Shift! OK listen up, green is not the colour of nerds

- "Stop counting cylinders," Volvo tells industry: By limiting all its engines to four cylinders and equipping them with "smart" electrification, Swedish automaker Volvo claims environmental leadership among the world's automakers. Saying it is time for the automotive industry to "stop counting cylinders" the company told an L.A. Auto Show crowd in November that focusing on four cylinders is "the perfect way to improve fuel economy without compromising driving pleasure or performance. Said president and CEO Stefan Jacoby, "We will offer customers fourcylinder engines with higher performance than present six-cylinder units. And they will have better fuel economy than the current generation of four-cylinder engines." Employing smart electrification, he said, Volvo buyers can environmentally conscious "and still enjoy the pure pleasure of owning a luxury car."

- San Diego gets first on-demand electric vehicles: North America's first all-electric car-sharing network opened Nov. 18 in San Diego, Calif., making emissions-free driving a widely available and affordable option for every citizen with a license. Car2go, an arm of Mercedes-Benz, is a blueprint that could be adapted to every urban centre on the continent. Three hundred Smart Fortwo electric-drive vehicles are now in on-demand service across the entire city. The car-sharing program gives San Diegans "a clean transportation option and complements walkable lifestyles" in the city's urban communities, said Mayor Jerry Sanders. As importantly, it will expose a vast number of people who drive internal-combustion-powered vehicles to electric-drive cars - or at least to the Smart electric vehicles - demonstrating their operation and utility.

- Fiat 500 Abarth "small but wicked": In the way that sick means good, here's evidence that wicked things come in small packages. North American roads have never seen anything like the newest iteration of the Fiat 500 subcompact; the 2012 500 Abarth. Looking something like an evil gremlin, its turbocharged 1.4-litre four-cylinder engine spits out 160 horsepower and 170 pound-feet of torque; that's 59 horses and 72 poundfeet more than the standard 500 that, when equipped with a manual shifter, is no slouch itself. It follows the "small-but-wicked" aspirations of Karl Abarth, the famed "tuner" of small European cars in the 1960s. "Italian performance at an affordable price," said its presenter at the recent Los Angeles Auto Show, without revealing the price.

- B.C. car dealers see the light: Farther up the Pacific coast in Canada, the phrase "British Columbia green" is taking on new meaning as car dealers offer $500 discounts on new bicycles and encourage car-and ride-sharing programs with credits worth up to $750. Before you ask if they've all gone mad, the euphoria doesn't end there: working with the provincial SCRAP-IT program, there are other dealerbacked incentives for buyers who surrender a 1995 or older vehicle and replace it with one from 2004 or newer, including cash-in-hand and dealer discounts up to $1,250, based on the amount of carbon-dioxide reduction achieved. Since its inception, the program has seen 30,000 older cars taken off the road, leading to an estimated reduction of 180,000 tonnes in greenhouse gasses.

- A little spark in Chevrolet's lineup: Almost a decade ago, a group of North American auto writers were visiting South Korea where they drove, among other vehicles, a Daewoo Matiz, a stylishly cute little thing penned by Italian design house Guigaro. They told Daewoo executives that they must bring this car to America. And here it is, finally, with some styling and equipment modifications: the Chevrolet Spark, which is the smallest car yet to be sold as a Chevrolet in the brand's centurylong history. While fuel-economy numbers aren't out yet, Chevrolet says the Spark's 1.2-litre four-cylinder engine will deliver better numbers than any other minicar now being sold, including the Fiat 500 and Smart Fortwo. It's due in showrooms in 2012, and an electric version of the Spark will follow, likely in 2013.

- Automakers see control of carbon fibre as an essential business move: BMW has bought 15 per cent of the world's largest maker of carbon fiber and graphite products for the car industry, reports Bloomberg News. The German automaker does not rule out buying additional shares. Competitor Volkswagen AG bought an 8.2 per cent stake in SGL earlier this year. The Wiesbaden, Germany-based company began making carbon brake discs for carmakers including Porsche (owned uby VW) more than a decade ago and now makes carbon-fiber-reinforced plastics for the industry. BMW's biggest shareholder, German billionaire Susanne Klatten, controls almost a third of SGL. The strategic importance of future lightweight materials "is too significant to allow a major competitor potentially taking over," a Credit Suisse official told the news agency.

Shift points

- An advanced, range-extending high-performance electric sports car concept is under development at Infiniti and will make its first public appearance at the Geneva auto show in March. Infiniti already makes hybrid and clean diesel models. "The natural next step was to push the boundaries where performance and the environment intersect," an executive said.

- Mitsubishi's most technologyintensive vehicle ever, the all-electric 'i' has scored first-place honours on the EPA's annual list of fueleconomy leaders for 2012. With a 2.1 litres per 100 kilometres equivalent (1.9 city/2.4 highway), the "i" is in a league of its own.

- A proposed U.S. rule requiring automakers to double average vehicle fuel economy to 4.3 litres per 100 km by 2025 would add an average $2,000 to each passenger car sold, says the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the EPA. They announced the projection on the NHTSA's website.