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In honor of Canada Day we bring you news from the Canadian capital, where a suburban service station has become the first in the world to sell a blend of gasoline and cellulosic ethanol biofuel. As part of a month long trial, drivers who fill up their Nissan X-Trails or Acura CSXs at a Shell station in the Ottawa suburb of Nepean have the choice of “CE-10″ blend — a mixture of 90 percent gasoline and 10 percent cellulosic ethanol from Ottawa-based Iogen ’s nearby demonstration plant. If the test goes well, Iogen hopes to have a full-scale plant running in Saskatchewan within the next few years. Before you dredge up the usual complaints about biofuel, be forewarned: this ain’t just any old ethanol. This is the so-called “second generation” ethanol that until now was never available to consumers. The CE-10 in Ottawa was produced  from an agricultural residue that otherwise would have been discarded. Unlike ethanol produced from corn or sugar, nobody’s converting a potential food source into fuel. Even better, there aren’t any of those pesky nitrous oxide emissions associated with the production of other biofuels, and Iogen estimates that lifecycle CO2 emissions of cellulosic ethanol are 90 percent less than gasoline with no decrease in power or fuel economy. What’s not to love? Well, the fuel isn’t yet ready for full-scale commercial production, but Iogen is hoping the demonstration project will change that. “Building a demo plant is one thing but you then need to go through the process of operating the new technology at scale, learning, modifying and lowering costs,” Iogen CEO Brian Foody said in a statement (PDF). “With the volumes we’re producing today, we’re confident about the future.” We’re pretty confident, too. We were in the area last week and decided to be part of biofuel history by filling up at this very station. Our mileage didn’t decrease, our car didn’t explode and our wallets didn’t get any lighter — though we did get some funny looks from the other folks filling up when we started taking pictures of a gas pump. See Also: More Corn Ethanol Could Boost Cellulosic Ethanol Cellulosic Ethanol: One Molecule Could Cure Our Addiction to Oil Another Argument Against Ethanol Photo: Flickr/ jsloss

Four months ago, the LH4 from Lightning Hybrids was nothing but a mound of clay , but the Colorado company has a running prototype and some video of it on the road. It’s brief, but you can tell the Corvette-inspired, hydraulic hybrid is not your typical hybrid. It sounds like a British sports car with a bad muffler but it doesn’t look too shabby. Lightning Hybrids is making steady progress after working double-time getting the LH4 built in time for the Denver Auto Show in April. It claims the car will get 100 mpg and do zero to 60 in under six seconds. If all goes according to plan, the LH4 will compete in the Progressive Automotive X Prize, and company founder and CEO Dan Johnson is pleased with how things are turning out so far. “It goes pretty good,” he said according to the Fort Collins Coloradoan . “It’s a little bit noisier than we’d like, but for the first prototype, we were pretty happy with it.” Johnson modeled the LH4 after the 1963 Stingray Corvette he restored in high school. The hybrid ditches batteries in favor of hydraulics, mating a 90-horsepower Mazda engine with a 150 horsepower Rexroth hydraulic pump. Hybrid technology like this has so far been limited to delivery trucks like the one UPS plans to roll out sometime this year. Check out our earlier post for an explanation of how it works. Lightning Hybrids plans to produce the LH4 in 2012 and a three-wheeled version called the LH3 next year. The Coloradoan reports the company needs $5 million to make it happen. To come up with the extra money to build the cars — which would cost $40,000 to $60,000 should they see production — Lightning Hybrids is looking for a partnership with Colorado State University and a government grant. It also hopes to pick up some extra cash from the sales of hydraulic hybrid retro fit kits and the X Prize. Photo: Lightning Hybrids See Also: 100-MPG Hybrid Evokes the ‘63 Corvette Lightning (Hybrid) Strikes Denver

