We Obsessively Cover the Green Scene…

Oil companies will pay $6.8 million in fines for not meeting federal quotas for blending in cellulosic biofuels – those produced from grasses, wood and plants – even though there weren't enough of those biofuels available for use, the New York Times reported. Those fines are likely to rise in 2012 because the cellulosic biofuel quotas that refiners have to meet will rise more than 30 percent to 8.65 million gallons.

Charles Drevna, the president of the National Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, said the imposition of the fines "belies logic," while Dennis McGinn, a retired vice admiral who serves on the American Council on Renewable Energy, said that the quota "is the right thing to do" even if the imposition of the fines "doesn't seem to make a lot of sense," the Times reported. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) spokeswoman Cathy Milbourn said the 2012 quota was "reasonably attainable." Hence the fines.

The fines illustrate the emphasis the federal government is putting on production of biofuels in an effort to cut dependency on foreign oil. Last month, the EPA said it boosted its 2012 goals for production of non-corn-based biofuels by about 36 percent. Specifically, the EPA increased its production goal for advanced biofuels, whose feedstocks range from sugarcane ethanol to algae, by 48 percent, while increasing its goal for cellulosic biofuels by 34 percent. Production of biomass-based biodiesel is set to rise 25 percent this year, according to the EPA.

Annual increases in the EPA's renewable-fuel production guidelines are a response to the Renewable Fuel Standard 2 (RFS2) and 2007's Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA), which, in part, set a U.S. production goal of 36 billion annual gallons of renewable fuel by 2022.

New cars in the U.S. may be getting better gas mileage than they used to, but that doesn't necessarily mean the vehicles on the road are a whole lot more fuel efficient, overall. That's because more and more of us are driving older cars and light-duty trucks.

The average age of the approximately 240 million light-duty vehicles on U.S. roads has risen about 12 percent in the past five years, according to automotive data research firm Polk. The average car or light truck on the road last year was 10.8 years old, up from a 9.7-year average in 2006. Cars were, on average, 11.1 years old in 2011, while trucks were 10.4 years old, Polk said.

The age increase reflects how consumers cut back on new-vehicle purchases during the most recent economic downturn. Americans bought almost 13 million new vehicles last year, down from an annual rate of about 16 million a decade ago, but up from about 10 million during the depths of the recession. Such longer ownership spells good news for repair shops and sellers of aftermarket auto components, but not for overall fuel economy. The average new vehicle in 2000 got about 12 percent lower fuel economy than vehicles sold during the 2010 model year, the most recent tracked by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Toyota sold more Prius V hybrid wagons in the U.S. during the model's first 10 weeks of availability than General Motors sold of its Chevrolet Volt extended-range plug-in hybrid all last year, Bloomberg News reported, citing Toyota spokeswoman Carly Schaffner.

Toyota sold about 8,400 of the hybrid wagons since late October. That's roughly 700 more than the number of Volts sold in 2011, even though a GM spokesman told Bloomberg that comparing sales of the Prius V to the Volt was "ridiculous" because of the different drivetrain technologies. Plus, the Prius V's base price is about $13,000 less than the Volt's $39,145 pricetag, though most Volt buyers can get a $7,500 tax credit.

Toyota's looking to boost U.S. sales of the Prius, by far the world's most popular line of hybrids, by about 60 percent this year to 220,000 vehicles with the flagship sedan – now called the Liftback – as well as with the Prius V and the C compact and plug-in versions that are set to debut later this year. U.S. Prius sales dropped 3.2 percent – to about 136,500 vehicles – last year, in large part to supply issues stemming from the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan last March. Want to know what it's like behind the wheel? Check out our first-drive impressions of the Prius V here.

Ford may make a plug-in hybrid-electric version of its Lincoln MKZ sedan for the 2013 model year, if there's customer demand for that variant, USA Today reported, citing comments Ford executive Scott Tobin made at the Detroit Auto Show recently. As it is, the 2013 MKZ will include gas-powered and hybrid vesions.

