2010 Hyundai Santa Fe Gls Sport Utility 4-door 2.4l on 2040-cars

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Human waste can be reused as hydrogen for Hyundai Tucson FCEV

Here's the recipe: separate the water out of some sewage, leaving the biosolids behind. Then pipe those solids into airless tanks and let some microbes go to town. These bugs release a gas (roughly 60 percent methane, 40 percent CO2) which you can burn to power the plant where you're doing all this work but remember to send some of the methane to a tri-generation machine that leaves you with electricity, heat and hydrogen. It might sound a bit complicated, but this process is working in prototype form at the Orange County Sanitation District's Fountain Valley waste facility in California, and hydrogen car drivers in the area - including those of the upcoming Hyundai Tucson Fuel Cell CUV - can even power their rides from the end product. UC Irvine's National Fuel Cell Research Center's Jack Brouwer developed the process and he says reusing waste to move cars, "smells like money." Hyundai will soon start leasing the H2 CUV for $499 a month ($2,999 down) for 36 months, including free hydrogen refueling and Hyundai's Valet Maintenance. The Korean automaker says it has had a surprising number of people express an interest in the vehicle. We wonder if a waste-powered hydrogen station will make fuel cell technology more or less appealing. Read more details over at the Korea Herald. Featured Gallery 2015 Hyundai Tucson Fuel Cell: LA 2013 View 19 Photos News Source: Korea Herald Green Hyundai Technology Emerging Technologies Hydrogen Cars tucson

Hyundai-Kia claims 'greenest' title from Honda, Big Three still big losers

Let's start with the good news. On average, any new car you buy in the US today will be 43 percent cleaner than any average new car in 1998. Here's some more good news, for Korea anyway, Hyundai-Kia has been named the cleanest automaker in the latest study by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), which looked at 2013 model year vehicles sold between October 2012 and September 2013 from the top eight automakers (by volume). The bad news? The big three Detroit automakers are, on average, still making the dirtiest cars in the showroom. The big three Detroit automakers are, on average, still making the dirtiest cars in the showroom. The problem for Ford, General Motors and Chrysler lies in their trucks, which sell well but tend to have pretty bad fuel economy (compared to sedans, at least). The UCS calculates its list by averaging "the per-mile emissions for each light-duty vehicle sold by each automaker" and then factors in "the fuel economy, fuel type, and sales volume of each type of vehicle sold by each automaker" and "the upstream global warming emissions from producing and distributing the fuel used by each vehicle, as well as emissions from the vehicles themselves." That all means that, the more trucks you sell, the worse you're gonna do. Then again, the more trucks you sell with 18 mpg, the more you're helping drivers put CO2 into the air, so the UCS is doing a fair comparison of the things that this study is trying to track. More details on the methodology are available on page six of the study PDF. In case you were wondering (we were), UCS did make sure to use the revised mpg numbers for Hyundai and Kia models that were originally overstated. Hyundai has apologized for and fixed those figures and even with the new, corrected numbers, Hyundai's total emissions are dropping at a rate of about three percent a year, enough for it to take the greenest company title for the first time. In fact, this is the first time that an automaker other than Honda has come out on top in the UCS ranking, which has been released six times now, including the first one in 2000 (which looked at 1998 model year data). In 2010, Honda was almost knocked off the winner's perch by both Hyundai and Toyota, but managed to hold on. Chrysler, on the other hand, came in dead last (again) in the ranking of the top eight automakers, snagging the "dirtiest tailpipe" award once (again). Read the UCS' press release below.

WRC driver fills radiator with beer from sponsor Corona

Rallying requires lightning quick reflexes and the ability to turn off one's sense of self-preservation. This much is not in doubt. Anyone that's ever seen a rally car hurtle along a tree-lined spit of dirt road at high speeds could tell you that. What many people don't know is that it also requires a strong mechanical sense. Knowing how to repair one's car when far from the service garages is a must. A strong sense of ingenuity is pretty handy, as well.
It was that sense of ingenuity that came to the aid of Thierry Neuville (shown above during last weekend's Rally Mexico), a WRC driver for the Hyundai Motorsport team, after his i20 suffered a radiator leak during the drive back to service. Neuville and his co-driver, Nicolas Gilsoul, hopped out of the car, assessed the issue and realized they needed to patch the radiator leak and refill the coolant, which they were fresh out of. So, instead, they used beer.
The pair had been awarded a magnum-sized bottle of Corona from the Rally Mexico's corporate sponsor after the final power stage. As Neuville doesn't drink, they tossed the beer in the back of the i20 and set off for the garages. It was a good thing they did, as adding the Mexican lager to the car's system allowed them to limp back to service.