Of all the cars we’ve tested this past spring, the Volkswagen EOS convertible is at the front of the pack, largely due to one big thing … it’s drop top coolness. Most folks would be hard-pressed to identify an EOS … it zips through life with a variation of the Romulan cloak of invisibility … what was that car?

Whoosh … and then it’s gone …

The under-hyped VW EOS over-delivers with a fantastic mechanical hardtop, exhilarating performance, solid iPod integration, and room for four … if you have two friends or family members of smaller proportions.

And it’s do 30 MPG on the highway … if you can keep your foot out of it.

But it’s the retractable hard top that steals the show.

MPGomatic’s VW EOS review of the handsome little German sportscar includes an indulgent look at the Transformer-like transformation from three angles.

Ready or not, the dawn of the electric car era is in sight.

Electric car fanatics gathered at the Plug-in Electric Vehicles 2008 conference last week in Washington DC. The event, hosted by the Brookings Institute and Google.org, packed the main ballroom of the Washington Hyatt on Capitol Hill.

A standing room only crowd heard words of encouragement and got a stiff dose of reality from distinguished members of Congress, industry leaders, and visionaries.

The electric car is going to happen. And it’s going to happen sooner than you might think.

Conference video:

• Imagining the Plug-In Future
• Plug-In Electric Vehicles: Where Are We Today?
• Jim Woolsey - Plug-In Electric Vehicles 2008
• Lamar Alexander - Plug-In Electric Vehicles 2008
• Orrin Hatch - Plug-In Electric Vehicles 2008

The thermometer hit 100 today and it’s only the 9th of June. It’s time to talk about the other kind of windows again … not Microsoft windows, but the windows on your home. Window tinting, specifically.

I’ve been giving a good bit of thought to installing D-I-Y solar window tinting on a handful of the windows here at Ranchero Indebto. In the summertime, the rooms on the eastern side of the house start heating up early in the morning, as the sun beats down upon them.

This is particularly troublesome, because my current home office faces east. On a warm sunny day, the office can start to overheat by 10:00 AM.

I’m hoping that solar window tinting will help to alleviate this problem.

Now if I had my druthers (and an extra ten thousand dollars or so), I would invest in electronically operated outside blinds or shutters for all the windows on the east, south, and west walls as they’re all prone to overheating at different times of the day.

Lacking the druthers (and the ten grand), I just might give the D-I-Y window tinting idea a whirl … starting with the home office windows. If it works (and more importantly, if my wife approves), I’ll try solar tinting on the other east facing windows.

After spending a week reviewing a Ford Focus, I get it.

The Microsoft Sync audio system, trendy design touches, and some of the best gas mileage results found in a domestically manufacturer conventional vehicle make this little critter a winner. It’s easy to see why Focus sales increased a whopping 88% year-over-year for the month of April.

It’s not a hybrid, but it’s the right car at the right time.

A Ford Focus? Isn’t that the nondescript car that Bill Gates drove off into the proverbial sunset in his 2008 CES video?

Well, yep it is … and just months later, it’s one of the hottest selling American-made cars.

We can’t pin all the success on Bill, of course.

While the Microsoft Sync audio system that is the shiny object that attracts the attention, it’s the solid gas mileage results that ensure the long-term love.

Staycation: it’s new buzzword being pressed by the media. “We can’t afford the gas to leave home this summer, so we’re going to have a staycation right here.

The retailers are using the staycation phenom as justification to grab a chunk of our economic stimulus checks.

Staycation sales … what a concept.

I had all intents of using my check as a down payment on a backyard wind turbine, but those plans flew away when we decided to (finally) finish off the last two rooms of our long-running hardwood flooring project. Our local retailer had run out of the oak flooring we’ve been using and were reluctant to order more, so I rolled the dice and placed the order online. (I’ll let you know how that works out …)

The rest of the check was gobbled up by some new wooden deck furniture … made right here in the great state of New Jersey by Tidewater Workshop.

I’ve been traveling a lot lately, with four cross-country trips in the space of just over two months. Now I know that might not seem like a lot for the most battle weary road warriors out there, but for me, it was monumental.

Two of the first three trips had red eye return flights. While I’m not sure exactly what prompted me to go for the red eyes in the first place (it may have been the mistaken thought of “saving a day”), it had turned into a nasty habit that I had to shake.

Last week, I was out in Las Vegas, covering the Alternative Fuels and Vehicles conference. Early on the day of my return, my wife kindly convinced me - over the phone - to nix the red eye and push my return flight back to a more reasonable time the next day. It was one of the wisest travel decisions I’ve made in ages and I have my wife to thank.