Ford will include a gas, hybrid and plug-in hybrid option for its 2013 Fusion mid-size sedan, which is why it makes some sense to do the same for the Fusions sister Lincoln vehicle. The company didn't disclose further powertrain details for the 2013 Lincoln MKZ.

Ford started selling Lincoln's first hybrid in 2010, and the company boosted sales of the model fivefold to 5,739 vehicles in 2011. The current MKZ hybrid, which pairs a 2.5-liter, four-cylinder gas engine with an electric motor, gets a combined 39 miles per gallon combined. That's almost twice the 21 mpg combined that the conventional six-cylinder MKZ achieves.

Here's a thought: the constant but not overly dramatic climb in the price of gas these past few years is numbing us to just how much we're paying for the privilege to fill our tanks. After what it calls "the worst year ever for gas prices" in 2011, the Charlotte Observer found that – locally, at least, in North Carolina – people just don't really care any more. They're stoic. They shrug.

The locals that the newspaper talked to aren't exactly excited to be paying over $3.42 a gallon (that's the average local price; nationally, it's $3.378, according to the AAA), but they realize they need to do what they need to do. This attitude speaks to an apparent dearth of alternatives, and makes us wonder what it will take for alternative-power vehicles to make a mainstream impact beyond the plug-in vehicle success we saw in 2011. Will it just be more availability of these new cars? Or will we need to see more financial pressure to push people into changing their gas-fueled habits?

So, here are two questions for our readers: does the price of gas bother you right now? What will the expected climb to over $4 a gallon this spring do to your attitude?

Arizona has repealed a lower vehicle emissions program that was patterned after California's rules after just one year in effect. The state government voted to instead match federal greenhouse-gas regulations.

CronkiteNewsOnline reports that, last week, the Arizona Governor's Regulatory Review Council voted against continuing regulations that would've required car companies to cut fleetwide emissions each year and to help develop an infrastructure to support electric-drive vehicles, the site said. Arizona's Clean Cars program was approved in 2008 and went into effect last January. The Council voted 5-1 in favor of repealing the program.

The decision is likely to aggravate environmentalists who say that the program would've helped the state's air quality and helped cut dependency on foreign oil. Those supporting the repeal say that, with the federal government proposing U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions standards requiring about an 80 percent improvement in fleetwide fuel economy by 2025, the state's program is unnecessary.

General Motors met many of its goals to reduce its environmental impact and carbon footprint by cutting landfill use, boosting recycling efforts and reduce water use, the automaker said last week in the first sustainability report it's released since emerging from bankruptcy in 2009.

More than 80 GM plants are landfill-free, while the automaker's factories recycle 92 percent of their waste. GM also highlighted its patents related to fuel cells and hybrid-electric vehicles and said it's made progress in its water-conservation programs. Additionally, GM is looking to cut its plants carbon footprint by 20 percent, cut water use by 15 percent and reduce total waste by 10 percent.

"Profits enable reinvestment," GM CEO Dan Akerson said in a statement. "In R&D to reimagine a car's DNA; in cleaner, more fuel-efficient technologies; in plants that better conserve resources; in improved vehicle safety; in job creation and stability; and in the communities in which we live and work."

GM's looking to highlight its environmental efforts as it attempts to reform its image as a more "green" car company with models such as the Chevrolet Volt extended-range plug-in hybrid. The company in October said it would launch a battery-electric variant of its Chevy Spark subcompact car and may be working on a plug-in version of the Chevy Cruze.

At some point during the 2012 Detroit Auto Show, Nissan sold its 10,000th Leaf in America. Not bad for an all-electric car that has been on sale for just over a year and is not yet available in all 50 states (this landmark will be achieved by March, though). Brendan Jones, the Leaf's marketing and sales strategist for Nissan North America, was understandably enthusiastic: "From a Leaf perspective, 2011 was a great year and very positive for the company. [10,000 sales] is more EVs than have been sold in the United States – and 20,000 globally – than all the other OEMs combined throughout the world. So that's an outstanding achievement."

