In November, the 65-mpg, 2009 Ford Fiesta ECOnetic will hit the streets with European consumers, leaving the North American buyers market to sit at home watching Golden Girls reruns, eating cheesecake.

Although the extremely fuel efficient Fiesta ECOnetic seems like the perfect vehicle for saving Ford in the U.S. market, it’s gas saving technology is the very feature that’s keeping it from gracing American shores. Despite it’s advanced, green technology, the 2009 ECOnetic’s 1.4L/1.6L TDCi diesel engines are proving to be the biggest setback in the quest for an American introduction.

Anticipated as the 2-door companion to the Saab 9-X Biohybrid sedan that debuted at the Geneva Auto Show in 2007, the Saab 9-X Air is two-door, four-passenger, convertible speedster. With a 200-hp, 1.4L Saab BioPower engine under the hood, the Saab 9-X air is engineered to run efficiently on E85 biofuel [85% ethanol, 15% gasoline] and is expected to average an estimated 107g/km in CO2 emissions. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the green machine is the Saab 9-X Air’s Targa-designed Canopy Top, which isn’t under the hood at all, yet makes a great contribution to the 9-X Air’s efficiency as a hybrid.

2010 Volkswagen Rabbit TDI Spy Photo

Eagerly anticipated by environmentalists and Vee Dub fans, the 2010 eco-friendly, diesel-fueled VW Rabbit TDI will be introduced to the U.S. in the fall of ‘09. According the VW, the Rabbit TDI’s will be released in a limited number and are intended to measure the market’s receptiveness of compact, diesel cars.

On Friday, I posted The Chevron Experience, Part 1 [Group Sex Video Footage Edited For Content And To Run In Time Allowed] , which briefly outlined my tour of Chevron’s Richmond Technology Center in California. My account was cut short, however, due in equal parts to the fact that there was a wealth of information that I needed to organize, and that there was a substantial amount of my travel budget [provided courtesy of Chevron], that needed to be spent at various San Franciscan drinking establishments, immediately. I promised a full, uncensored post on Monday, but technical difficulties with RideLust and the mother of all hangovers prevented me from making good on my word, delaying the big reveal until today.

At the request of Chevron Energy Corporation, I spent the bulk of today in Richmond, California receiving the grand tour of Chevron’s Richmond Technology Center. Despite the fact that my feet were dragging from jet lag, the tour was definitely worth the effort, even if for no other reason than the plentiful supply of engineer eye candy [they definitely gave the Chevy Volt-mates a run for their geeky stud-muffin money].

As drool-inducing as I found many of the Chevron execs to be, however, RideLust’s content censor tends to maintain the same business theory that most professional pornographers do, namely: the majority of your audience is not interested in dicks. So, in the interest of maintaining reader interest, I’ll move on to explain the less sexual parts of the tour.

Battery manufacturer Ener1 has recently announced that they’ll be seeing a 50% drop in the price of lithium ion batteries as production increases. Statements indicate that the majority of the price decrease will come from scaling up manufacturing, and that it won’t happen until their dealing in hundreds of thousands of units. That means it’s a very optimistic prediction, to say the least.

I love sci-fi, futurism, and automotive shizz; that’s why I think Daniel Simon is so bloody super-fantastic. He’s the man behind Cosmic Motors.

Cosmic Motors, according the History of Cosmic Motors on their website, is an independent manufacturer of vehicles of all kinds, located in the center of the Galaxion galaxy. CoMo, as it is affectionately referred to by it’s fans, was founded by the famous Redooa brothers in the Galaxion year 8966-B.

Imagine a car that would emit no harmful vapors and would offer incredible fuel mileage far beyond that of the most efficient cars ever built. It’d be sleek and silent, with only the hum of a turbine. It’d basically be run on steam. That’s how nuclear power works.

Yeah, nuclear power. The Ford Nucleon concept car was designed to be powered by a miniature nuclear reactor. Simple, safe, and eco-friendly, right?

Hydrogen could be the fuel of the future, if someone can help bring the price down.

Hydrogen’s obtained by splitting water into it’s two parts, oxygen and hydrogen. Right now, the only method for doing the splitting involves platinum as a catalyst. Platinum is expensive, and that’s the main reason for the high cost of hydrogen as a fuel. But some researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology may have more cost-effective solution.

A new Sam’s Club Solar Kiosk

Cars like the Tesla Roadster are 100% electric, but that doesn’t mean they’re Zero-Emissions. You have to get the electricity you need to re-charge them from somewhere, and the main source for grid electricity in the US? Coal. So to power your super clean Tesla Roadster, you have to burn a bunch of coal. Makes it less appealing, doesn’t it?

Well, in California, being a smug eco/electro-driver just got a little easier, and from a company you’d never expect: Sam’s Club, aka Wal-Mart.