Although I’ve gotten to the point where I can actually fall asleep on an airplane (under the right circumstances), that sleep is never refreshing. Rather then saving time by flying the red eye flights, I was losing time, because it wiped me out for 24 hours or more.

Life’s too short to walk around like a zombie. An extra night in a great hotel wins, hands down.

When you’re the geek around the house, technology is where you find it. Last week, I found it in the master bath, when I replaced the original toilet with a hi-tech wonder … the toilet that flushes an entire bucket of golf balls.

It started out as a little job … we just wanted to replace the floor as a temporary measure until we had the opportunity to do a complete renovation. But as they often do, that simple $100 flooring job turned into a bit more than initially anticipated.

Seizing upon the opportunity to turn moldy lemons into something else (not lemonade), I quickly decided it was time to replace the toilet.?? Not with just anything, mind you, but an affordable variant of what Wired called American Standard’s King of Thrones.

Replacing a toilet is one of those rights of passage that ranks right up there with seeing your child being born. (Well, not quite …) Nevertheless, these are mysteries that many regular mortals can only speculate upon.

To flush away the mystery on toilet replacement, it’s two bolts, one simple plumbing fitting, and the all-important wax ring. With just an adjustable wrench (or better yet, set of sockets), a putty knife, and a screwdriver, you’re in business.

I’ve done the task twice … the first time was frightening (due to the fear of the unknown). But the second time was a piece of cake. While this isn’t a task you want to take on if you are unsure of your abilities, you have options.

If there’s a plumber in your family or circle of friends, be sure to give them a call before you take that leap of faith …

Comcast recently took over our local cable company. We had a clue before the welcome packet arrived in the snail mail … the performance of our cable Internet dropped dramatically.

“Dad! What’s wrong with the Internet?”

When tested with one of the speed testing services, we’re still cranking at a download speed of roughly 3000 kb/s … but there seems to be a lag problem.?? This, of course, drives the kids crazy.

Fragging and lagging don’t mix well …

Who says that money doesn’t grow on trees? Washington has cut the the trees down, printed up a whole bunch of new money … and they’re about to send it out to the taxpayers, in the hopes of jump starting the economy.

So what are you planning to do with your economic stimulus check?

I’m not going to use mine to pay bills. I’m not going to sock it away for a rainy day. I’m not going to gamble or drink it away.

I’m going to use it as a down payment on a home turbine. Well that’s the plan, at least.

Would you drive a hybrid car?

Just a few years back, I never thought I would.

But here it is, Spring 2008 and I’ve just spent a month with four different hybrids — two sedans and two SUVs. I have two more on the way. I’ve made a pledge to deliver hybrid reviews of nearly all of these cutting-edge vehicles by the end of the year … I’d gladly do them all, if the stars align.

Advanced forms of the hybrid will soon be more the norm then the novelty. The current crop of hybrids is just the tip of the iceberg. As Lithium Ion battery technology develops, the electric motor will become the primary, rather than the secondary means of propulsion. Next-generation hybrids like the Chevy Volt (video) show the clear path to the future … with gasoline or diesel engines functioning as generators, rather than as the drive train.

I’ve long pondered this question: If you could control anything via the Internet, what would it be?

Over the years, I’ve come up with lots of crazy ideas, like RFID tagged socks (August ‘04) and net-controlled hot tubs. And I’ve stumbled into plenty of others, like the Proliphix Internet-controlled programmable thermostat.

Sometimes it seems like half of the crazy ideas aren’t so crazy … to the point that someone’s already doing it, somewhere …

If you could control anything (other than an ATM) over the Internet, what would it be?

I can’t count how many times I’ve heard (or read) folks say that they “wouldn’t buy a hybrid until it gets 100 miles per gallon (MPG).”

A good bit has changed since I wrote about the CalCars.com mod back in the summer of 2005.

That good bit is the price.

Think 100 MPG is so tough to achieve?

Behold the 100 MPG Prius (YouTube) …

As it turns out, all it takes is six grand, a bit of ingenuity, a big box o’ batteries, some cables and other goodies. Truth be told, six thousand dollars is just a start … the ultimate price depends on your choice of battery technology.

Modders rule.

It’s all about the green. We’re all getting squeezed these days. Even if you’re not worried about the environment, you’ve got to be concerned about the green that’s flowing at an ever-increasing rate from your wallet.

Kids can be forgiven for their cluelessness when it comes to wasting energy. Parents are often the ones running around the house shutting off unnecessary lights and appliances. After all, it’s the responsible adults that wire up the programmable thermostats and other painless energy-saving devices. We’re the ones installing the compact fluorescent light bulbs (while dreaming of switching to LEDs once the price comes down).We’re the ones stuck pondering the boring stuff like replacement windows (when we’d rather be replacing Windows). We’re the ones reading the reviews of the Honda Civic Hybrid, looking for ways to shave some dollars off the gas card each month.