The votes are in, that ballots are tallied and the winners chosen in Nissan’s “Hypercube” social media marketing contest, which pitted Canadian artists and writers against each other to demonstrate their creativity in trying to “personify the Cube brand” The social media campaign was designed to engage Canada’s “creative class” as brand ambassadors for the Cube minicar. Hypercube solicited entries from anyone who self-identified as “creative, hip, interesting or unique, including musicians, DJs, dancers, programmers, designers, bloggers, podcasters, poets, writers, storytellers and artists.” Entrants were narrowed down to 500 finalists, who used both online content and real-world chutzpah to muscle their way to the top 50 in order to win a car. The winners were selected by online voters and what Nissan calls “an amazing group of prominent Canadians” — a panel featuring English- and French-speaking judges, of course. Like Ford’s Fiesta Movement in the States, Hypercube competitors distinguished themselves through self-generated publicity. One Hypercube winner made a cardboard Cube and drove it around Toronto , and another made pins and handed them out around town. Unlike the Fiesta Movement, Hypercube eschewed top-down structure: the campaign began with a Twitter announcement and spread via word of mouth, nobody got to borrow a free car, and no “missions” were required. Most interestingly, Hypercube actively sought participants looking for their fifteen minutes of fame — a concept espoused by Nissan’s ad agency, Capital C . In addition to winning a car, the top 50 entrants got a chance to show off their creativity to the whole country during the contest and at last night’s festivities at nightclubs in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. “It’s what Johnny Carson did for comics and Ed Sullivan did for musicians in the heyday of television, and it’s what Nissan will be doing through social media for today’s Net Generation,” Capital C boss Tony Chapman said in a statement . “It’s where brands as exciting as the cube should play the role of curator, facilitator and multiplier of the collective imagination of Canada.” Photo: Nissan See Also: Another Cool Car, Another Social Media Marketing Campaign Ford Bets the Fiesta On Social Marketing Are You Cool Enough to Drive a Ford Fiesta?

Seeking to free themselves from the tyranny of federal and state governments, some separatist and militia groups have cast off the shackles of that great oppressor and bastion of tyranny, the Department of Motor Vehicles. Some groups have gone so far as to pick up where New Hampshire left off with “Live Free or Die,” proclaiming their sovereignty by stamping their own license plates. The homemade license plate is a favorite ploy of garden-variety tax evaders — like the Washitaw Nation — seeking to make a quick buck by getting “registry fees” from slightly more gullible tax-evaders. We won’t bother to ask why folks who don’t recognize government authority need a license plate in the first place, let alone why they’d set up a bureaucracy to extort fees from their fellow (free) man. While the plates may seem comical to casual observers, for law enforcement, they’re a warning sign. Back in the late ’90s, when the militia movement was in full swing, Militia Watchdog founder Mark Pitcavage warned police who pulled over cars with homemade plates that the driver may view them as a “symbol of all the perceived oppression and tyranny” they have encountered.”The officer now represents virtually all of ‘Government’,” he wrote. One of the folks who got pulled over back then was Scott Roeder, now accused in the shooting death of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller. McClatchy reports he was stopped in 1996 for driving a car with plates reading “Sovereign private property. Immunity declared by law. Non-commercial American.” Despite Roeder and others whose fake plates led to much greater crimes, most folks with a homemade DMV are looking to proclaim their eccentric (and often extremist) political views while getting out of paying taxes. We still wouldn’t recommend tailgating any of them. Does the ploy work? Consider the explanation that Embassy of Heaven founder Paul Revere gave to an Oregon police officer when his Subaru got stopped for fake plates. “I am an Ambassador of Jesus Christ for the Kingdom of Heaven,” Revere told the officer, according to the Embassy of Heaven website . “I am using the highways in the Kingdom of Heaven in the performance of my official duties to evangelize the Kingdom of Heaven according to the Great Commission.” The car was towed and Revere was arrested. Still, the Embassy continues to offer vehicle titles, drivers licenses, registration documents and license plates for anyone who wants to apply . Unlike your state’s DMV, the Embassy lets you do all your transactions online. Photo: Flickr/ av43050