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"We are the Petro Metro but we are also a car city," said newly elected Mayor Annise Parker, speaking at an event on February 5 to promote the Nissan LEAF, an all-electric, five-passenger vehicle that can travel 100 miles on a single charge. "To have an electric vehicle that appeals to a car culture will make the real difference for market penetration."

Cities like Houston and San Francisco are forging partnerships with automakers and power companies to make the vision a reality.

In Houston, for instance, Japanese-based Nissan Motor Co Ltd has signed a deal where the city and power provider Reliant, a unit of NRG Energy Inc, will build a handful of public-charging stations to allow electric car drivers to recharge their cars.

Nissan has signed agreements with other cities like San Diego, Seattle and Orlando and states like Tennessee and Oregon to ensure that public-charging stations are built.

Such agreements are key to easing skeptical consumers' fears of running out of juice if their car batteries run low before they can reach their garage charging stations.

For beleaguered U.S. auto makers like General Motors Co and Ford Motor Co, electric cars could be a way to boost shrinking market share.

"Detroit needs something to be exciting and new," said William Hederman, a senior vice president at Concept Capital's Washington Research Group.

General Motors' highly-anticipated battery-powered Chevy Volt hits showrooms in November, about the same time that Nissan begins U.S. sales of the LEAF.

LOVE OF BIG CARS

Texas drivers have a well-established affinity for over-sized cars, but the case for electric cars is strong.

Even if a small percentage of Texas drivers switch to electric cars, the payoff could be substantial. The Houston area alone is home to 4.5 million vehicles that travel 86 million miles a day, according to state statistics.

And Texas leads the nation in producing clean, carbon-free electricity from windmills. But the state must build billions of dollars worth of transmission lines needed to channel the wind power to urban centers.

For U.S. utilities that have seen electric demand slump 5 percent over the last two years due to a recession, the electric car is a godsend, said Kevin Book, managing director of research at ClearView Energy Partners LLC.

"What a salvation the electric car revolution would be for generators that are well below their capacity margins and trying to figure out how to make money," Book said.

In a strange bedfellows story of sorts, U.S. utilities have moved in recent months to cement ties with automakers.

"We've worked very closely together," said Tony Earley, chief executive of a Detroit utility and chairman of the U.S. electric industry's main lobbying group who also sits on Ford's board of directors.

Such coordination has helped utilities fend off clean-car competition in the form of natural gas-powered vehicles promoted by Texas oil man T. Boone Pickens, Hederman said.

Utilities see electric cars as a perfect market for spare electricity that is generated by power plants in off-peak hours that could be sold to consumers who will recharge their electric cars during late-night and early-morning hours when power is the cheapest.

"If it works the way utilities envision, it's growth that fills in the valleys of their demand patterns, and that would be a wonderful thing," Hederman said.

Utilities must build or buy generation to meet the one day of the year when electricity demand is the highest. "The other 364 days of the year our system is under-utilized," said Earley, also chief executive of DTE Energy Co. in Detroit. "There is a lot of capacity that is unused."

UNDER PRESSURE

For utilities and auto companies watching climate change legislation advance on Capitol Hill, electric cars are a useful tool to reduce heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions to comply with looming first-ever U.S. greenhouse gas restrictions.

"We know that our utility partners face the same pressures that we do to reduce emissions," said Mark Perry, Nissan's director of product planning.

About one-quarter of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions are linked with cars. U.S. President Barack Obama wants to put 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015 to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

And even without climate change legislation, smog-enveloped cities like Houston are already under the gun from federal regulators to reduce smog-causing pollutants like nitrogen oxide, which comes mainly from vehicles.

One big question mark for utilities is how they will be compensated for building charging stations. One study by the University of California Berkeley pegged the cost of building U.S. charging stations at $320 billion in coming decades.

State public utility commissions will have to give utilities permission to recover infrastructure costs via higher rates, but won't approve electric charging stations until they are widely used, Hederman said.

