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California Highway Patrol officers say their patrol car acted as a brake for a Toyota Prius with a stuck accelerator Monday. The car, headed eastbound on Interstate 8, was going at a high rate of speed because the accelerator was stuck, according to CHP spokesperson Brian Pennings. The patrol car moved in front of the Prius and engaged its brakes to bring the Prius to a stop, according to CHP. The car eventually stopped on the highway near the La Posta Bridge in the area of the Golden Acorn Casino.

Be honest. It's what we're all thinking about the tree huggers' favourite vehicle and the tree huggers who drive them, ever since it was revealed just how easy it is to wrap one round a tree. The Toyota Prius "Not So Bloody Smug Now" Special Edition. Coming to a brick wall near you soon.

TOKYO – Toyota's president apologized Friday for the massive global recalls over sticking gas pedals as the automaker scrambles to repair a damaged reputation and sliding sales. But Akio Toyoda, appointed to the top job at Toyota Motor Corp. last June, said the company is still deciding what steps to take to fix brake problems in the popular Prius gas-electric hybrid. Speaking at a hastily announced news conference that lasted an hour, a stern-looking Toyoda promised to beef up quality control. "We are facing a crisis," he said, publicly confronting the automaker's safety problems for the first time since the...

Toyota USA says it is evaluating brake problems with the 2010 Prius gas-electric hybrid, but no decision has been made about a recall. Company spokesman Brian Lyons says it's too soon to talk about a recall. He says the automaker is cooperating fully with a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration probe into the brake troubles. The government is investigating reports that antilock brakes can fail momentarily on some 2010 Prius models in slippery conditions or on rough roads. The company says it made a change in the 2010 braking system last month to correct cars in production. The company has...

The hybrid-electric Prius has long been Toyota’s “green car,” the symbol of the automaker’s engineering prowess and its big bet on the kind of car consumers will want to buy for decades to come. But on Wednesday, the Prius was drawn into the mounting crisis for Toyota, as Japanese officials ordered the company to investigate problems with the brakes on the 2010 model. American safety officials also said they had received dozens of similar complaints. The new questions surrounding the Prius raise doubts about a different problem in a model that was not part of the recent global recalls of...

In the future, the anti-fun police will ensure that cars won't go fast, they'll just look fast. Comrades, we give you the Toyota Prius Custom Plus Concept.

With the announcement today by Government Motors (GM) that it's closing the books, the last chapters of which are written in red ink, on the cult-car Saab brand, the delightfully irreverent car blog Jalopnik asks, "What Will Latté-Swilling Liberal Northeasterners Drive Now?" Actually, now that Saab has gone the way of Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Plymouth, one of Jalopnik's readers asked the question, and blogger Matt Hardigree recommended a used Saab, a Volvo Wagon or a Subaru Legacy. Apologies, but that just won't do. That won't do at all. A used Saab is simply out of the question. Used cars are...

The report alleges that Toyota exploits guest workers, mostly shipped in from China and Vietnam. According to the NLC, these workers are “stripped of their passports and often forced to work — including at subcontract plants supplying Toyota — 16 hours a day, seven days a week, while being paid less than half the legal minimum wage.” Workers are forced to live in company dormitories and deported for complaining about poor treatment, the report finds.

Could the Prius and other Toyota hybrids be banned from the U.S.? It seems unthinkable, but that's one possible ending to a patent investigation launched this week. This case centers around Paice, a tiny Florida company that has patented a way to apply force to a car's wheels from the electric motor or the internal combustion engine.

Q: Are you tempted to get out the shotgun and blow a large smoking hole in the middle of your flatscreen TV if you are forced to watch that damned Prius commercial one more time?? You know the one I mean....

Alternative Energy: A government report says reliance on electric cars will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and may merely shift our dependence on foreign sources from one set of dictators to another..."If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country's electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?" asks Mark Gaffigan, co-author of the GAO report. The report itself notes: "Reductions in CO2 emissions depend on generating electricity used to charge the vehicles from lower-emission sources of energy."

