We all know that there are steep environmental costs to driving, but for most Americans driving is an essential part of the fabric of their daily lives. Most of us need the flexibility of our own wheels to get everything done. But there are many ways that you can reduce the environmental impact of your driving. Here are just five of them.

1. Share your rides with others. Offer your neighbor a ride to the grocery store, go to parties with friends who live near you, offer to pick up some other children from school when you are getting your own, or plan outings ahead of time with others. You’ll be building community at the same time that you are saving gas.

2. Switch to a car that gets better mileage. It doesn’t have to be a hybrid; if you live in the country, as we do, there is less benefit to hybrids than there is for city dwellers. This is because one of the primary ways that hybrids conserve gas is that they don’t run when idling at a stop. There are many small cars now with miles per gallon figures that were unheard of in the recent past.

3. Combine your errands and save time as well as money. You don’t need to go to the grocery store constantly. Keep a list going on your refrigerator door and do larger shopping less often. And when you do go to the grocery store, stop by the library, the drugstore, the hardware store, the bank, and anywhere else you need to go. You could even go by a friend’s house for a short visit as well.

We live an hour’s drive from the nearest large town, so we are motivated to do all these errands at once. We can usually go two weeks between visits, buying a few groceries in our small town in between major shopping forays. We keep a cooler in the trunk of our car and another one in the back of our small pickup, so we don’t usually need the dry ice available at the grocery store. I like to get all the errands done and then enjoy lunch out before heading home.

4. Simplify the schedules of your school-age children. Consider whether their lives are overly booked and too demanding of fossil-based transportation. For example, they could ride bikes more.

Each person’s transportation needs are different, and we do not live in a society with high-quality public transportation. It you can use it, do. And think about your situation and no doubt you can find ways to improve it.

This article came from: Greener Driving: Five Tips at SimpleGreenLiving.com..

How cool would it be to build your own solar car? That’s what my husband Kelly Hart thought, over ten years ago. He was following all the solar car news, and he noticed that all the attention seemed to be going into racing vehicles. He thought a slower moving, reliable neighborhood vehicle would be very useful. So he built one, with some help from me, and we called it our Sunmobile. We used it to drive around our small Colorado town. We even took it in the 4th of July parade one year!

How did we create this unusual thing? We began by buying the framework, a very sturdy four-person bicycle called a Rhoades Car. We kept one of pedals, so the driver could pedal if needed. We would have kept the one on the left as well, but Kelly’s design needed that space for some of the parts. We joked that we had a hybrid vehicle: solar and human powered!

He built an aluminum canopy which acted as a sun shade and more importantly as the location for the solar panels. He installed a box that went behind the two seats, to hold a set of four deep-cycle marine batteries, and then behind it he installed a large black cargo box. It held our groceries, the mail, and whatever else we wanted to carry with us on our short trips.

The vehicle used a one horsepower motor that Kelly installed. The brakes were hand brakes on the handlebars. We also had a speedometer, a rear-view mirror, a loud horn, and headlights. We were not required to license it.

We never plugged the Sunmobile in to the power grid, though that could have been done. We were strictly solar, other than a bit of pedaling! The vehicle could go up to 30 miles an hour, and had a range of up to 30 miles, though I don’t think we ever went quite that far. But in the several years we operated our Sunmobile, we must have gone hundreds of miles. We loved the pollution-free nature of the vehicle.

Kelly often drove the Sunmobile into town to get the mail. I became used to his not returning promptly. Once in a while the vehicle would break down, but much more often people asked Kelly a lot of questions about it. He gave many rides to fascinated passengers!

We no longer own the car. It happened to be down for repairs when we decided to sell our home and move to Mexico. The friends who bought our house wanted the car as well, so we included it in the deal. We lived in Mexico for about five years and then we moved back to the same little town in Colorado. People still keep coming up to Kelly around town and asking him about the Sunmobile. Maybe one day such vehicles will be commonplace.

This article came from: We Built an Experimental Solar Car at SimpleGreenLiving.com..

Electric Bicycles – Green Transportation

By Alejandro Chacon

Electric bicycles are one of the greenest forms of transportation there is.Green Electric bicycles are becoming more widely accepted, as the Consumer Product Safety Commission has recently classified electric bicycles as bicycles, provided the top assisted speeds do not exceed 20 mph, total propulsive power does not exceed 1 Hp, and the vehicle includes fully functional pedals. Green Electric bicycles are the new way to get around. Green Electric bicycles are a fantastic method of transportation that allows you to get where you need to be in a fast, efficient and eco-friendly manner. An electrical bicycle offers you a lot more than freedom of movement.

