{"id":3512,"date":"2011-06-21T16:31:04","date_gmt":"2011-06-21T20:31:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=3512"},"modified":"2011-06-21T16:31:04","modified_gmt":"2011-06-21T20:31:04","slug":"report-mercedes-to-unveil-new-eco-friendly-popemobile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/report-mercedes-to-unveil-new-eco-friendly-popemobile","title":{"rendered":"Report: Mercedes to unveil new eco-friendly popemobile"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By NIELS SORRELLS<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>c. 2011 Religion News Service<\/em><\/p>\n<p>BERLIN (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI has a lot of ground to cover when he heads back home to Germany this September, but thanks to a new popemobile from Mercedes, at least 30 of those kilometers (18.5 miles) will be on the greener side.<\/p>\n<p>The Vatican has contracted with Mercedes for the first-ever hybrid popemobile, according to a report by business magazine Wirtschaftswoche. Citing company sources associated with the top-secret project, the magazine reported that the vehicle, based on Mercedes&#8217; M Class, would come with both a battery and a gasoline engine.<\/p>\n<p>It was never considered, according to the report, to resort to an entirely battery-powered car since security threats require the pope to always have the option of a quick getaway.<\/p>\n<p>The new hybrid engine would allow the popemobile to go 30 kilometers (about 18.5 miles) purely on battery power, which would require a one-hour plug-in charge. The car reportedly runs on a lithium-ion battery and a 60-horsepower hybrid engine.<\/p>\n<p>Mercedes has been providing vehicles for the Vatican for eight decades. The iconic popemobile was first used in the 1980s, when Pope John Paul II yearned for a vehicle that would let him have closer contact to people during his overseas visits.<\/p>\n<p>Neither the website of Mercedes, nor its parent company, Daimler, made any mention of a possible new hybrid popemobile.<\/p>\n<p>September&#8217;s four-day visit is Benedict&#8217;s first official state visit to his native Germany since ascending to the papacy in 2005, though he has visited privately several times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By NIELS SORRELLS c. 2011 Religion News Service BERLIN (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI has a lot of ground to cover when he heads back home to Germany this September, but thanks to a new popemobile from Mercedes, at least 30 of those kilometers (18.5 miles) will be on the greener side. The Vatican has contracted&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":345,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[623,8,9],"tags":[2206,934,560,933,2202],"class_list":["post-3512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic-news","category-news","category-rns","tag-catholic","tag-mercedes","tag-pope","tag-popemobile","tag-rns"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Report: Mercedes to unveil new eco-friendly popemobile<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/report-mercedes-to-unveil-new-eco-friendly-popemobile\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Report: Mercedes to unveil new eco-friendly popemobile\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By NIELS SORRELLS c. 2011 Religion News Service BERLIN (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI has a lot of ground to cover when he heads back home to Germany this September, but thanks to a new popemobile from Mercedes, at least 30 of those kilometers (18.5 miles) will be on the greener side. The Vatican has contracted&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/report-mercedes-to-unveil-new-eco-friendly-popemobile\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-06-21T20:31:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Beliefnet News Editor\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Report: Mercedes to unveil new eco-friendly popemobile","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/report-mercedes-to-unveil-new-eco-friendly-popemobile","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Report: Mercedes to unveil new eco-friendly popemobile","og_description":"By NIELS SORRELLS c. 2011 Religion News Service BERLIN (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI has a lot of ground to cover when he heads back home to Germany this September, but thanks to a new popemobile from Mercedes, at least 30 of those kilometers (18.5 miles) will be on the greener side. The Vatican has contracted&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/report-mercedes-to-unveil-new-eco-friendly-popemobile","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-06-21T20:31:04+00:00","author":"Beliefnet News Editor","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/report-mercedes-to-unveil-new-eco-friendly-popemobile","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/report-mercedes-to-unveil-new-eco-friendly-popemobile","name":"Report: Mercedes to unveil new eco-friendly popemobile","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-06-21T20:31:04+00:00","dateModified":"2011-06-21T20:31:04+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/ff42454e16eda902b675fd206e222124"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/report-mercedes-to-unveil-new-eco-friendly-popemobile#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/report-mercedes-to-unveil-new-eco-friendly-popemobile"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/report-mercedes-to-unveil-new-eco-friendly-popemobile#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Report: Mercedes to unveil new eco-friendly popemobile"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/ff42454e16eda902b675fd206e222124","name":"Beliefnet News Editor","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e30\/e30900503ec90484dcd1469f5ccbd68fx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e30\/e30900503ec90484dcd1469f5ccbd68fx96.jpg","caption":"Beliefnet News Editor"},"description":"Top religious news from around the world","sameAs":["http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/news"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/345"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3512"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3514,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512\/revisions\/3514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}