At The Daily Green we’re no strangers to things you should rent instead of buy. Continuing in that spirit (and with a dash of humor), today we take a colorful look at some more bizarre things that you can rent (but may not necessarily want to in some cases). As always, if you do end up renting one of these things, make sure it’s covered by your renters insurance.

The Bright Idea: Now backed with GM cash. (Credit: Bright Automotive)

General Motors recently launched a $100 million fund named GM Ventures LLC to get the once-staid company into some innovative technologies, and its president, Jon Lauckner, had been in office barely a month when the first $5 million was handed out — to Bright Automotive.

The most common reaction was probably “Bright what?” Despite a somewhat glamorous launch as a spinoff of Amory Lovins’ fast-paced Rocky Mountain Institute (with investment from Google, Alcoa, Johnson Controls and the Turner Foundation), the company with plans to built a very green plug-in hybrid commercial van languished for want of further investment. Like many other startups, it was left hoping for the Department of Energy funding that was going mainly to established players.

GM’s investment “validates” Bright, said Chairman and CEO Reuben Munger. “We’re delighted to be in a partnership with Reuben and the Bright team,” said Lauckner. It was a mutual admiration society.

And it makes strategic sense. “This is a great first pick for Jon Lauckner and GM Ventures,” said EV strategist and consultant Chelsea Sexton (one of the stars of Who Killed the Electric Car?). “The Bright team has a crucial mix of deep automotive and EV experience and innovative spirit, but is refreshingly lacking in arrogance. I’ve long thought that partnerships between large and small automakers hold great potential for both sides, and it was only a matter of time for a major OEM to see the potential in Bright.”

The Bright Idea: Now backed with GM cash. (Credit: Bright Automotive)

General Motors recently launched a $100 million fund named GM Ventures LLC to get the once-staid company into some innovative technologies, and its president, Jon Lauckner, had been in office barely a month when the first $5 million was handed out — to Bright Automotive.

The most common reaction was probably “Bright what?” Despite a somewhat glamorous launch as a spinoff of Amory Lovins’ fast-paced Rocky Mountain Institute (with investment from Google, Alcoa, Johnson Controls and the Turner Foundation), the company with plans to built a very green plug-in hybrid commercial van languished for want of further investment. Like many other startups, it was left hoping for the Department of Energy funding that was going mainly to established players.

GM’s investment “validates” Bright, said Chairman and CEO Reuben Munger. “We’re delighted to be in a partnership with Reuben and the Bright team,” said Lauckner. It was a mutual admiration society.

And it makes strategic sense. “This is a great first pick for Jon Lauckner and GM Ventures,” said EV strategist and consultant Chelsea Sexton (one of the stars of Who Killed the Electric Car?). “The Bright team has a crucial mix of deep automotive and EV experience and innovative spirit, but is refreshingly lacking in arrogance. I’ve long thought that partnerships between large and small automakers hold great potential for both sides, and it was only a matter of time for a major OEM to see the potential in Bright.”

Made from organic cotton, bamboo or recycled materials, these bikinis and swimsuits are as cute as they are sustainable.

The once-crowded field at the Auto X Prize is narrowing. (Credit: Auto X Prize)

I have to say that the $10 million Progressive Insurance Auto X Prize is a bit of a soap opera. What a movie it would make. The Alternative Class came down to a photo finish for $2.5 million, with frontrunner Edison2 and its Very Light Car disqualified at the very last minute because of a software glitch.

According to David Brown, Edison2’s spokesman, “This is a high-stakes competition. It was potentially a $2.5 million software problem.” Ouch! But Edison2 has consolations. The field is now much narrowed, and it’s two remaining Very Light Cars are the only contenders left in the Mainstream class. And that’s worth $5 million.

The point of the Auto X Prize is to stimulate development of cars with the equivalent of 100 mpg that you or I can buy. When Auto X was announced, those cars were nowhere to be seen, but now the field is crowded: We have the $41,000 Chevrolet Volt “range extender,” the $32,000 Nissan Leaf battery car, and many others from Coda, Wheego, Think and Smart. It seems the market took off on its own.

The Edison2 Very Light Car: a sure winner. (Credit: Auto X Prize)

Still, the Auto X fascinates, because the contenders are a quirky lot. The battery electric X-Tracer is now sure to win the Alternative tandem class (an oddity, these are cars with the passenger behind the driver). X-Tracer will win because it’s fielding the only two entries. The car is from a Swiss team, and it’s essentially an enclosed motorcycle with auxiliary wheels that extend at lower speeds. It has an extra-tough (and expensive) Kevlar body, which may explain the estimated price of $106,000.

Shades of the Tesla Roadster (which it nearly matches in price), the X-Tracer reaches 60 in less than three seconds, and soars to an unrestricted 180 mph. Why not? It’s a motorcycle! There’s solid Swiss craftsmanship here, though, and the X-Tracer deserved to win.

The X-Tracer: Swiss entry still standing. (Credit: Auto X Prize)

I’ve been spending a lot of time recently thinking about lighting, because I’m writing a book about green lighting, which will be out this fall. I’ve been busy approving layouts. Green lighting is a very exciting set of technologies, because it provides some of the quickest paybacks of any energy efficiency upgrades, it is easy to do, and it can improve productivity and comfort.

There’s been a lot of excitement about LEDs (light emitting diodes) recently, and some hot new bulbs are due from major manufacturers in the near future. They are roughly 90% more energy efficient than regular old incandescents, they last for tens of thousands of hours, and they produce less waste heat, meaning they don’t contribute to summer cooling loads. LEDs also can come in many colors, and they can be rapidly switched. In fact, chances are good that you are looking at them right now, since many serve as backlighting in computer displays.

