Car dealers are realizing that there's more to green cars than what's under the hood. Check out what this innovative dealership has done to green their entire operations.This dealership houses its own geothermal pump, cleans its cars from recycled water, has a water-soluble paint booth, and powers its repair machinery on biodiesel. And....they've increased their sales as a result!

With the current GM slump in sales and increased layoffs, perhaps it would be wise for GM to encourage similar endeavors at more dealerships throughout the country.

Where do you buy your green cars? Perhaps at one of 16 green car dealerships that MSNBC contributor Jenny Lynn Zappala discovered in her research to understand just what's the deal with buying alternative-fueled vehicles. Zappala talks to Ron Gompertz, the force behind Eco Auto in Bozeman, Montana and the co-founders of Green Car Company of Kirkland, in Seattle. While there are only 16 dedicated shops today, the general thought is that with gas prices rising, alternatives to gasoline becoming more and more mainstream, the overall availability of green cars is surely going to increase in the near future. We're not talking about more hybrids on the major dealer lots here, but real alternative dealers.

Zappala even asked some fool blogger what he thought about this situation (and, to be clear and avoid any trouble, I'm talking about myself here, not Green Car Congress' Mike Millikin who was also interviewed for the article). Read the whole thing.

[Source: MSNBC]