Inhabitat’s Week in Green: LA Auto Show, tidal energy farm and Japan’s futuristic eco-city

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.

It was a big week for green cars, as Inhabitat scoured the floors of the LA Auto Show to search for the latest and greatest in green auto design and innovation. We were excited to check out Audi’s hybrid-diesel E-Tron Spyder concept car, Croatia’s first electric vehicle prototype the DOK-ING XD, and Honda’s hotly anticipated 2013 electric version of their popular Fit. Honda also made waves at the west coast auto show with their Civic Natural Gas car, which took home the title of ‘Green Car of the Year’ — the Civic is the cleanest running internal combustion car certified by the EPS. Meanwhile, Ford announced that their EVOS plug-in hybrid will be hitting the market next year, FlyKly’s ultra-modern electric bikes have become a choice ride in New York City, a German museum decided to recreate an operable version the world’s oldest electric car, and the US Navy successfully sent a test-ship out on a 117 hour voyage using a 50 percent algae-derived fuel.

There were also some exciting announcements in clean energy technology this week, including a recent report completed by leading scientists that predict giant orbiting solar power plants could supply all the earth’s energy needs by 2041. We also learned that France will open the world’s largest tidal energy farm in 2012, and GE will provide the turbines for a $100 million wind farm in Mongolia. Also for Mongolia, a local geo-engineering firm is making plans to battle the capital’s scorching hot summers by cooling it down with gigantic manmade chunks of ice that mimic naleds. London’s audacious mayor came up with an equally ambitious idea — his plan is to curb pollution by spraying the city’s roads with a sticky calcium-based adhesive able to catch airborne pollutants. We also got the inside scoop from Panasonic’s Energy Solution Business Director, Haruyuki Ishio, on the futuristic eco-city that is being planned for Fujisawa, Japan.