Cheapest Car to Go Hybrid; Google to Move Into Clean Energy; CMT-380 plug-in diesel hybrid supercar; Boosting Biofuels; Thermeleon roof tiles

Tata Nano: World’s Cheapest Car to Go Hybrid Not sure if this is at all necessary, but hey – who am I to judge? If all goes according to plan, the ultra-cheap hybrid stands to shatter the economic barrier to getting greener vehicles on the roads.

Google to Move Into Clean Energy Project Investing At an event at Google’s offices in San Francisco on Monday night, the company’s director of climate change and energy initiatives, Dan Reicher, said that Google will soon make a step into clean energy project investing.

CMT-380 plug-in diesel hybrid supercar uses microturbine, li-ion batteries The company behind the concept, Capstone Technologies, says that the microturbine under the hood is basically an “ultra-clean and quiet jet engine,” and the announced performance specs bear this out: 0-60 mph is taken care of in a quick 3.9 seconds and the top speed is listed at 150 mph. The hybrid powertrain uses li-ion batteries along with the C30 microturbine to reach a range of 500 miles per tank (the size of the tank and an estimated MPG figure were not given), with 80 of those miles available in pure-electric mode.

Boosting Biofuels With Extra Chromosomes Kaiima, based in Israel, says it has devised a technique for multiplying the number of chromosomes in biofuel and other agricultural crops in a way that will increase harvests while at the same time skirting some of the technical and regulatory risks surrounding genetically modified organisms.

Thermeleon roof tiles could be a game changer A team of MIT graduates have certainly weighed in with their part, where their Thermelon contribution picked up the third annual MIT Making and Designing Materials Engineering Contest by virtue of being a thermally-activated, color-changing, roofing material.