It was only a couple of weeks back when we reported on the speculation about the end of the road for the SUV. Today GM announced the closure of 4 truck & SUV plants in Canada, Mexico and the US. (Oshawa, Ontario, Canada; Moraine, Ohio; Janesville, Wisconsin; and Toluca in Mexico.)

GM, the world's largest car manufacturer, is quoted as saying the sudden move is

No, that's not a brand name or a model name, this is a mountain bike with a bamboo frame!

My own mountain bike is a full-suspension alloy number I bought a few years back (at a considerable discount) as an ex-demo from my local bike shop, but I have to admit this little beauty is quite an eye-opener.

Whilst my girlfriend is back in the USA news comes in that the Americans are suffering gas, or rather $4 a gallon gas I should say. Some of them are praying for gas!

Over at the BBC there's a great video story on a car that runs on air.

The car, well, a small van actually, has a tiny engine that runs on compressed air and uses other fuels for longer journeys. That means that during the urban cycle the vehicle makes absolutely no emissions at all. Except, for now, a bit of noise.

Inventor Guy Negre, an ex Formula 1 engineer, said that:

*cough*

I beg your pardon?

Did you just say "You can drive a big truck and still be responsible"?

Those are the words of Jim Press, Vice Chairman of Chrysler, to the BBC as he sings the praises of the new 2008 Dodge Ram - a truck that has 5.7 litre 345 horse power V8 engine and is apparently 5% more fuel-efficient than its predecessor. With that in mind he adds that "it's kind to the environment".

The ill-considered rush to provide biofuels for Europe & the world has led to a number of negative environmental issues.

Where biofuel was once seen as an easy alternative to producing greener vehicles, it was thought that simply fuelling the same old vehicles with "greener" fuel would be the answer to the CO2 issues.

However the use of biofuel, mainly due to these negative issues, is almost negligible.

Somebody mentioned this statistic on one of those comedy TV shows last week and we though we would check it out. And sure enough we found that very same phrase in its entirety:

"Road traffic in Great Britain has grown by 84% since 1980"

That is a LOT of traffic, nearly double in under 30 years. It does add credence to the commonly held view that

"Weren't the roads much quieter when we were kids?"

Yes, you read that right, we said Carbon Footyprint. There's an online text ad doing the rounds at the moment that caught our attention...

"Make the beautiful game a greener game"

...and it clicks through to CarbonFootyprint.com

German-made cars have seen their CO2 emissions go UP according to a report from the European Federation for Transport & the Environment (T&E) whereas French, Italian and Japanese car manufacturers saw their vehicles' emissions go DOWN.
T&E says that the figures for 2006 when compared to 2005 show that French, Italian and Japanese CO2 emission figures actually dropped by an average of 1.6% whereas the German cars' emissions increased by 0.6%.

After Richard Branson's £1.6 billion Pledge towards green fuels last year comes a new 'green' deal with Branson's Virgin Atlantic ordering 15 of Boeing's new 'green' Dreamliner passenger jets.