What do Porsche and Lamborghini have in common? Well, a lot. To begin with, both make highly desirable sports cars, and after the former bought Volkswagen, which in turn had bought the latter, both are now under common ownership. Both have produced insanely powerful sport-utilities and both have built tractors. Lamborghini started out making tractors before Ferruccio's infamous run-in with Enzo Ferrari, after which he started making sportscars. The rest, as they say, is history. Porsche, on the other hand, started out in the opposite direction, producing sportscars before eventually moving on to sport-utes. But back in the 1950's, Porsche made a series of tractors as well.

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According to FedEx, its hybrid delivery vehicles have saved approximately 83,000 gallons of fuel and eliminated 950 tons of greenhouse gas emissions while racking up an impressive 2 million miles overall.
Because of this success, the global delivery giant will be adding 75 new hybrid vehicles to its fleet, making for a total of 172 hybrid vehicles.

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Hi-tech dumper is going green
Collecting bin bags has never been such a clean job – if they are being dumped in one of the world’s first hybrid refuse trucks! A fleet of two of these eco-friendly lorries has just been unveiled by Volvo Trucks in Sweden. It claims they could cut emissions by 20 per cent, thanks to an electric motor mated to the diesel engine.

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If there is any type of vehicle that would seem ideally suited to a hybrid drive application, it is a garbage truck (right, Volvo?). With the continuous stop and go driving involved with collecting the detritus of modern civilization there is plenty of opportunity for regenerative braking and electric launch. ISE Corporation already has a series hybrid system that they've developed for transit bus applications.

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Scania has announced that, after 20 years of providing ethanol buses, the Swedish company (owned by Volkswagen) is going to sell ethanol trucks from the next model year onwards. The marque also announced agreements to build a network of fueling stations to make it easily available for small businesses to buy the biofuel. According to Scania's data, ethanol produced from sugarcane can reduce CO2 emissions by up to 90 percent compared to a regular diesel engine. Scania stated that it's betting on ethanol because it's the most cost-efficient biofuel available.

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We recently told you about hybrid hopeful AFS Trinity taking their show on the road to spend Earth Day (a week from today) in Washington, DC. Now, Toyota has announced that it has its own big blue tractor-trailer billboard with a hybrid theme hitting the road again in time for Earth Day festivities in downtown New York, NY.

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With the arrival of spring, many of us have been busy preparing our gardens for the upcoming growing season. The soil needs to be tilled, fertilized and well hoed to ensure a bumper crop. And speaking of bumpers, the folks over at AFS Trinity have been polishing theirs (you see what I did right there?), getting ready for an epic cross country trip from the gritty streets of San Francisco to the gleaming metropolis of Washington. With their D.C. arrival to correspond with that of Earth Day, they have hopes of finding some politicians on the Capitol Mall in search of a good green-tech photo-op with their XH-150.

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It's been a month since we last wrote about Miles Automotive. Most of our recent coverage of the electric car company has revolved around the sounds-too-good-too-be-true XS500, a highway speed all-electric sedan that is - supposedly - about a year away. Now we have something new from Miles to write about. The 2008 Production Model MILES ZX40ST Work Truck, which was introduced today at the Green California Summit in Sacramento.

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Delivery services like DHL are very efficient operations that get your package from point A to point B at the lowest possible cost, but the company's mega-fleet spews CO2 by the truckload. In the Asia Pacific region, DHL has started Gogreen Express to give environmentally conscious shippers the ability to choose carbon-neutral package delivery. Using Gogreen Express is as simple as paying an additional three percent fee on top of the cost of the overall bill. DHL then invests the money into green projects like vehicle technology, solar panels and reforestation. It's definitely not electric-powered delivery vehicles, but at least it's a start.

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One of these days we'll have at least one post from every country in the world here on AutoblogGreen. After all, cars are a worldwide thing and it is called "global" warming, isn't it? Today, we feature our first post about Cambodia, where a charity group called Planet Biodiesel Outreach Cambodia has started running tours using a biodiesel-powered van/truck thing (pictured). The organization offers 7- and 12-day triips where your local transportation is powered by biodiesel the group makes from used veggie oil.

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Eaton Corporation has confirmed that Coca-Cola Enterprises has placed the largest single order to date for trucks using the company's hybrid system. Coca-Cola will be purchasing 120 of the hybrid trucks to add to the 20 that they bought last year. Eaton and Coca-Cola have been working together to test the hybrid trucks since 2003. The vehicles in use so far have achieved a thirty-two percent reduction in emissions and thirty-seven percent drop in fuel consumption. Eaton's system is a full parallel hybrid system with regenerative braking capability.

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Utilmaster, the company that makes the trucks that deliver your packages, uniforms and potato chips, has taken note of the price its customers are paying for gas and is following up on a memorandum of understanding it struck last August with hybrid power train developer Azure Dynamics. Yes, pen has been put to paper and a supply contract has been signed. Scott Harrison, Azure's Chief Executive Officer, said in a press release issued by the company, that since the announcement of the original memorandum, "significant progress has been made by both parties to reach production readiness." Or, in other words, each of the involved party's aqua-loving fowl have been nudged and prodded into a linear column.

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Wal-Mart is going to introduce four liquefied natural gas (LNG)-fueled Peterbilt 386 trucks into service at their distribution center in Apple Valley, California using Westport Innovations HPDI system on Cummins ISX engines (pictured above is one of Wal-Mart's hybrid trucks being used for other tests). The deployment will be supported, in part, by funding from the Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District's (MDAQMD) Mobile Source Emission Reductions Competitive Bidding Program.

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England's Tanfield Group has inked a deal with Valence Technology for a supply of lithium phosphate battery packs. The batteries will be used in Smith Electric trucks which the company recently announced would be available in the U.S. The Smith trucks currently use sodium nickel chloride (Zebra) batteries which will be supplanted by the new lithium units. Tanfield becomes the first large-volume customer for Valence's new batteries with an initial order for $70 million worth of packs. The packs are equipped with Valence's third-generation Epoch battery management system.

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Corporate Express has announced that it will be one of the first U.S. companies to test an Isuzu hybrid delivery truck for its operations. The model will be a current Isuzu truck in which Enova Systems will retrofit their HybridPower drive system. The truck is expected to be completed in April 2008 and will be used in Los Angeles, CA.

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