Mercedes-Benz News - Mercedes-Benz unveils retrofuturistic F-Cell Roadster built by trainees

[tags]mercedes benz news, mercedes benz reviews, mercedes benz, daimler chrysler[/tags] -

Mercedes-Benz unveils retrofuturistic F-Cell Roadster built by trainees

Filed under: Etc., Hydrogen, Mercedes Benz, Green Daily

Times may be tough, but that isn’t stopping Daimler from having a bit of expensive-looking fun with its trainees… so long as there’s an educational bent to it. What you see before you isn’t an artful series of renderings, it’s an actual time-warping fuel cell concept dubbed “F-CELL Roadster.”

It took a year and more than 150 trainees to create, but the entire project involved using “junior employees,” giving the company’s up-and-coming employees a creative way to learn how alternative-fuel systems come together.

The F-CELL Roadster marries Benz Patent Motor Car stylings with 21st century tech wonderfully, including that legendary vehicle’s general aesthetic and proportions, along with old-meets-new technologies like carbon-fiber buckets capped in hand-stitched leather and a drive-by-wire central control joystick.

The centerpiece, of course, is the Roadster’s fuel cell powertrain, which has a power rating of 1.2 kilowatts, a top speed of 25 kilometers-per-hour, and a range of 350 kilometers. That means you’ll have a long, slow trip, just like those adventuring motorists back at the turn of the century. Official press release posted after the jump.

[Source: Mercedes]

Continue reading Mercedes-Benz unveils retrofuturistic F-Cell Roadster built by trainees

Mercedes-Benz unveils retrofuturistic F-Cell Roadster built by trainees originally appeared on AutoblogGreen on Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mercedes-Benz News - Double green car boost for Ann Arbor: Mercedes hiring, Zipcar coming

[tags]mercedes benz news, mercedes benz reviews, mercedes benz, daimler chrysler[/tags] -

Double green car boost for Ann Arbor: Mercedes hiring, Zipcar coming

Filed under: Mercedes Benz, Green Daily

Two pieces of good news for green car fans in Ann Arbor, Michigan. First, Mercedes-Benz says it it looking to hire 223 workers at a new research and development center for hybrid technologies there. Don’t everyone put an applications in right away, because these jobs will be phased in over 10 years. As MLive points out, Ann Arbor is slowly getting a green car reputation - see also: Sakti3 and Th!nk - and the new hybrid center is just the latest piece in an alternative propulsion puzzle. The state, through the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, will likely approve tax credits for Mercedes and its 65,000 square foot center. Official name: the Mercedes-Benz Engineering Center for Powertrains USA.

The other bit of green car news is that Zipcar, which has been operating in Ann Arbor since 2006, is expanding from the U of M campus to downtown. Now, any local resident can rent one of four Toyota Matrix or two Scion xD vehicles by the hour from a centrally-located parking garage. More details after the jump.

[Source: Zipcar, MLive]
Photo by zzellers. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.

Continue reading Double green car boost for Ann Arbor: Mercedes hiring, Zipcar coming

Double green car boost for Ann Arbor: Mercedes hiring, Zipcar coming originally appeared on AutoblogGreen on Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mercedes-Benz News - Mercedes-Benz testing Citaro FuelCELL hybrid bus

[tags]mercedes benz news, mercedes benz reviews, mercedes benz, daimler chrysler[/tags] -

Mercedes-Benz testing Citaro FuelCELL hybrid bus

Filed under: Hybrid, Hydrogen, Transportation Alternatives, Mercedes Benz

Mercedes-Benz has a history of introducing various fuel saving technologies to its line of commercial buses. The automaker first began experimenting with fuel cells in bus platforms back in 1997, and has since put 36 units on the road. Recently, the hydrogen component was dropped in favor of a diesel engine to act as a generator for the lithium ion batteries and wheel motors of the electric bus. By adding the electric drive component, MB was able to downsize the diesel engine from 12 liters to 4.8 liters.

Now, the oil-burning powerplant is once again going away completely as Mercedes-Benz has started testing Citaro buses with hydrogen fuel cells. Daimler points to the complete lack of emissions as one reason to choose a hydrogen fuel cell in lieu of an internal combustion engine to keep the batteries topped up. This new Citaro FuelCELL hybrid bus will be officially debuted in June at the UITP World Congress and Mobility & City Transport Exhibition in Vienna.

[Source: Benz Insider]

Mercedes-Benz testing Citaro FuelCELL hybrid bus originally appeared on AutoblogGreen on Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mercedes-Benz News - Greenlings: How power-split parallel hybrids work

[tags]mercedes benz news, mercedes benz reviews, mercedes benz, daimler chrysler[/tags] -

Greenlings: How power-split parallel hybrids work

Filed under: Hybrid, GM, Mercedes Benz, Toyota, AutoblogGreen Exclusive, Green Daily

Over the past decade, if there is one word that has become synonymous with green motoring it is hybrid. Ever since Toyota launched the first modern commercially viable hybrid with the original Prius (above) in 1997, over one million of them have hit the roads. Of course, as is so often the case, this overnight sensation was anything but. In fact, the technology was nearly a century in the making.

The first known hybrid was developed by the original Ferdinand Porsche back around the beginning of the twentieth century. The hybrid, as we mostly know it today, was actually developed and patented by engineers at TRW in the late 1960s. While most people have by now heard of hybrids and know that they can improve efficiency, few understand how they work. Since the debut of the Prius, most automakers have been working on hybrids and have developed their own variations in an attempt to reduce the cost and/or improve the efficiency. Let’s start (after the jump) with a look the power-split parallel hybrid as popularized by Toyota and Ford.

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Greenlings: How power-split parallel hybrids work originally appeared on AutoblogGreen on Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mercedes-Benz News - Luxurious and green: Europe’s (relatively) low-CO

[tags]mercedes benz news, mercedes benz reviews, mercedes benz, daimler chrysler[/tags] -

Luxurious and green: Europe’s (relatively) low-CO

Filed under: Etc., Audi, Bentley, BMW, Cadillac, Chrysler, Honda, Jaguar, Maybach, Mercedes Benz, Rolls Royce, Europe/EU

Some drivers love large luxury sedans sedans. What’s more, there’s nothing that denotes luxury quite like the largest car from a premium brand. They might be impractical in some European cities, but that’s for the chauffeur to worry about. For the green-minded baron, though, there are always concerns about high fuel consumption and, well, sometimes you can do the job with a smaller car. However, for those times when we just need to be driven in a big sedan, let’s see what the European market has to offer. After the jump we have a list of luxurious sedans ordered by CO₂ emissions. And for once, this is a list - despite the inclusion of a few diesels - that includes many players from the American market as well. Click past the jump for the complete list.

[Source: Auto News]

Continue reading Luxurious and green: Europe’s (relatively) low-CO₂ luxury sedans

Luxurious and green: Europe’s (relatively) low-CO₂ luxury sedans originally appeared on AutoblogGreen on Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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