We got the chance to check out the concept behind the Standard Taxi at the New York Auto Show in 2007, and it now sounds like the unique people-mover will get a shot at production. Now known as Vehicle Production Group LLC, the company behind the Standard Taxi design has gotten the funding it needed for production. AM General, the company which became famous worldwide for creating the military-spec HMMV (better known as the Hummer), will do the duties of assembling the blocky cab at its Mishawaka, Indiana plant where the Hummer H2 is built for General Motors.

The Standard Taxi uses a rather traditional design with the engine placed up front, driving the rear wheels. Powertrain development work is being jointly carried out with GM. A compressed natural gas version is also in the works with assistance from Clean Energy Fuels Corp., founded by T. Boone Pickens, who also has some investment in VPG. The cab is capable of carrying four passengers and all their belongings and is wheelchair ready.

[Source: Vehicle Production Group]

General Motors is announcing a new partnership today with Clean Energy to install a hydrogen filling station near Los Angeles International Airport. Clean Energy is a California-based company that currently operates 170 compressed natural gas filling stations around the country and the new LAX hydrogen station will be on the same site with a CNG station. The new LAX station to be operated by Clean Energy will be available to participants in GM's Project Driveway fuel cell field test program. According to Dan O'Connel, GM's Director of Fuel Cell Commercialization, the primary user of the facility will likely be Virgin Atlantic. The airline is taking six of the fuel cell Equinoxes (up from three) that are being used for Project Driveway to use for shuttling first class passengers to and from the airport. Beyond this first station, Clean Energy is looking at adding additional stations at other locations as well as examining the feasibility of on-site reforming of natural gas to produce hydrogen.

General Motors has now built 85 of the planned 100+ Equinoxes for the program and will have delivered 40 of them to customers within the next two weeks. Customers are apparently very pleased with the performance and are regularly topping the 160mile range estimate which was based on the EPA test cycle. According to O'Connell the only real complaint they've had so far besides people not wanting to give up the vehicles after three months is they want to be more visible. Many of the first batch of vehicles had little in the way of signage to distinguish them from standard Equinoxes and people want to show off the fact that they are driving bleeding edge technology.

[Sources: General Motors, HydrogenForecast]

While wind turbines provide a clean source of energy, they still have a number of short-comings as well as vocal opponents who often come from the sore-sight front. San Francisco, which probably wouldn't have the space for a field of wind turbines anyway, is proposing to decrease the city's dependence on foreign oil by implementing turbines submerged underwater that would sit on the floor of the Bay. Preliminary studies say that San Francisco's tides and currents could generate enough power to light up 38,000 homes.

Public Utilities Commission General Manager Susan Leal said that they will spend $150,000 for a study on harnessing power from the ocean's waves and currents. Mayor Gavin Newsom fully supports the proposal and added that a task force of experts will be formed to advise the city on the matter.

Studies determining turbine location and size as well as the potential impacts they would have on marine life need to be done. Also, it is not yet known who would own the project or who would pay to install the turbines.

Despite the obstacles, city officials hope to start a pilot program by 2009 which they estimate would cost between $5 million and $7 million.

[Source: San Francisco Chronicle]

In a story that sounds like it could have come from the county music press, Boone Pickens is getting some props. Pickens is not a famous banjo player but instead one of the founders of Clean Energy (the company calls itself North America's leader in clean transportation and refers to Pickens as "perhaps America's most outspoken advocate of natural gas as a transportation fuel"). Pickens is being honored for his role in promoting natural gas with a liquefied natural gas plant that was dedicated to him in Willis, Texas.

The "Pickens Plant" can produce about 100,000 gallons of LNG a day, according to Clean Energy. Clean Energy is the largest provider of vehicular natural gas (CNG and LNG) and related services in North America.

[Source: Clean Energy]