A car that get over 200 miles per gallon.

General Motors’ upcoming Volt plug-in gasoline-electric hybrid has already grabbed plenty of buzz over the past couple of years. But Volt mania reached a fever pitch this summer when General Motors announced that it would achieve 230 miles per gallon.

Later the same week, Nissan revealed that its upcoming Leaf electric vehicle would achieve 367 mpg.

View Now: Chevy Volt Pictures

Before you go put your money down, beware—neither of those two numbers are official U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) fuel economy estimates. TheEPA hasn’t yet formalized any method of testing or rating plug-in hybrid vehicles or a new generation of electric vehicles, and you won’t find either of those numbers in the EPA’s annual Fuel Economy Guide or on window stickers because they’re still prototypes.

Turns out both of these triple-digit numbers rely on optimistic methodologies that are favorable for the respective vehicles but not or easily applied to other types of vehicles or compared to present-day fuel economy figures.

The recent claims remind John DeCicco, a transportation and energy issues expert, of the time just after the 1973 oil crisis and before the first official EPA fuel economy ratings were available, in 1975. Some manufacturers around at that time advertised their vehicles with “outlandish mileage claims,” recalledDeCicco, also a senior lecturer on energy and climate policy at the University of Michigan. “We’ve again got a situation where manufacturers will spin the number to look good,” he said.

Looking at the 230-mpg figure, there’s no way of saying simply that the Volt would use less than a quarter of the fuel of a 50-mpg Toyota Prius to go the same distance.

It is however fair to say that in typical driving a 50-mpg Prius will go twice as far on a gallon of gas as a 2010 Toyota Corolla XRS, rated at 25 mpg. Such comparisons are fair game for any light vehicle that’s officially on sale in the U.S. Every one carries EPA fuel economy ratings, which are designed to give prospective owners an idea of relative fuel cost in real-world driving as well as a way of comparing various models on equal ground.

The ratings are listed in the EPA’s annual Fuel Economy Guide, at fueleconomy.gov, or on the window sticker of any new vehicle; they’re also used in figuring an automaker’s corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) and in assessing a gas-guzzler tax on some vehicles. They’ve become an important way in which shoppers can easily compare one vehicle to another, and it assures a level playing field because of rigorous testing.

What comes next for the US and Haiti ?

Obama has mobilized a huge emergency aid effort for Haiti and officials say the United States will remain involved in rebuilding the impoverished Caribbean nation so that, after some 200 years of independence, it can eventually stand on its own.

"I want the people of Haiti to know that we will do what it takes to save lives and to help them get back on their feet," Obama said on Friday. "The scale of the devastation is extraordinary ... and the losses are heartbreaking."

This is what could happen next.

THE U.S. EFFECTIVELY TAKES OVER

U.S. officials have stressed that the assistance effort, which involves thousands of U.S. soldiers, sailors and Marines along with civilian search-and-rescue teams, is being organized in cooperation with the Haitian government led by President Rene Preval.

But the Haitian government, fragile at the best of times, is almost entirely out of contact, meaning that many of the operational decisions must come from Washington.

Experts say the United States has few options: it must either step up to the task of relief rebuilding, or open itself to criticism and as a possible new flood of Haitian refugees.

Dan Erikson, a Haiti specialist at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank, said at least in the short term the United States was calling the shots.

"Haiti had barely functioning ministries even before the earthquake," Erikson said. "The Obama administration can describe this as a partnership, but it is one where one partner is doing all the work and has all the authority."

U.S. aid chief Rajiv Shah said the strategy was to "saturate" assistance networks run by the United Nations and non-governmental organizations -- after which U.S. forces will start delivering emergency help themselves.

It will not be the first time U.S. soldiers have taken the lead in Haiti, the hemisphere's poorest country. After decades of political turbulence, the United States first sent troops to Haiti in 1915. They stayed 19 years.