This enthusiasm embodies Nissan's public face about the Leaf and electric vehicles in general, a tone set by Nissan-Renault Alliance chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn. To follow up the Leaf, Nissan and Infiniti will introduce three more EVs in the coming years: the eNV200 van that was on display at the Detroit Auto Show, the Infiniti EV that will be shown in New York later this year and another vehicle. We've speculated about this fourth vehicle before, but thought it would make sense to ask Castelli and Nissan spokesman Mark Perry to give us more hints about what we'll be seeing next. Click past the jump to read more.

Your car could get the best fuel economy figures this side of a bicycle, but if you're driving around in circles because you can't find your destination, it kinda defeats the whole point. That's why a hybrid needs a good navigation system as much as it needs the computers that manage the charging and use of its gasoline-electric powertrain. To that end, Fisker Automotive announced a deal with TomTom to provide the sat-nav system for the Karma.

The three-year partnership deal announced at CES just this past week will see TomTom provide its latest route guidance systems into the vehicle touted as the world's first premium plug-in hybrid. That includes maps for the U.S., Canada and Europe, points of interest along the way, and voice control systems that recognize commands and vocalizes text, all controlled through a 10.2-inch touch screen that will also manage the vehicle's HVAC system, infotainment and phone operations. Official announcement after the jump.

Nissan North America and ABB, the world's biggest maker of power-transmission equipment, have announced an agreement to test used lithium-ion electric-vehicle batteries – such as those in the Nissan Leaf battery-electric vehicle – for possible energy storage uses for utility companies and community power sources.

The partnership, which also includes Sumitomo Corp. of America and 4R Energy Corporation, looks to develop a 50-kWh battery-storage prototype that would be able to power 15 homes for two hours. Nissan and ABB, whose executives spoke about the partnership in a press conference Wednesday, said it was too early to disclose specific commercial applications for used EV batteries, which on average will still retain as much as 70 percent of their energy-storage capacity after 10 years of use in an EV.

"We are working as this as a first step," said Nissan North America's Ken Srebnik on the conference call. "We definitely do see pilot projects with utilities within the next two years."

Proponents of electric vehicles are keeping an eye on the secondary-battery market because much of an EV's cost and residual value is tied to how much the battery costs to produce and how much it can be sold for when it can no longer be used in the car. Frost & Sullivan said in late 2010 that, by 2022, about $2 billion worth of lithium-ion batteries from EVs will be processed. Such batteries may eventually be used to prevent or limit blackouts by providing temporary power during peak demand periods on the grid.

In late 2010, Duke Energy and Tokyo-based ITOCHU Corp. reached a similar deal to test second-life applications for lithium-ion EV batteries. Duke Energy and ITOCHU were going to analyze data from Ener1 lithium-ion batteries used in a fleet of 80 Think City plug-ins.

Nissan last August started selling a system in Japan that allowed the Leaf to be used as backup electricity-storage system for homes. The Leaf, with its 24-kWh battery fully charged, can supply enough electricity to power a typical Japanese home for about two days, Nissan said at the time.

"We see increasing need for storage in the distribution grid," said Jochen Kreusel, head of smart grid operations for Zurich-based ABB, on Wednesday's call.

The sudden departure of Peugeot from the Le Mans racing scene came as quite a shock, we know. But don't count the inaugural FIA World Endurance Championship – or the famed 24-hour race at its center – out for the count before it's even started, because another powerhouse is already gearing up to take Peugeot's place. And that powerhouse is Toyota.

The Japanese auto giant announced its plans to build and campaign a new LMP1 racer at Le Mans and the WEC back in October. Toyota Motorsport GmbH (which ran the company's F1 team until its withdrawal in 2009) then set about designing the car, partnering with Team Oreca to help with the logistics of entering the pinnacle of endurance racing, and hired three top pilots to, you know, actually drive the thing.