It takes something big for a generation to be broken from its stupor. Did your lights go out at 8:00 on the 29th? Did you notice that Google went dark for the day? What’s it going to take for everyone to understand that it all starts with them and that if each person starts with a little change it can make a big difference?

I spent a couple of days at the NY Auto Show press preview last week and have been busy cranking out videos on many of the cool concepts and upcoming releases. If I could use just one word to describe this year’s show, it would have to be electric…

The tiny electric Subaru R1e and Nissan Denki Electric Cube, and innovative high-MPG Chevy Volt and Jeep Renegade concept hybrids push the envelope.

That extension cord?

Don’t leave home without it…

I waded into the chat room last night to talk with Chris about an article I’d just written about 35 mile per gallon (MPG) cars and SUVs. The article’s a bit of an eye-opener in these economically troubled times, but it comes down to some little known facts and a strange twist of market fate. How strange, you ask?

Did you know that there are half a dozen diesel-powered 35 MPG vehicles that are manufactured here in North America right now, but cannot be sold to Americans? That’s 35 MPG combined …

Needless to say, the conversation caught fire. I didn’t have the faculties to follow the rapid fire stream of chat … the topic spurred quite a bit of controversy, it was late, and my eyes were just about done for the day. There was no way I could keep up with the comments.

So I copied and pasted the log, in order to more fully understand where folks were coming from.

While it seemed like a good many folks fully understood the benefits and realities of modern diesel engines - perhaps because of the international crowd - there was still an undercurrent of misunderstanding from the portion of the American audience that may have lacked the exposure to clean diesel technology.

Truth be told, I had never driven an diesel-powered vehicle (other than a backhoe, once or twice) until earlier this winter, when I spent two wonderful weeks with a diesel-powered Jeep Grand Cherokee. That experience only served to pique my interest in diesels, which lead to my doing the research on said article.

Needless to say, I’m sold on diesel. Hybrids can be fantastic in town, but out on the open road, over long distance, diesel is king …

Article: 35 MPG - Why Wait Until 2020?

An old buddy of mine has been thinking about picking up a Mac for some time now, but he didn’t know where to start. After I penned a note outlining the most affordable choices, it dawned on me that I should share the info with my gnomie buddies … so, how about them cheap apples?

So you want an entry-level Mac? Ready to switch to the other side of the fence?

Here’s a quick overview of your options …

The Mac Mini is the most affordable way to jump on the Apple wagon.?? It has a remarkably small footprint.?? $599 gets you a brand new 1.83GHz CoreDuo mini with 1GB of RAM and an 80GB HD (with free shipping, no less).?? You can re-use an existing USB keyboard, mouse, and DVI monitor from one of your PCs.?? Just plug ‘em in and go.

The MacBook is the least expensive notebook, with new models starting at $1099 (2.1GHz CoreDuo, 1GB of RAM, 120GB HD).

We have two MacBooks here at Rancho Indebto. Among other things, I’ve been using my entry-level MacBook to cut video.?? Works just fine … maybe one day I’ll get the big workstation or a higher-end MacBookPro, but for now my little white MacBook is getting the job done and it’s great for the road.

You can sometimes find bargains on refurbs and clearance items.?? Take a look at the “Special Deals” section of the Apple Store website … the link is at the bottom of the left side column on the front page.

I highly recommend the AppleCare Protection Plans, especially for the notebooks … Apple has great service (with friendly, intelligent, well spoken phone support) and the AppleCare plans extend the warranty. You can walk repairs into your local Apple Store. While not every genius is a genius, nearly everyone I’ve worked with in an Apple Store has been helpful and friendly.

The laws, they are a changin’. Here in the glorious Garden State, law enforcement authorities are now allowed to pull over and ticket drivers for using a cell phone while driving… but only if you are not using a hands-free phone.

You’re free to chat all you want, as long as you have a headset or a fancy in-dash system. But if a police officer sees you with that telltale hand to the ear, you’re out of luck. And a hundred bucks.

There’s good and bad to this law, no doubt.

The good, of course, being the hope that there will be fewer accidents caused by cell phones.

The bad, of course, being another erosion of our personal liberties.

I’ve always avoided using a cell phone while driving, for a number of reasons. I’ve always driven stick shifts, and seeing that I only have two arms…

This new law will stimulate the economy in a small way, by pushing people into buying new phones. (It will also serve to further skew the balance of trade… after all, how many cell phones are manufactured here in the States?)

I’m a case in point. My $20 pay-as-you-go Nokia soap bar doesn’t have Bluetooth. While I still don’t want a plan, I would like to be able to use my own phone with the in-dash systems (rather than borrowing one from my kids).