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The camouflage on the new Prius has come off a little sooner than Toyota had planned. We've known for quite a while that Toyota was going to bring the new Prius to the Detroit auto show next January. And there's been no shortage of spy shots of well-covered prototypes. But the new Prius has gone naked. The fans at priuschat.com posted pix of what was claimed to be redesigned Prius. And guess what? Toyota PR confirms that the photos are legit, although they won't say anything else about them.

The Toyota Prius, the car favoured by celebrities wanting to flaunt a green conscience, is to become bigger and more sporty, with a larger engine, quicker acceleration and a top speed of well above 100mph. The changes – coming at the expense of fuel economy and carbon emissions – will be incorporated in a new version to be introduced at the Detroit motor show in January. The decision risks denting the image of the Prius as one of the greenest cars on the road and will be seized upon by critics, who accuse the car’s owners of being smug and...

Green With Envy: Prius Owners Smile as Neighbors Fume Monday , August 25, 2008 By Meg Shannon Every morning, as Lynn Schmidt walks out of her Long Island, N.Y., home, opens the door to her baby-blue Prius, waves to her grumbling neighbor and pulls out of the driveway, she has every reason to smile. It's not just the 45 miles per gallon her gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle is getting. And it's not only that she can go three weeks without a fill-up. It's also because that through her choice of automobile, Lynn is doing what she considers her share of being...

Toyota Motor Corp. said today that its first quarter net income dropped 28.1% to 353.6 billion yen, or $3.2 billion, mainly due to the impact of exchange rates between the yen and the dollar, higher raw material costs and the turbulent U.S. market. While Toyota worked to cut costs and said global vehicle sales increased by 24,000 to 2.19 million vehicles, it wasn't enough to overcome a plunge in sales in the United States and Western Europe. For the three months ending June 30 Toyota's total revenue declined by 4.7% to 6.22 trillion yen or $56.9 billion. "The financial results...

You would think a car that didn't make loud engine sounds and offered a calm and silent ride would be a commercial winner. But supercar firm Lotus is putting the noise back into their electric and hybrid motors because of road safety fears. The company has started a project to synthesise the sound of a traditional engine in otherwise quiet vehicles and have installed speakers in their Toyota Prius. They are concerned that silent cars could pose a threat to pedestrians and cyclists who may not hear them coming. Despite their environmental credentials, electric and hybrid vehicles have come in...

Al Gore has a new boat and even it is green. The boat is docked at Hurricane Marina on Center Hill Lake in Smithville, about 70 miles east of Nashville. While it doesn't have solar panels yet, a spokesperson at Gore's office told News 2 they are scheduled to be installed Wednesday. The boat is named Bio-Solar One and has been called the "Toyota Prius of boats"...

Rising fuel prices, both in the U.S. and abroad, means that automakers can now offer similar engines in vehicles sold throughout the world. According to Automotive News, General Motors' next small car, the Chevrolet Cruze, will be offered with a new 1.4-liter force-fed four-banger, putting out between 120 and 140 horsepower and returning fuel mileage in the 40 mpg range.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) will switch gears and produce the Prius hybrid instead of the less fuel-efficient Highlander sport utility vehicle at its planned Mississippi factory, the Nikkei business daily reported on Thursday. The world's biggest automaker is also likely to suspend production at one of two assembly lines at its Indiana factory, where it builds the Tundra pickup and Sequoia SUV, by year-end for at least six months, the paper said. Citing company sources, it said the move was in response to falling demand for those models and would amount to a production cut of 50,000...

Top-end versions of the Toyota Prius hybrid are set to receive rooftop solar panels. News agency Reuters reports that the Japanese giant intends to install solar cells in order to power the air conditioning unit. Silicon prices are currently rising, pushing up the cost of solar panels. At this stage, it is unclear how much the solar-panelled versions would cost. The third generation of Toyota Prius with a petrol-electric hybrid powertrain is due to reach the market in 2009. Over 1 million Prius cars have been sold, with the strong demand for 'green' vehicles accelerating thanks to high oil...

