Higher gas prices? Blame ethanol

MarketWatch reported today that the price of ethanol has seen a 30-percent price increase so far this year, taking the price of gasoline up with it, since a good majority of "gasoline" sold today is around 10 percent ethanol. The average price of a gallon of gas today is $2.30, according to FactSet data, but this has varied since the beginning of 2014. Despite the recent surge, ethanol prices have also proved to be rather volatile with reports of it dropping 8 percent this past Thursday after falling 10 percent just the day before.

UK’s first public hydrogen filling station opens

First UK public Hydrogen Filling Station Opens Every car maker – well, every car maker with an eye to the future – is developing hydrogen fuel cell cars. Really, short of portable cold fusion becoming a reality, hydrogen is the only viable future for cars. So the opening of the UK’s first public hydrogen filling station today at Honda’s South Marston plant is a big deal.

Subaru Forester tops small SUVs in new crash test

The Subaru Forester and Mitsubishi Outlander Sport have won top honors from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, becoming the only small SUVs to ace the group's new "small overlap" crash test. The Forester, which Subaru redesigned for the 2014 model year, earned Top Safety Pick+ accolades by scoring a "good" rating on the small overlap test, in which the front corner of the vehicle on the driver's side strikes a five-foot-tall barrier at 40 mph. "With the redesigned Forester, Subaru's engineers set out to do well in our new test, and they succeeded," Joe Nolan, vice president for vehicle research at IIHS, said in a statement.