The MINI people have announced their 100% electric, zero-emissions car, and a New York field trial program to go along with it. They're looking for 500 people in the area who want to be "motoring pioneers" -- sounds pretty exciting, right? Wrong. While the prospect of electric cars hitting the streets is exciting, one look at the laborious application and FAQ section and you'll quickly learn that the trial will cost you no less than......

NYC comptroller William Thompson is proposing that the city plug the MTA's budget gap by raising automobile registration fees in the 12 counties served by the MTA’s trains and buses. If passed by the State Legislature, his plan would require drivers in the city and surrounding counties to pay $100 a year to register their vehicles. (The city currently charges $30 every two years.) According to the Times, drivers with vehicles weighing more than 2,300......

Windsor Terrace residents were joined by Park Slope Assemblyman Jim Brennan and local community board members at a rally to decry a proposal that would completely bar cars from Prospect Park for three months next summer to study the traffic impact. Last month Transportation Alternatives delivered a petition to Mayor Bloomberg signed by 10,000 people who want the park to be totally car-free. At Thursday's rally, Community Board 14 Chairman Alvin Berk told the Brooklyn......

While the House of Representatives voted against a measure to strip Representative Charles Rangel of chairing the House Ways and Means Committee, House leaders are planning an investigation of Rangel's ethical issues--you know, the lack of reporting income on his returns, his rent-stabilized apartments, using House letterhead to solicit donations for a center being built in his name. This comes as his 1972 Mercedes Benz, long unused, was towed from a House parking garage! Yesterday......

Since Mayor Bloomberg and the DOT have been showing an interest in making the city's streets more inviting to pedestrians and cyclists, advocacy group Transportation Alternatives has decided it's a perfect time to increase pressure on City Hall to make Brooklyn's Prospect Park completely car-free. As it stands now, the hours when drivers are permitted in the park have been whittled down to two hours in the morning and two hours at night on weekdays,......

Streetfilms had five camera operators covering yesterday’s suspenseful rush hour race between a cyclist, driver and MTA commuter, and they’ve quickly edited together a video of the competition, which takes a bit of inspiration from Mike Figgis’s split-screen movie Time Code, sometimes showing the contestants battling it out simultaneously. And Streetsblog also points us to today’s New York Sun, which is reporting on a sudden bike shortage at shops around town. Some bike shop owners......

The 7th Annual “Great NYC Commuter Race” went down this morning, with three commuters racing to see who could get from Fort Greene to Union Square during rush hour in the least amount of time. Social worker Jamie Favaro traveled by bicycle; April Green, who works at an art foundation, took a foolish bus/subway combo; and photographer Emmanuel Fuentebella made irresponsible carbon footprints with his car. And like the story of John Henry, the......

The repo man says business is booming in a Channel 11 news report about the rise and tide of auto repossession -- the segment even features a cameo by Lil' Kim! Seems the rapper fell behind on at least four payments and when she refused to give up the keys to the $250K car, it was loaded onto a flatbed truck. She gave the repo men (who say the car is "not hers") about the......

Image, at left, from WNBC; map from Gothamist Newsmap Early this morning, a car drove into the Newtown Creek. Police divers pulled two men from the water, one was alive and the other was dead. According to WNBC 4, officials believe the car "drove through a fence on Apollo Street and ended up in Newtown Creek about 3:30 a.m." Witnesses tell WCBS 2 that they heard the "car racing down" the street. And WABC......

Comedian and car enthusiast Jerry Seinfeld managed to walk away "without a scratch" after his 1967 Fiat BTM flipped in East Hampton over the weekend. According to the Post’s account, Seinfeld was alone behind the wheel and was about to merge into highway traffic when the brakes gave out. He then tried the emergency brake, and that failed, too. Drenched in flop sweat, the Bee Movie star cut the wheel to the right and "the......

The relative merits of automobiles versus mass transit are frequently debated by New Yorkers, but rarely do the two modes of transport become physically opposed to each other, as they did yesterday in Brooklyn. Service on the N line was suspended for a few hours early yesterday morning, after a car jumped the curb at 63rd St. near the New Utrecht Ave. subway station, traversed the sidewalk, crashed through a chain link fence, and fell......

The police are upset with Staten Island car owners. Why? Because many tend to leave their keys in the ignition, giving a free ride to thieves. Out of the 76 cars reported stolen for 2008, the NYPD says 24 of them had the keys in the ignition. And then another 10 vehicles were stolen because the keys were, per the Advance, in the "glovebox, on the ground of a parking lot or discovered inside a......

Crazy! Gowanus Lounge posted this video of a car on fire in the Greenwood Heights section of Brooklyn. The video shows the FDNY extinguishing the fire, and GL followed up with an eyewitness account from Greenwood Heights resident Aaron Brashear (who's also in the Concerned Citizens of Greenwood Heights). Brashear said when he looked outside, some teenage girls were yelling, "*Oh, sh*t, that's our car*!" He added that another "long time resident swore it......