More recently, former President Bill Clinton helped restore President Jean-Bertrand Aristide after he was ousted by the military in 1991. But President George W. Bush did little to help Aristide stay in office when his second term was cut short in 2004 by an armed revolt.

Aristide, speaking from exile in South Africa, has offered to return -- which could complicate things.

"What happens if the Venezuelans decide to fly him back?" said Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. "Until there is some kind of political resolution, it is going to be very hard to have rehabilitation."

UNITED NATIONS TAKES THE LEAD

U.S. officials sketch out a long-term strategy under which the United Nations -- which already has a peacekeeping force of about 9,000 in the country -- takes the lead.

While U.S. forces will contribute much of the initial emergency earthquake response, over time this will shift to a broad-based international assistance project that will concentrate on areas such as energy, farming and healthcare.

"Before this earthquake, we weren't talking about restoring (Haiti) we were talking about building a whole new country, former President Clinton said on U.S. television on Sunday.

"And there was a government plan that they developed in cooperation with the U.N., but it was their plan. And what I believe will happen is they will take all this devastation into account, all the work that has to be done, and they will rewrite their plan."

Coordination could be simple. Bill Clinton is already the U.N. special envoy for Haiti, and repeated donor conferences have established a well-known set of development priorities as well as a mechanism -- the Interim Cooperation Framework -- for delivering the help.

U.N. and NGO offices in Haiti are themselves struggling with the quake's aftermath. But given time, analysts say they should be well positioned to help channel assistance.

THE HELP DRIES UP

Some analysts say perhaps the biggest fear is that time will push Haiti off the priority list as other disasters intervene. For Haiti, already among the world's least developed nations, this could be a compound catastrophe.

"Donor fatigue is a very real concept," Birns said.

With a population of 9 million, an annual per capita income of just $560 and high infant mortality and HIV/AIDS rates, Haiti needs help virtually across the board but often lacks the ability to handle it when it comes.

"Often a lot more money is pledged than is actually delivered. And once the money is delivered, the Haitian government doesn't have the capacity to execute so the money doesn't get spent," said Erikson.

Still, like many development experts, he saw the earthquake as a possible fresh start for Haiti in its relations with its powerful northern neighbor -- who this time is intervening for humanitarian, rather than political, reasons.

"I think we ought to care from a humanitarian perspective and I also think from a strategic perspective because it makes sense to have a stable democracy in our neighborhood," former President George Bush said in a U.S. television interview.

Hot ars

Koenigsegg CRR

On February the 28th 2005, at 12.08 local time, the Koenigsegg CCR broke the production road car speed record, achieving a new official top speed of 387.87 km/h (242.14 mph) at Italy’s Nardo Prototipo proving ground.

With this verification of speed, Christian von Koenigsegg is even more confident that the Koenigsegg CCR is capable of reaching its projected top speed of 395 km/h, or more, in a straight line.

Driver Loris Bicocchi was very impressed by the performance of the car. He feels happy to finally prove the performance of the Koenigsegg. “This test was very important for the customers and owners of Koenigsegg cars. It proves that their belief and faith in the small Koenigsegg Company was well founded”.

Saleen S7

Priced at $430,000, The Saleen S7 is America’s first true supercar that has captured the imagination of the automotive world since its introduction in August 2000.

Designed to compete with the fastest, quickest, best handling and most exotic sports cars, the S7 provides a distinctly American driving experience for the fortunate few who will own one.

Lamborghini Gallardo

With a retail price of $165,900, Lamborghini Gallardo is a 2-door, 2-passenger luxury sports car.

The Italians love curves on their women and their cars, and the futuristic-looking Gallardo is no exception. The extreme curves on the roof make the car look like it could fire off the line at any moment.

You won't find the Gallardo's 500-horsepower, 5.0-liter, V10 engine on American streets just yet. But even if you could, you still might have trouble catching it with the naked eye -- the top speed of this baby is just over 190 miles per hour.