With all those pieces in place, the Toyota team began testing their new prototype racer last week at the Paul Ricard test track in France. Toyota itself didn't release much in the way of details, but Alex Wurz was said to have led the shake-down, with his team-mates Nicolas Lapierre and Kazuki Nakajima on hand to share in the driving duties as well.

And while no "official" photos were "officially" released, Toyota PR rep Scott Brownlee tweeted a couple of snapshots to whet our appetites. The result looks, predictably enough, much like the latest LMP1 racers fielded by Audi and the departed Peugeot, but as with most things, it's what's underneath the surface that will count the most. In Toyota's sake, that would be a gasoline-electric hybrid drivetrain of some sort, but we'll have to wait a little while longer – as the next round of testing and the car's anticipated debut at Spa come May approach – to find out more.

Even if you can add fuel to your electric car to go for hundreds of miles, they're not fun if you don't have a good soundtrack. Fisker has enacted its second recall on its Karma in less than a month, this time for a software issue that causes the extended-range plug-in hybrid's entertainment and navigation system to malfunction, HybridCars has reported.

The company will stop sales on the Karma until the problem is fixed, Fisker spokesman Roger Ormisher told HybridCars. Neither the company nor the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has released an official statement on the recall.

The recall represents another setback for closely held Fisker, which pushed back the initial delivery date for the Karma at least four times since the September 2010 deadline company co-founder and chief executive Henrik Fisker first set for the car's debut.

Fisker, which finally started selling the Karma last year, recalled the car in late December because of battery-related safety issues. Specifically, the batteries, which are made by A123 Systems, were found to have potentially caused coolant leaks because of the positioning of the battery cover relative to the car's hose clamps. Fisker and NHTSA officially recalled 239 Karmas that were built between July 1 and November 3 of last year.

There are drawbacks to every kind of alternative to burning fossil fuels in our cars. Electric cars don't have enough range. Hybrids are burdened with what essentially boils down to two parallel powertrains. Hydrogen is limited to where it is available. Bio-ethanol has its own drawbacks, but don't tell that to the performance enthusiast. That's because E85 – similar to what IndyCars run on but mixed with 15 percent pump gasoline – is not only a renewable and cleaner source of energy, it also provides more power.

Take the Koenigsegg Agera R, for example. With 927 horsepower on tap from ordinary 95-octane gasoline, the Koenigsegg is already one of the fastest, most powerful cars money can buy. But fill it with E85 and it offers up almost 1,100 hp. Now, a Norwegian firm is offering an aftermarket bio-ethanol conversion for the Ferrari FF that provides a similar transformation.

Whereas the stock FF (which could now just as easily stand for Flex Fuel) already drives a prodigious 650 horsepower to all four wheels, the converted version packs a whopping 875 hp for a sub-three-second sprint to sixty, all the while dropping the car's emissions figures by some 80 percent. The conversion costs just €1,500 ($1,930 U.S., at today's exchange rates) – rather insignificant considering the FF's $300k+ sticker price – and has reportedly been fitted by an authorized Ferrari dealer to at least one customer's car, though that doesn't mean it's covered by (and very well might invalidate) the FF's warranty.

Volkswagen has confirmed to Autoblog that the oil-burning 2013 Beetle TDI will make its public debut at the Chicago Auto Show next month.

No specific details have been released at this time, but you can bet that the automaker's slick 2.0-liter turbo-diesel four will be underhood. In the Golf, Jetta and Passat, the mill kicks out 140 horsepower and 236 pound-feet of torque, and both six-speed manual and DSG transmissions will likely be available. This engine is already good for as high as 43 miles per gallon highway in the Passat (and we've routinely hit as high as 50 mpg in our long-term Jetta TDI), so we expect exceptional fuel economy out of the diesel Bug, as well.

What's more, our understanding is that Volkswagen plans to offer the TDI engine in the upcoming Beetle Convertible, which will make it the very first clean diesel droptop available in the United States. Of course, we won't know for sure until the roofless Bug debuts later this year, but still, it's something to get excited about.

Stay tuned for the full scoop live from the Chicago show next month.