The car looks great, sounds great, gets lots of attention, and is fun to drive. I was slightly disappointed that they switched from a BMW diesel to a Chevy gas engine, but hats off to Local Motors for getting this car on the road. It’s a huge breath of fresh air compared to what the big car companies create these days.

An ETH professor is working on a pneumatic hybrid engine. It stores excess energy as compressed air instead of using batteries, which could make hybrid engines simpler and cheaper.

Rinspeed (a Zurich based Porsche dealer and tuner known for creating crazy concept cars in their spare time) has come up with an engine management solution for Fiat 500s that lets the driver switch between low horsepower/high MPG and high horsepower/low MPG modes. So you can just cruise along in 58 miles per gallon mode and when you feel like having a little fun you flip the switch to turn on an extra 100 horsepower.

Apparently Citroen will release a successor to the classic 2CV. It looks great and will supposedly have an interesting sounding diesel hybrid drive train.