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Prius hybrid automobile is popular for its fuel efficiency, but its electric motor and battery guzzle rare earth metals, a little-known class of elements found in a wide range of gadgets and consumer goods. That makes Toyota's market-leading gasoline-electric hybrid car and other similar vehicles vulnerable to a supply crunch predicted by experts as China, the world's dominant rare earths producer, limits exports while global demand swells. Worldwide demand for rare earths, covering 15 entries on the periodic table of elements, is expected to exceed supply by some 40,000 tonnes annually in several years unless...

Conservation: The Chevy Volt is said to be able to get 230 miles per gallon. That's if it's continually plugged into a fragile and overburdened power grid. Where will you be when the lights go out? Since most U.S. electricity generation is not carbon-free, the Congressional Research Service agrees. The "widespread adoption of plug-in hybrid vehicles through 2030 may have only a small effect on, and might actually increase, carbon emissions," it observes. "If you are using coal-fired power plants and half the country's electricity comes from coal powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?"...

The silent hum of hybrid petrol-electric vehicles, which recently became number one best-selling cars in Japan, has been deemed dangerous to pedestrians, in particular the visually impaired. When switched from fuel to battery mode, the vehicles make a barely perceptible noise, prompting campaigners to urge the installation of noise devices to prevent accidents. A new government panel of scholars, consumers, police, vision-impaired groups and automobile industry leaders has been formed in Japan to discuss whether the eco-friendly cars should be installed with compulsory noise-making devices. "We have received opinions from automobile users and vision-impaired people that they feel hybrid vehicles...

He did not use solar cells in his modification, but managed to stretch out his Prius and insert a row of seating to accommodate all his children. The result is a Prius SUV Limo contraption. I sure as hell would rather see this thing rolling around town instead of a gas guzzling juggernaut such as the stretch Hummer! This would probably catch on pretty well for the environmentalist hedonists in Portland. Lobbyists might actually feel good renting these things out to ferry legislators around the state or city. Apparently the car still is able to achieve 50mpg! From the guy...

Maybe it’s my inner rebellious child, but it bugs me to be told what I want. And if there’s anyone I don’t want telling me that, it’s some do-gooder from the government. So when Carol Browner made the morning show rounds today, claiming that Pres. Obama’s new, higher MPG standards are “giving Americans the cars they want,” it really got under my skin. Oh, and then of course there’s the little thing about what she said being . . . demonstrably false. View video here.

You Don't Play Chicken When You Drive A Prius .... .... especially when the other guy has a garbage truck. Here's the response from Rep. Tim Sanders (R 51A) to the Governor's decision to unallot to solve the budget gap left by Democratic leaders in the Legislature. This afternoon, Governor Tim Pawlenty announced there will be no special session and no government shutdown. According to the Governor, the 2009 session will definitely end Monday night at midnight. The governor has decided to take the bills the DFL majority has put on his desk, line-item veto in some places, and sign...

The Energy Department could spend its billions the old-school way. Or it could try the direct approach: 2 million new hybrid drivers per year. A calculator can be the plaything of the damned. Allow me to demonstrate. Of the 12 million barrels of oil we import daily, the 6 million barrels we get from OPEC members are the most geopolitically dubious. That oil from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is refined into about 83 million gallons, or roughly one-fifth of our daily gas consumption of 390 million gallons, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Sometimes the cars accelerate on their own. Sometimes they stop dead. Drivers of the hybrid Prius have discovered they can be an unexpected adventure. Bobette Riner publishes an electricity index used to promote renewable energy, and she bought a brand-new Prius last year to shoot the bird at the oil companies. Elizabeth James says her Prius surged out of control near Lawson, Colorado, sending her plunging into a river. "I felt so smug for a while," she says. "Especially being in Houston." She had been lucky to score the car from a dealership on Houston's south side, because for nearly...