Electric Folding Bicycle

Folding bikes come in a wide range of sizes and with a variety of features. Folding bikes are also especially convenient in cities and college dorms where space is an issue. Green Electric folding bikes present an excellent way for one to commute, as they provide all of the advantages of portability coupled with the benefit of electric assistance. A folding bike is a bike that is designed so that when not in use it can be folded into a much more compact size. Due to the nature of their folding mechanisms there is absolutely no risk of a bike collapsing while in motion we have made it a point to mention this as this is a legitimate concern experienced by those new to folding bikes; for those that are experienced, well, they share our confidence.

Electric Scooter

There are many different manufactures and styles of scooters with different characteristics. Motorized kick scooters are usually larger than non-motorized ones. Scooters had somewhat larger motors, but none of them produced more than one horsepower (746W). And are cheaper and less polluting than most conventional scooters and mopeds. Somebody may argue that the scooter still use the fuel indirectly (electricity). Silent Scooter brings affordable, high quality street-legal, green electric bicycles to America. Motorized scooters usually have hand brakes and often have larger, pneumatic rubber tires; and some have pedestal seats. Power scooters rely on multiple batteries and can weigh up to 90 kg (200 pounds). Lots of electric scooters, for example, are outfitted with nonfunctioning pedals and with speed-limiting devices designed for easy removal after purchase.

Batteries

Batteries and hub motor are positioned to lower the center of gravity, minimize rotational steering inertia and provide optimal balance about the steering axis. Batteries and bicycles can be used at very low temperatures. Green Electric bicycles use rechargeable batteries, electric motors and some form of control. Battery systems in use include lead-acid, NiCd, NiMH and Li-ion batteries. 90% of bikes today use sealed lead acid batteries, which cost about $45 to $99 to replace. An e-bike battery can be fully charged from a regular electrical outlet in less than 4 hours, costing less than 3 cents per charge.

Cost

About $25 worth of energy from a wall plug gets you 5,000 miles of travel at a fraction of the cost of gas vehicles, not to mention, a lot more fashionable. Charging the battery takes about four hours and costs just a few cents. Nevertheless, experts are optimistic that the green electric bikes will ultimately prevail because of the adverse environmental and health effects of automobiles and the rising cost of petroleum products. Green Electric bicycles cost about $5 worth of electricity a year. Bicycle. Battery costs are going down steadily with increasing demand. An electric bike costs anywhere $800 to $2000, depending on features. Did you know that riding an Green Electric Bicycle only costs Pennies per charge?

Electric Bicycles Green Transportation
By Alejandro Chacon
http://www.gogreenelectricbicycle.com/electric-bicycles/

We offer only electric bicycles, mopeds, scooters, ATVs, utvs, pocket bikes, sea scooters and helmets. Unlike other web sites that offer both gas and electric products. We want to maintain and help keep our environment clean and green even if it’s only one bike at a time. For the best deals on are all electric line up go to http://www.gogreenelectricbicycle.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alejandro_Chacon

http://EzineArticles.com/?Electric-Bicycles—Green-Transportation&id=3304249

This article came from: Electric Bicycles and Scooters at SimpleGreenLiving.com..

By a solar car, I mean one that runs completely on solar power, with no electricity from the grid.

Kelly started by buying a four-wheel, two-passenger bicycle. (would that be a quadracycle?) The Rhoades Car company makes models for one to four passengers. In ours, we sat side by side.

Next, he  motorized it and added a little roof of solar panels, with two deep-cycle batteries sitting in a bin behind us.

It was perfect for going to the post office or other short trips. The only problem was, people were so fascinated and delighted by it that Kelly often took over an hour to make a trip that would take twenty minutes in a car!

Some Other Transportation Alternatives

Every gallon of gasoline used has an environmental cost, but our society is so heavily dependent on the passenger car that it will take a lot of creativity – and perhaps some dire necessity – to create alternatives.

The alternatives include walking, bicycling, sharing rides, avoiding unnecessary trips, combining necessary trips, and using public busses or other public transit. Even roller blading or skateboarding would be viable for athletic city dwellers!

Getting a good bicycle is one obvious choice. There are several companies that make electric add-ons to bicycles, little motors that help you get around. So long as the bike can still be pedaled, the US Department of Transportation has ruled that electric bicycles do not fall into the category of a motor vehicle. Check with your local state  for further details.

There’s a lot of creativity going on in these categories, so I’m sure there will be all sorts of interesting transportation options. One sign of this is that Kelly’s little website www.sunvee.com gets more and more traffic all the time.

This article came from: The Solar Car Kelly Built at SimpleGreenLiving.com..