cars across the city by 2015, turning London into a center of plug-in vehicle technology.

By creating the right conditions, Johnson said the city can encourage a “golden era” of electric cars, and he predicted that every resident will be within a mile of a charging point.

Johnson said the challenge of reducing carbon emissions is urgent, but should not require “hair-shirt abstinence.”

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PARIS (Reuters) – The Paris city hall and local authorities in several surrounding districts on Thursday called for bids to run a self-service electric car hire scheme modeled on the “Velib” bike rental system.

The “Autolib,” which is scheduled to start in September 2011, would consist of 3,000 vehicles at 1,000 rental sites in Paris and neighboring communes, the city’s town hall said on its website.

Four thousand battery-charging stations are also planned.

A candidate to run the Autolib service will be chosen by the end of next year. The Velib scheme is run by JCDecaux.

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The movement towards zero emission electric cars is gaining a tremendous amount of momentum. As we move into 2010, practical electric vehicles for the vast majority of the public will be available late in the year with the release of the Nissan Leaf. The shift that may occur in the coming years provides the opportunity to engage in open dialogue about the tax benefits and burdens as the US moves into the era of the electric car.

If you plan to purchase an electric car in 2010, you can expect a healthy federal income tax credit to reward you. For plug-in electric vehicles with a gross vehicle weight of less than 14,000 pounds acquired after December 31, 2009, the maximum tax credit available will be $7,500. The base amount of the credit is $2,500. If the car has a battery capacity of at least 5kWh, then an additional $417 in tax credits will be available. For every kWh of battery capacity in excess of 5kWh, $417 will be added to the total amount. The additional amount, based on battery capacity, over the base amount is limited to a total of $5,000.

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It’s cleaning up space junk, and is giving us lab-on-chip biofilters for detecting contamination. Now nanotechnology has produced a coating for windows or solar panels that repels grime and dirt. Expanded battery storage capacities for the next electric car could be within reach too.

New Tel Aviv University research, just published in Nature Nanotechnology, details a breakthrough in assembling peptides at the nano-scale level that could make these futuristic visions come true in just a few years.

Operating in the range of 100 nanometers (roughly one-billionth of a meter) and even smaller, graduate student Lihi Adler-Abramovich and a team working under Prof. Ehud Gazit in TAU’s Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology have found a novel way to control the atoms and molecules of peptides so that they “grow” to resemble small forests of grass.

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The IEC forum meets in Israel to standardize electric car charging stations so electric car owners can fuel up and road trip around the world.

So you bought a new electric car and think you can go on a road trip with it from the UK to Spain, then over to France, Eastern Europe and Turkey? Well, think again because it won’t be even as easy a trying to drive a right-hand drive car from the UK in Europe or America.

In fact, it could be downright difficult as not only the electric current may be different, the “codes” for recharging a car battery and the charging infrastructures may vary from country to country –  even those who all claim to have a “standardized” 220 Volt 50 cycle electric current network.

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Refueling newly developed electric cars in Israel may be one step closer to being commonplace with an agreement reached between Israel Railways and the Better Place electric car and energy terminal company.

Better Place, which we’ve covered in depth currently in the process of developing practical electric powered cars, as well as recharging stations for them, has agreed to install up to 220 charging terminals in railway parking lots in a number of stations. They are Bat Galim, Central Haifa, Acre, Beit Yehoshua, Herzliya, Hod Hasharon, Rosh Ha’ayin, Petah Tikva Segula, Kiryat Arie Petah Tikva, Bnei Brak, and Pe’atei Modi’in.

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