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According to Toyota's Open Road blog, Magnussen’s Toyota in Palo Alto, California was "doing what Toyota encourages its dealers to do:" Take customers' money. The Silicon Valley dealership had apparently been deluged with requests for a plug-in Prius hybrid; knowing Toyota was working on such a vehicle, Magnussen's decided to take "deposits" for plug-in Prii, despite the fact that Toyota had not yet announced any timetable for retail sales. Irv Miller, Toyota VP of Corporate Communications, then attempted to spin away Magnussen's shady business practices as a simple case of a dealer trying to make its customers happy. Some choice quotes after the jump. More »
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A next-generation 2010 Toyota Prius was snapped in full camo regalia filling up at a gas station. So what can we tell? Mainly that the Prius' has totally ripped off the styling of the new Honda Hybrid, differentiating their design with the addition of a small spoiler on the rear. Reports state, and these pictures seem to confirm, that the main visual changes to the 2010 Prius will be on the interior, with a much more integrated cockpit design taking the place of the tacked-on bins-'n-pods look of the current car. You can get your helping of hybrid smug — made-in-America by 2011, no less — midway through 2009, the tentative date for the Toyota vs. Honda hybrid battle royale! [Drive.com.au] More »
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Former Jalopnik intern Eric Tingwall over at that magazine all about the Automobile has put together a small-car fuel economy comparison to finally settle the question of whether a compact hybrid like the Prius is actually a less-expensive alternative to non-hybrid compacts. As Tingwall mentions, the real equation is a lot more complex than just "purchase price plus fuel cost," involving insurance, maintenance and the real kicker: depreciation. We're not going to give away the results, but we will say Prius owners' smugness isn't entirely unjustified. [Automobile] More »
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Leave it to The Car Connection's Marty Padgett to dream up a list including seven good reasons for buying a hybrid — we were surprised to see that many. Being professional cynics, we're far more interested in, and familiar with, the six bad reasons he detailed in a piece for PR Newswire. But with the super-exciting hybrid wars on the way at the 2009 Detroit Auto Show, we suppose it's about time to bone up on the rationale for hooking up with the hybrid clan. Brief summaries of the points after the jump. More »
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Not content to wait for the major automakers to show up with their expensive Chevy Volts or Electric Cubes, regular folks are home-brewing their own electric vehicles. While the results you get with golf-cart batteries aren't quite the same as what you get with, say, Li-Ion batteries (usually just 20 to 40 miles on an overnight charge), we doubt there's any other way to get yourself an electric-powered Honda Del Sol. One Atlanta man spent $12,000 converting his Chevy S-10 pickup — not exactly a gas-guzzler to begin with — to cruise on all-electric for 40 miles with a top speed of 60 MPH. More »
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A new study by the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC-Davis reveals only one-third of US car buying households have both the necessary charging infrastructure and the desire to purchase a plug-in electric hybrid. The comprehensive study, designed to determine more about the early plug-in market, found that most consumers know very little about plug-in hybrids or think that existing hybrids on the market are already plug-in capable. But, it's not all bad news for lovers of the slide toward electrics. More »
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Andy Grove, retired CEO of chipmaker Intel, apparently has grown bored of sailing the South Pacific and decided to insert himself into the debate over the future of transportation. A proponent of electric vehicles, Grove wrote, "The beauty of electric power is its ability to be produced through multiple sources...and its 'stickiness' — it can be transported only over land." This statement, showing Grove thinks AA batteries arrive from China over a distant land-bridge, tell us Andy may not have all the facts he needs. More »
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It turns out that a majority of Americans surveyed in a recent J.D. Power & Associates study are very enthusiastic about hybrid technology...until they find out that they have to pay for it. Continuing a long history of having cake and eating it too, 72% of consumers said they were interested in hybrid technology independent of cost. When a $5,000 cost was included in the equation, the number of respondents who were interested dropped to 46%. When consumers discovered that hybrids weren't available at Wal-Mart, interest plummeted into the single digits. More »
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