BOULDER, Colo., June 28 (UPI) -- Backers of all-electric cars say they're relieved a fire that destroyed a Toyota Prius prototype this month wasn't caused by the battery. A report from the Boulder, Colo., firm that built the Prius prototype said the blaze was instead caused by loose electrical connections that set fire to the vehicle's upholstery, and not by the sophisticated lithium ion batteries it carried, The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

" Have you ever thought that you stand a better chance to woo a girl by going green? Well, a recent study conducted by US car maker General Motors has revealed that nearly 88 per cent of women surveyed would chat to a guy who owns a green car than a sports car. Quite an award for going green! "

TOKYO - Toyota is building a $192 million plant in Japan to produce batteries for gas-electric hybrid vehicles, as it seeks to keep its lead in an intensifying race for green cars among the world's automakers. Toyota's joint venture with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which makes Panasonic brand products, is building the plant in Shizuoka prefecture, in central Japan, Toyota spokesman Paul Nolasco said Friday. He declined to give more details. The plant will produce nickel-metal hydride batteries, now in the company's hit Prius hybrid. The Nikkei, Japan's top business daily, reported Friday that Toyota was building another plant in...

Readers of London's Sunday Times kept telling the auto reporters that the official mileage numbers for the Prius were overstated by about 15 imperial mpg. Intrigued, the Times decided to test things out by running a Prius against a BMW 520d with regenerative braking from London to Geneva, a 460-mile trip. Then they added 100 miles of urban running to give the Prius a chance to recover ground on its proper turf. The verdict: the conventional diesel with Efficient Dynamics beat the full hybrid by 2.2 imperial mpg, or 1.8 US mpg. This means that an executive sedan with all...

I think you will enjoy this YouTube about the Toyota Prius. Keep in mind that this is the first generation. WHAT IS A PRIUS GOOD FOR?

San Diego, Calif. - There is much talk regarding how eco friendly that Prius Hybrid cars are and how the owners are all of the environmentally sensitive folks out to save all mankind. On Sunday around 2:20 p.m., a correspondant witnessed one of those "environmentally sensitive" folk dump her Christmas tree on Fiesta Island. Ironically, if she would have taken the time to look up tree collection sites she would have found a designated collection point about 1/8 mile from where she dumped it on Fiesta Island. The charcoal gray Prius was seen leaving the scene shortly thereafter, but not...

Toyota Motor Sales USA has reported that it has sold 224,399 vehicles in December, 2007, a decrease of 1.7% from the same period last year. this is why http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOvp69lnZbA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmG05AtNVtM&eurl=http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=126437

Japanese-built Prius carries energy bill18 minutes ago WASHINGTON - When Congress sent an energy bill to President Bush for his signature, it arrived in a Japanese-built Toyota Prius hybrid — a move that rubbed two Michigan Republicans the wrong way. "It is a huge slap in the face, calculated I believe, just to demonstrate their complete disregard for the domestic auto industry," said Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich. To Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., it was a "slap in the face of every American auto worker." They said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., could have provided the same symbolism by sending the...

March 7, 2007 Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage By Chris Demorro Staff Writer The Toyota Prius has become the flagship car for those in our society so environmentally conscious that they are willing to spend a premium to show the world how much they care. Unfortunately for them, their ultimate ‘green car’ is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than a Hummer. Before we delve into the seedy underworld of hybrids, you must first understand how a hybrid works. For this, we will use the...

All right Al Gore III, you're still the tops when it comes to speeding in a Prius - but not by much. Steve Wozniak is right behind you. And when I say speeding, man o' man, do I mean speeding. You probably remember when the son of the former vice president was caught going 105 mph in Southern California last month. Well, a mention of that in a recent Roadshow column led a buddy of Wozniak's to check in, claiming that the co-founder of Apple Computer was ticketed for going 105 mph on Interstate 5 earlier this year. Whoa. Mr....

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The Toyota Prius remained America's most popular gasoline/electric vehicle even as sales of hybrids rose 35 percent in the first quarter of 2007 compared to last year, according to a new report from J.D. Power and Associates. Sales of diesel-powered vehicles, already a larger portion of the market than hybrids, are expected to grow even faster. A total of 187,000 hybrid vehicles were sold in the United States in the first six months of 2007, according to J.D. Power. Sales of hybrid vehicles are expected to decline slightly in the second half of the year but,...

My younger son calls the Toyota Prius a "hippie car," and he has a point. Not that Prius drivers are hippies. Toyota says that typical buyers are 54 and have incomes of $99,800; 81 percent are college graduates. But, like hippies, they're making a loud lifestyle statement: We're saving the planet; what are you doing? This helps explain why the Prius so outsells the rival Honda Civic Hybrid. Both have similar base prices, about $22,000, and fuel economy (Prius, 60 miles per gallon city/51 highway; Civic, 49 mpg city/51 highway). But Prius sales in the first half of 2007 totaled...

