Best Buy is going to start carrying some electric bikes in a handful of its stores on the West coast. “Best Buy will be piloting electric-powered personal transportation products at some of our stores on the West Coast later this spring,” said Paula Baldwin, senior manager for Best Buy public relations. At first, e-bikes by Currie Technologies and Ultra Motor will be available.

According to Bicycle Retailer Magazine, Currie Technologies will be supplying Best Buy with six different Izip models, ranging in price from $499-$2,000. The Southern California-based company will also provide Best Buy with two electric scooters at $299 and $599, according to Currie president Larry Pizzi. Pizzi also added that these electric bikes will be sold in around twenty stores at first, but that a “larger roll out” was possible for around Christmas time.

We at Sustainability Ninja think the Mini Cooper is a damn cute car. And now, the Cooper doing the smart thing by jumping on the electric vehicle bandwagon. Can we get a hoo raah?

In a floundering auto industry, when many automakers struggle to attract buyers, Mini has to figure out which buyers to choose, the good people over at BMW are having a problem: They can’t build enough electric Mini coopers to meet demand. Mini will release only 450 vehicles and another 50 in Berlin. From there, the company will decide whether or not to mass produce the vehicle.

Powered by a 100 % electric motor, the Mini E can accelerate to 62 mph in just 8.5 seconds, and reach a top speed of 95 mph. Unfortunately, Mini E is only available for lease and will be available in just three cities. Despite a hefty price tag, there has been a whopping demand for the car.

“We have to make sure their driving style fits with what we want,” Jim McDowell, vice president of Mini USA, told ANE. “If you drive 200 miles a day, that’s a longer daily drive than our range.”

McDowell says Mini has whittled the application list down to 1,000 people. The 450 people who will be selected should receive their cars in April.

Now as much as we at SustainabilityNinja love eco-friendly transportation, we can’t help but think the Segway is a little bit stupid. And a Chanel Segway? Now that’s just embarrassing. The Chanel Segway is just your standard Segway but with the Chanel logo painted on the side, wheel and handlebar as well as a Chanel bag on the front.

Now we know that this guy loves the Segway, but do you think even he’d be caught on a Chanel Segway? C’mon!

We’re not sure how much the good people at Chanel are charging for this laughing-stock on wheels, but we’re guessing Chanel Segway customers are probably doing alright for themselves, even in the current economic climate.

The clearly capable designers of the Aptera 2e have another exciting environmentally friendly vehicle on the way – a solar powered pontoon boat. The Aptera 2e designers have reworked the Tamarack Lake Electric Boat Company’s signature eco-friendly pontoon boat; the Loon and the results are impressive.

Not only are the twin hulls essentially puncture resistant through their integration with the deck, but the solar panels on the roof of the boat can be lowered to the sides for convenient off-water transportation.

The most innovative aspect of this solar powered boat is something we are seeing more often in cutting-edge eco-friendly electronic systems, which is its ability to feed energy back into the power grid. When the 1,000 watt solar panels have fully charged the battery the excess energy can be sent back into the grid while it sits plugged in at the dock.

Additionally, the materials used to build the boat get two eco-ninja thumbs up and include: recycled plastic, natural fibers and bamboo. My favorite part of the construction is its manatee-friendly shroud that houses the propeller blades. Oh the huge manatee!

The original Loon had a range of over 30 miles and a top speed of 6 knots. We haven’t seen the specs for the new model but we are expecting they will see significant improvement.

Bentley just released a photo of it’s first foray into the world of eco-friendly cars with a biofuel luxury car that it promises will be the fastest, most powerful and clean car the company has ever built. The biofuel Bentley will be unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show in March as a testament toward the automaker’s goal of reducing the average CO2 emissions of its entire fleet.

The problem lies in the supposed benefits of biofuel. Switching to biodiesel on a large scale requires considerable use of our arable area. Even modest usages of biodiesel would consume almost all cropland in some countries in Europe. If the same thing was to happen globally, the impact on the world’s food supply could be a disastrous. Biodiesel also tends to reduce fuel economy, and is less suitable for use in low temperatures.

Toyota is currently developing a car that will be powered solely by solar energy in an effort to turn around its struggling business with a totally sustainable energy car.

According to newspapers, it will be years before the planned vehicle will be available on the market. Toyota’s offices were closed Thursday and officials were not immediately available for comment. According to The Nikkei, Toyota is working on an electric vehicle that will get some of its power from solar cells equipped on the vehicle, and that can be recharged with electricity generated from solar panels on the roofs of homes. The automaker later hopes to design a model totally powered by solar cells on the vehicle, the newspaper said without citing sources. The planned solar car is part of efforts by Japan’s top automaker to grow during the global economic crisis.

Toyota is a world leader in green technology and their executives have said that they won’t cut back on environmental research despite current financial troubles.

James May of Top Gear recently traveled from the UK to LA, California to test out the Honda FCX Clarity in their latest episode. In case you have not heard of the FCX Clarity, it is an electric powered car with no batteries. Instead, the FCX generates it’s own electricity from hydrogen fuel cells.

I think that hydrogen fuel cell cars are a very good alternative to regular gasoline cars however I still believe fully electric vehicles are the way to go. If we can improve the charging time on the batteries it would be a much better route to go. With the price of hydrogen roughly the same as petrol, the powers at be would prefer to have us still heading to the pumps to fill up. This means we will still be at the whim of the Exxon’s of the world, jacking up prices as they please. Personally I’d rather wait for my fully electric car to charge up, for a fraction of the price.

This is why I was a little annoyed with May’s bashing of the electric powered car while so blindly promoting the hydrogen powered car. “When the clarity runs out of juice, you just pull into a hydrogen filling station.” Ah, what hydrogen filling station? I understand this infrastructure could be put in place if the industry took, but so could rapid electric charging stations.

“In America, hydrogen costs roughly the same as petrol, but unlike petrol it will never run out, because it is the most abundant element in the universe.” Ok, this one really got to me. First off, he contradicts himself by saying “hydrogen is usually stuck onto something else” and “is actually quite difficult to scrape off“. If it is stuck to something else and is difficult to separate then that means we are going to be using a lot of energy to create it and transport it; unlike electricity.

Let’s not forget how explosive hydrogen is as well. I would not want to be in an accident in a hydrogen fueled vehicle. You can check out the full video on the Honda FCX Clarity here and draw your own conclusion.

James May flies to Los Angeles to test the Honda FCX Clarity Hydrogen fueled vehicle. Is this the future for sustainable transportation? Possibly, but I don’t like the fact that he bashes the strictly electric vehicles. Watch the full video and comment on what your thoughts are.

There are many sites around the web claiming to be the real deal when it comes to providing consumers with hydrogen car kits for their vehicle that can improve fuel consumption by a remarkable percentage. Many who have assembled and used these kits scream scam, while others say their gas mileage improved 100 percent.

The concept behind hydrogen generator kits for cars and trucks is that they use electricity provided by the car’s battery to electrolyze a small amount of water which separates the hydrogen from the oxygen. The hydrogen and oxygen are then injected into the vehicle’s air intake system. The hydrogen and oxygen displace some of the fossil fuels in the cylinders, help the gasoline or diesel fuel to burn more efficiently, increase performance and decrease pollutants coming out the exhaust.

I have yet to try one of these kits out myself but if anyone has attempted, or is currently using one of these hydrogen car kits, please share your experience for the rest by commenting.