LEDs are awesome, and their prices are dropping, though right now CFLs and other fluorescents are a better buy for most homeowners who don’t have super-heavy lighting needs. Yes these bulbs have some mercury in them, but that is dropping, and there are precautions you can take, and do be sure to dispose of them properly. However, also don’t panic. There is much more mercury in other common products (thermostats, thermometers, electronics, switches), and I interviewed experts in the book who calculated that you’d receive more exposure from eating a seafood meal than is likely from a broken CFL.

So all of this explains why I am excited that WellHome has made a new infographic on green lighting. WellHome is a company that offers home energy audits, then helps customers start saving money. Energy audits are generally very worthwhile, and they may get even cheaper if HOME STAR passes:

Hoboken’s Ian Sacs (right) and Juan Melli with a Corner Car. (Jim Motavalli photo)

HOBOKEN, NEW JERSEY–Fresh off the $1.75 PATH tubes from Manhattan, I am standing on a pleasant residential street lined with brownstones in downtown Hoboken, New Jersey with the boyish Ian Sacs, head of the city’s transportation and parking bureau. In front of me is a Toyota Prius, just like any other except for the fact that it is parked in a green-lined space…and just about anyone in Hoboken could drive it.

Welcome to Corner Cars, Hoboken’s municipal car-sharing program, undertaken in conjunction with the mainstream player Hertz Connect. Residents pay $25 to join, but they get a $75 credit which can be applied to reserving cars on a per-hour basis. The program, just a few weeks old, has 200 members and 42 cars (two-seater Smarts are the cheapest at $5 an hour) in the first wave. Corner Cars claims that three families so far have given up their cars (and four more have made inquiries about it), but as many as 750 could take that step soon, the program estimates.

With a light rain falling, Sacs swiped his smart card across the Prius’ windshield and it unlocked. They let me drive, so we cruised the dense downtown (45,000 people in 1.3 square miles) and saw Corner Cars (Toyota Yarises, Priuses, Smart cars) all over the place. We drove past Carlos’ Bakery, across from City Hall, and saw a line two blocks long. For cupcakes? It all became clear, when I learned that the bakery is the setting for the Cake Boss food reality show.

We even encountered a young bike rider who’d recently moved to Hoboken, with easy mobility being a factor. He was accessing a Smart car for his friend who was late for a job interview, and loves the program–especially the $75 credit after a $25 payment. Here’s the view from the street:

Fashion designer Lara Miller goes green beyond recycled cloth.

I have seen the future of EV charging, and it’s really cool looking. ECOtality just emailed me a photo of its station, which will be unveiled at the Plug-In 2010 trade show in San Jose on the 27th. I can’t show it to you until then, but it’s proof that we’re in a designer race with these babies. ECOtality’s Jonathan Read says its’ “way smarter and easier to use than any other similar product. It makes it very easy for consumers to switch over to electric driving.”

Soon, we’ll be buying EV chargers in big-box stores, and they’ll be competing to make them visually appealing. Maybe Apple will have one, too, and Steve Jobs will be up there in his jeans introducing it. Stranger things have happened.

EVs have arrived, and they’re not yesterday’s super-clunky nerdmobiles. If even the chargers are getting cool, we’re on to something. I was watching a video of an old-technology solar EV charger in action, and the thing was so boxy, so ugly, so poorly labeled (dozens of confusing buttons) that it’s no wonder they didn’t take off back then. Just look at the thing:

I can’t show you the newest charger, but this was a week for innovation in the space. I got a first look at the pretty sleek Coulomb ChargePoint charger in New York this month, when Mayor Michael Bloomberg introduced it to his city with HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan in attendance. The station is one of 200 coming to New York, paid for with a $15 million Department of Energy grant.

Bloomberg plugged in a Smart car, which like most coming EVs is “smart” in more ways than one–it can interact with the grid and charge itself only at night when the rates are lower and demand is down. ECOtality’s station offers “smart phone appliations for status charges and notification of completion or interruption of charge.” That means you’ll get a text on your phone letting you know your charge is complete.

It is possible to plug in an electric car to an ordinary wall socket and, a mere 10 or 12 hours later, is will be fully charged. Wow, that’s a long time! But Britta Gross, lord and master of everything for the “range extender” Chevrolet Volt (she’s the director of global energy systems and infrastructure commercialization for GM) tells me that the company’s research predicts that 40 percent of the car’s charging will be on 110 (Level One charging). That means just plugging into the wall and not into a 220-volt charger (which is Level Two charging, estimated to charge a car in four to six hours).

Seconding that, Pamela Fletcher, the Volt’s chief engineer, told me, “You can go home and while you’re sleeping you’ll be filling up your tank. A lot of the time, you’ll be traveling to grandma’s house and want to top up the batteries, but she won’t have a charger.”

Never thought of that. It’s also true that 110 charging will be cheaper, and incredibly simple. Do you know how to plug in a toaster? You can do the same for an EV. The main advantage is that you save in buying the 220-volt charger itself, an expense that starts at $2,000 plus the hassle of having it installed and inspected (it can take weeks). If you have an electric dryer, you’re in luck (they’re 220), but if you went with gas or have older wiring, you’re looking at larger bills.

If you think about it, does it matter if it takes 10 or four hours to charge the car if it’s just sitting in the garage? Maybe we’ll just set it and forget it.

I was pondering this as two companies made EV charger news this week. General Electric rolled out its ultra-cool 220-volt WattStation (designed by Yves Behar of Fuseproject, who also gave us the $100 laptop). And a competitor, Coulomb Technologies, was in New York unveiling its first ChargePoint 220-volt public charger, part of a $37 million program (funded in part by the Department of Energy) to put 4,600 free chargers around the U.S.