"Absolutely, they're buying the car for the statement it makes," Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing, told reporters. The firm concluded that more customers pick the Prius because the Prius is identifiably a hybrid. While just 36 percent cited fuel economy for buying a Prius, 57 percent said their main reason was that "it makes a statement about me." In focus groups, many Prius buyers admit expecting acclaim from friends and co-workers for making such a socially responsible, planet-saving purchase. But the satisfaction of some eco-drivers risks swelling to self-righteousness -- like the Prius driver with the bumper sticker: "How...

As yet another tale of celebrity spawn gone wild, the arrest Wednesday of Albert Gore III -- son of the former vice president -- on suspicion of drug possession was routine except for one, rather mind-blowing detail: Gore was clocked in a blue Toyota Prius hybrid traveling on the southbound Golden State Freeway in Orange County, Calif., in excess of 100 m.p.h. "One hundred and five, actually," said Orange County sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino. "I think it's slightly downhill there." The former vice president Thursday declared his love for his son, said Albert III was receiving treatment and added that...

With Al Gore in the news for battling global warming and Al Gore 3rd in the news for getting toasted, my favorite NYPD detective recalled a story that helps explain how father and son each became a particular kind of loser. The story was told to the detective by a Secret Service agent some years back as they worked security for a dignitary visiting New York. Such details largely consist of just standing there for as long as 12 hours and the talk turned to a day when the Secret Service agent was assigned to then-Vice President Gore. The detective...

Al Gore III Arrested The son of renowned climatologist Al Gore, Al Gore III (Who knew there were 109 Al Gores before these two?), was arrested Wednesday for speeding and drug possession. Police reportedly clocked the younger Gore's Toyota Prius at over 100 MPH (!), incredible but for the fact Gore had replaced the hybrid power plant with a Chrysler Hemi as an act of rebellion against his father. "He can force me to drive this little crap-box, but didn't say I couldn't personalize it," said Gore III. "It's got 420 horse power and gets about 10 miles to...

RUSH: Emily in Cary, North Carolina, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello. CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you? RUSH: Fine. Thank you. CALLER: Great. It's great to talk to you. I'm just calling because I finally have a reason to buy a hybrid. I've been waiting because I've been debating about it because I'm tired of the oil-rich countries, you know, becoming rich on the backs of Americans, so I've been wanting to buy something that, you know, would use less oil so we would in turn give more oil to, you know, Chavez or wherever, but now I have...

Interesting news coming out of the Central Connecticut State University paper: The Toyota Prius has become the flagship car for those in our society so environmentally conscious that they are willing to spend a premium to show the world how much they care. Unfortunately for them, their ultimate ‘green car’ is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than a Hummer. ... When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes...

Robert James Woolsey Jr.-Jim to his friends-isn't your typical Prius driver. Educated at Stanford, Oxford, and Yale, he was facing down the Russians in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks of the late 1960s before he was out of his 20s. He's held a series of senior government posts; the walls of his office bear signed photographs and messages of thanks from every president since Nixon. In 1993, Bill Clinton made him director of Central Intelligence, giving him control of the CIA's $30-billion annual budget and its network of tens of thousands of agents and a brief to run covert operations...

Is a Hummer cleaner than a Prius? Monday, 30 April 2007 BY JOE TONER You’ve often heard it, be you an ordinary “joe-soap” king, queen or pope; we are all only dust and it’s to dust we’ll go. A recent report, in the USA, came up with a hypothesis on the great hybrid versus petrol car debate on a dust to dust premise. Before you go any further I must remind you of how great they are at producing report after report. I sometimes wonder if anyone, least of all themselves, listens. Sure, aren’t they great ones for rubbishing what...

Environment: Feeling a bit smug about owning that hybrid? Better rein in that contempt for those who still drive primitive conventional cars. It seems that a Hummer is more ecologically friendly than a Prius. Yes, the Hummer will burn much more gasoline and discharge more emissions than a Toyota Prius driven the same distance. But a car's ecological footprint — if we may twist an environmentalist phrase — is more than just fuel mileage.

The Toyota Prius has become the flagship car for those in our society so environmentally conscious that they are willing to spend a premium to show the world how much they care. Unfortunately for them, their ultimate ‘green car’ is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than a Hummer. Snip-------------------- When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius’s...

SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT- Hummer vs. Prius You would do better in a Hummer. Manufacturing the Toyota Prius involves a shocking amount of pollution. A plant in Ontario, dubbed the "Superstack," mines and smelts the nickel for the Prius' battery, each of which then travels to Europe, China, Japan and the United States. How many Prius miles would it take to offset those trips? Canadian Greenpeace energy coordinator David Martin says the vast amounts of sulfur dioxide released over northern Ontario cause acid rain, which in turn destroys plants in the area, resulting in mudslides. In fact, the surrounding environment is...

The Toyota Prius has become the flagship car for those in our society so environmentally conscious that they are willing to spend a premium to show the world how much they care. Unfortunately for them, their ultimate ‘green car’ is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than a Hummer. Before we delve into the seedy underworld of hybrids, you must first understand how a hybrid works. For this, we will use the most popular hybrid on the market, the Toyota Prius. The Prius is powered by...

Sunday November 26, 2006 By JEREMIAH MARQUEZ Associated Press Writer LOS ANGELES (AP) A Toyota Motor Corp. executive engineer who was described as the ``American father of the Prius'' and among the country's top experts on gas-electric hybrid vehicles died in a plane crash in the Pacific Ocean, officials said Sunday. David Hermance, 59, was piloting an experimental plane when it went down around 1:20 p.m. Saturday about 50 yards off of Los Angeles' San Pedro area. A search team found the wreckage of the two-passenger Interavia E-3 aircraft submerged in 60 feet of water Sunday morning, said county Fire...

by Mark Finkelstein July 11, 2006 Here at NewsBusters, we keep close tabs on the MSM. That's why I can say with considerable certainty that this morning, the Today show ran its . . . nth segment on 'soaring gas prices.' The template is time-honored: reporter standing in front of gas pumps with scary-high price placard in background. Cut to clips of regular folks filling up, expressing varying degrees of outrage. Bring in an 'oil industry expert' for some words of wisdom. Back to reporter at pump, warily wondering just how much higher prices can go. Conclude with hosts back...

In about 13 years Toyota has gone from a brainstorming session to creating and selling and teaching the world there is another way. 1993 - Toyota initiates the G21 project to develop a small car with better mileage that can be sold anywhere in the world. 1994 - Executive VP Akirhiro Wada insists the car needs to set a new standard for mileage and recommends a hybrid engine. 1995 - The Prius prototype debuts at the Tokyo motor show-- but will NOT start. Toyota responds by moving up the production deadline by one year. 1996 - Toyota's US division wins...

Toyota hybrids have hit the ceiling - the tax break ceiling. The limit of 60,000 cars was surpassed already, BUT, because of some funky law, buyers have until Sept. 30th to buy a Prius and still qualify for the $3,150 government tax credit. After that they can only get half a credit. Qualifying for the credit is easy -- finding a Prius is the hard part. I got an email from a fellow in Canada who says they have a bunch of them just sitting around. Would anybody like to fund bringing them here to the Bay area of San...

Toyota is planning to voluntarily recall about 2/3 of the Prius cars they have made. Someone in Japan learned that when you turn the steeling wheel and drive real slow into a curb, it can break something in the steering mechanism. Trust me, you drive very slowly in Japan a lot, with the steering wheel turned all the way the left or right. Usually, its bad business for a car company to do something like this. However, Toyota is sucking it up, making the changes on their own dime BEFORE a tire blows out, or a car rolls over and...

Felix Kramer is on a mission, one that carried him and his new plug-in Toyota Prius hybrid to the steps of Capitol Hill. There he and representatives of Electro Energy, which brought along their own plug-in Prius, showcased to some of Washington's most powerful politicians, from Orrin Hatch to Hilary Clinton, technology that can help make America less dependent on petroleum: cars that can get 100 mpg. The event -- organized by SetAmericaFree.Org -- was planned to coincide with an announced summit between the White House and Detroit's beleaguered carmakers. Although the meeting was postponed at the last minute by...

Expect something amazing from the next Toyota Prius — like fuel economy that pushes past the 100-mpg barrier. Due in two years as a 2009 model, the next Prius is set to be an evolution, company sources say. The hybrid will retain the same basic 1.5-liter hybrid drivetrain. But Toyota is now on a mission to do two things: drive the economy ratings skyward, and cut the associated costs by 20-30 percent.

