Walking the Talk: Automakers' Employees Champion Energy Efficiency at Work and at Home Car companies have phalanxes of assembly workers, engineers, marketers and lawyers working to speed the adoption of energy-efficient vehicles. For some of these employees, the work of minimizing environmental impacts follows them home. Shunsuke Okubo and his wife, Carol, are Ford engineers working on hybrid and plug-in hybrid cars at the company's base in Dearborn, Mich., where they share automotive patents as well as strong convictions about environmental preservation. The backyard of their home in Belleville produced 200 pounds of vegetables last year. The house is powered by a 4.1-kilowatt solar system, consisting of 18 photovoltaic panels that combine to meet all their electricity needs as well as produce surplus power to sell back to the local utility, through a process called net metering. We're immersed in green technology at work. My wife develops software and I tweak it," Mr. Okubo said in a telephone interview. And we also do our best at home to conserve natural resources. In addition to the couple's solar investment, they recently performed an energy audit to track down their home's power wasters. They've eliminated so-called phantom loads, which include small draws that continue even when appliances are turned off, like the four-watt digital clock on the family microwave. "Four watts isn't much, but it adds up when combined with other examples of standby power," Mr. Okubo said. I did the math and just the clock added up to 35 kilowatt-hours a year. Mr. Okubo uses hypermiling driving techniques to squeeze up to 38 miles per gallon from his 2000 Focus, but he has his eye on a 2013 Fusion Energi, the automaker's coming plug-in version of its redesigned midsize sedan, which could be recharged from the surplus energy produced by his solar panels. Sara Hoover, a senior manager and tax lawyer at Nissan's American headquarters in Franklin, Tenn., drives the purely electric Leaf. "I've always been interested in environmental issues, but getting the Leaf really upped the game for me," Ms. Hoover said in an interview. It's made me think a lot more about global warming, for instance. She is an avid recycler, a vegetarian with a membership in a community-supported agriculture cooperative and is a volunteer for a youth-oriented charity. Ms. Hoover's 17-mile commute from her home in Nashville to Franklin leaves little reason to experience range anxiety from her Leaf, which has an E.P.A.-estimated range of 73 miles. In addition to her home garage charger, there's a row of units, including a 480-volt quick charger, at work. "It hasn't changed how I drive," she said. She's already considering an upgrade, to the coming Leaf-based battery vehicle from Infiniti, Nissan's luxury subsidiary, which is expected to have its debut at the New York auto show next week. Tony Argote, a powertrain integration engineer for General Motors, has worked on the Chevrolet Volt as well as two coming advanced-powertrain vehicles, the Cadillac ELR and Spark E.V. For him, going green is about reaching out. In 2010, with other G.M. employees, he co-founded Green Place Detroit, which secured a pair of lots near the César Chávez Academy charter school and, with assistance from students, planted an urban garden there. Mr. Argote, who drives a Camaro but aspires to the Volt he "fell in love with," says that Green Place intends to build a house on the two lots for a family in need, aided by the students" sweat equity and planning prowess. Ultimately he envisions a recycled home adapted from a shipping container. "Container houses are amazing, and they're very structurally sound," Mr. Argote said in an interview. Though he works for a competitor, Mr. Argote might do well to compare notes with David Treharne, a technical leader for electrification systems and controls at Ford. Mr. Treharne has already finished his green house, in Ypsilanti Township. "It was built in 2005 with foam-based insulated concrete, resulting in 10-inch walls that are fantastic for energy efficiency," he said in an interview. I estimate that it saves 60 to 70 percent on heating bills. The house also has a geothermal system that taps into subsurface temperatures to supply all heating and cooling needs, augmented by passive solar. Mr. Treharne started at Ford in 1989, moving to the hybrid program in 2002 out of a desire "to promote energy efficiency and tread lightly on the planet."