The MINI E UK Research Consortium has won a £25m grant from the UK Government’s Technology Strategy Board in order to launch a 12-month field study of the MINI E’s real-world sustainability. Spearheaded by MINI’s parent company, BMW Group, the MINI E UK Research Consortium is comprised of several corporate, academic, and government organizations, including energy provider Scottish and Southern Energy, Oxford Brookes University’s Sustainable Vehicle Engineering Centre, the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA), as well as both the Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County Council.

Joining similar projects already underway in the U.S. and Germany, the UK test project will bring BMW Group one step closer towards achieving Strategy Number ONE: mass-producing the electric plug-in MINI E within the next five years.

Have you been dreaming about a partially enclosed electric vehicle made out of fabric and powered by 20 D-cell batteries? What if we told you it folded up for easy storage? Plus, what if it came with all the sex appeal of a 1:32 scale Amish buggy? The brain trust at Wike, a maker of bicycle trailers, has come up with a hair-brained electric vehicle idea they call the Electric Sun, and what we’d like to call the antithesis of all that’s good and pure in the world.

Baard Eker, designer and 49 percent owner of Koenigsegg, spoke briefly about the future of the brand Born From Jets. “Saab has to refine their quality level, their soul and spirit and we believe that this is something we can help with. The most interesting thing is that GM thinks the same.” You think, GM? I guess the existing 10-year product life cycles just weren’t cutting the mustard. But what does the future hold?

And you two groups of slightly socially inept folks though you had nothing in common! You Linux nerds hate proprietary technology, and what is more proprietary than insidious Celtic dancing? And you Riverdance fans, afraid to expose yourself to public ridicule, hide in the shadows. Hide no longer! The Riversimple is here! A hydrogen city car with a name seemingly inspired by the fancy footwork of Micheal Flatley. Its open-source concept ensures that no one involved will make money, and the silly name will mean it is ridiculed almost as often as the similarly silly-named Riverdance!

Click through for a less nonsensical description of this concept.

Green motor oil. Green as in environmentally friendly. You knew this one was coming. It’s not a bad thing, really, and by that I mean it won’t be a bad thing when it’s well established and reliable. But for right now… Well, I’m not so sure I want to pour a few quarts in any of my vehicles.

Say goodbye to lubrication via pulverized tyranasaur and hello to lubrication via bovine fat.

Which one would you rather see with a Turbo-Diesel powerplant?

am-biv-a-lence
-noun
1. Psychology. the coexistence within an individual of positive and negative feelings toward the same person, object, or action, simultaneously drawing him or her in opposite directions.

Lamborghini is taking its own steps to save the environment through the kissing of environmentalist-ass!

Like most companies, the Italian manufacturer finds itself under pressure to make-nice and reduce C02 emissions and increase the fuel-efficiency of their cars. Though Lamborghini is technically exempt from the harshest wave of Emission Laws in the European Union per a clause pertaining to “manufacturers of ’specialty’ vehicles (with fewer than 10,000 new cars made per year) who run their own production facilities and design centres, even though they are part of a group of associated producers,” Lamborghini nonetheless is doing their part to at least look like they care.

In a new press release, Lamborghini details their plans to clean-up their factories by attaching solar panels to the roofs of their plants, really a smart move considering factories make up the portly midsection of those Pollution Pie Charts.

But their plans involve the possibility of Lamborghini Hybrids as well.

Ford Bobcat Engine

The ongoing dance around CAFE and EPA standards has created another example of mechanical Darwinism. Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC, an engineering partner of Ford, has cross-bred a traditional gasoline engine with E85 Direct Injection and thrown in a couple of turbochargers for good measure. The resulting mutation provides diesel-like performance on demand with improved emissions and increased fuel economy. Code-named “Bobcat”, it could be the future of engines or the next vaporware coffee table in the engineering lounge. Why so cynical? Thank you for asking.

Don't hold your breath.

Volvo has issued a press release laying vague claim to an upcoming series of plug-in diesel hybrids (PHEV “DRIVe” in Volvo’s “Bork Bork” corporate marketing lingo) that will maybe, sort of, probably be coming in 2012 (give or take a decade). We hear lots of elaborate claims by automakers about their upcoming products, and we’re not doubting that Volvo CAN make these hybrid cars … we’ll just believe it when we see it.

Now that the calendar reads ‘2009′ and summer is upon us, we can already begin shutting the book on the first decade of the new millenia. All the cars that will be produced have either made it to dealerships or have half a dozen reviews already printed in some magazine collecting dust on your shelf.

This decade closes much like the 1960s, in an atmosphere of uproar and protest, with rumors of war and peace and revolution at hand. The auto industry has experienced a second Golden Age, bigger and grander than the first, and has again sunk into crisis, darker and dimmer than the one Baby Boomers remember. And enthusiasts young and old fear that a similar fate awaits them in the coming years with news of outrageously stringent CAFE standards, and fear-mongering legislators fuel anxieties that we’ve already seen the best cars of the next thirty some odd years.

So it is that we turn back to this decade already a bit nostalgic. Here lie the future legends, the autos of myth and lore. With the future unclear, we ask ourselves which cars made the glorious 2000’s the decade we will all miss more than we know?

If you fancy a lift, bring coal and lithium-ion batteries!

You’ve seen steampunk laptops, steampunk guitars, steampunk iPods, pretty much everything under the sun. But how many steampunk vehicles have you seen outside of Howl’s Moving Castle? Slap on your goggles, work up a head of steam, and take a gander at these 10 steampunk vehicles, ranging from modestly altered to completely bespoke.