What should consumers look for to figure out the best model for the environment -- and their pocketbook? Consumers have had a hard time figuring out if gas-electric hybrid vehicles are worth the sticker prices, which are thousands more than their gas-only counterparts. It turns out even Consumer Reports has trouble calculating the true value and savings associated with buying and operating hybrid vehicles.

It is indeed a sad day when peasants in Russia have so much to teach us peasants in California about social activism. But look what's happened in Moscow, where average folk got fed up with priority access to the road system: in a textbook nonviolent protest, the trigger point came when commoner Oleg Scherbinksy was sentenced to four years in prison for causing an accident by not getting out of the way fast enough when a government official, commandeering the road, sped by. In response, a thousand citizens in 500 cars took a Sunday drive, moving slowly through the streets...

Oscar nominees Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal and Frances McDormand are among those expected to step out of green vehicles and onto the red carpet at the Academy Awards ceremony Sunday. In all, 25 VIPs are participating in the fourth annual "Red Carpet, Green Cars" event sponsored by Toyota Motor Corp. and the environmental organization Global Green USA. McDormand, Phoenix, Gyllenhaal, Jennifer Aniston and George Clooney are all expected to arrive at the Oscars in Toyota or Lexus hybrids, including the Toyota Prius, Lexus RX crossover and a hybrid version of the Toyota Camry, which goes on sale in May. Event...

We at the Toyota Motor Corporation are writing to address certain misconceptions that have arisen about your Toyota Prius model, which we are proud to note is driven by many celebrities, including Prince Charles and HBO's Larry David. Our pioneering gasoline-electric hybrid, introduced in 1999, has become an object of adoration to the world's enlightened car buyers. Our competitors, including America's Big Three, are rushing out hybrid vehicles of their own..

RUSH: We had a discussion last week about all these hybrids. I have told people ever since I heard about it, I talked to a high-ranking automobile executive who said, you know, this hybrid stuff is crazy. He said, "If we could make every automobile in America a hybrid today, in five years we would be right back to using the same amount of gasoline and oil that we're using today. It's not going to save anything. So this little column appeared in the Wall Street Journal yesterday by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. It's called "Dear Valued Hybrid Customer --...

MIDI - LAST KISS (oh where oh where can my baby be....remember?) On her way to the Sierra Club...it will turn into quite a flub Miss Arianna really hates SUVs She talks the talk but will she also walk it...I guess we'll see There's her plane touching down, it's at SFO The keynote speaker's set to go They get her bags, where's her ride And on which limo did they decide There at the curb is a big black machine She knows it is not very green But she gets in the SUV Can we all say, HYPOCRISY? Oh...

For decades, Americans have paid little attention to the fuel economy numbers on cars' window stickers -- or to whether their vehicles actually attained those mileage figures. But for hybrid car owners, impressive city and highway mileage numbers are often the primary selling point. When a hybrid's mileage falls short, the owner logically asks why the real-world figures don't match the ones listed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Consumer groups and transportation policy analysts often point to the EPA's test procedure as the cause. Critics say the test cycle, a simulated route of starts and stops to replicate city and...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Federal regulators on Wednesday officially opened an investigation into the red-hot Toyota Prius, responding to complaints alleging the cars' hybrid engine cuts out in traffic. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it received 33 reports of the gas-electric hybrid shutting down without warning typically at speeds between 35 mph and 65 mph. The investigation covers about 75,000 vehicles. Some of the complaints indicate that the vehicle was operated in electric mode for awhile after the gas engine stalled, NHTSA said. In at least half the cases, the car wouldn't restart and had to be towed....

Toyota is looking into complaints in the United States that its popular Prius hybrid car suddenly stalled or shut down, often at high speeds on highways. "We have been alerted to the fact that some owners might have a problem," Toyota spokesman John Hansen told Reuters on Monday. "We are going to go back to our service records to find out what owners have had a problem like this and how many." The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it has received 13 complaints so far of the gas-electric hybrid vehicles stalling or stopping unexpectedly. Toyota dealers attributed the...

By ALICIA CHANG 2005-05-06 08:16:12 LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Sheila Catoira wanted a fuel-efficient Toyota Prius hybrid so badly, she found a used model online and paid $1,000 more than the car would have cost new. With the demand for a gas-electric Prius far outstripping supply, some buyers are plunking down a premium for cars that are thousands of miles old. The trade-off: They don't have to wait for months on dealers' waiting lists. "I figured that if I can get it right away, it was well worth it," said Catoira, 31, a teacher and self-described environmentalist in San Diego....