At this point I know I'm not the only one a little bit suspicious of the incidents surrounding Prius recall incidents.  Specifically referring to the out of control Prius doing 80 down the freeway in San Diego.  It all kind of smells like Balloon Boy and people looking to taste nano second fame in the wake of Toyota's woes.

In San Diego a guy claimed that he couldn't get his Prius to stop because of a stuck accelerator pedal.  However, analysts are quick to point out that shifting into neutral, standing on the brakes, shutting the car off, or all of the above should have brought the car to a stop.  Slowly but surely the above should have worked and if not there are a lot more problems at stake here than just a stubborn gas pedal.  Of course that doesn't make an interesting news headline, nor damaging enough to the foreign manufacturers name.

Again, I'm not the only one making the Balloon Boy reference, but it's the most fitting.  Perhaps it's even worse, maybe the goal of the media and guilty parties is to damage a name, rather than just a chance to be on TV.  It's a volatile economic market and if we can burn Toyota at the stake it can only make our domestic manufacturers stronger.  We all know underhanded deals go on everyday with big time corporations, maybe this is an operation involving damaging a corporate name.  Toyota presented an opening for criticism and guilty parties took notice and are not exploiting it as much as possible.

Toyota has been spending a metric butt load of money on advertising and claiming to have the fix in place for their accelerator problems.  The recalls have been widely televised, dealers have been compensated, and you can get online without seeing an advertisement featuring a Toyota owner pleased with their cars safety record.  Toyota knows what's going on, they see the writing on the wall, and I suspect it will be a long time before they ever make it back to the top of the sales charts in the US.

It's not a bad thing that domestic car manufacturers retake the top sales figures again, I just hope that it's done without any fancy business.  It's been pointed out that Ford has been making huge gains in quality, leadership, and efficiency for a few years now, which has helped place them where they are.  Let's focus on the good things our country has to offer in the automotive industry and leave Toyota to clean up it's own mess, consumers will still be around when they are done.

By now, if you follow automotive news at all, you've heard of the 2.3 million vehicles recalled by Toyota.  It's not like other car manufacturers don't have recalls, but Toyota's is massive, and involves a very serious component of the vehicles.  Toyota's recall affects the gas pedal, which can be extremely dangerous if it fails, unlike the Camaro battery cable recall.

Affected Toyota Recall Vehicles:

• 2009-2010 Rav 4
• 2009-2010 Corolla
• 2009-2010 Matrix
• 2005-2010 Avalon
• 2007-2010 Camry
• 2010 Highlander
• 2007-2010 Tundra
• 2008-2010 Sequoia

Ignore the immediate millions of dollars needed to actually fix these vehicles, imagine the consumer backlash of not trusting Toyota vehicles in the future.  What kind of affect will this Toyota recall have on future sales?  In an attempt to keep dealerships happy, Toyota has agreed to pay up to $75,000 per dealership to cover incidentals involved with this recall.  It's money to keep dealerships from jumping ship and switching manufacturers.

In January alone it's estimated that Toyota dealerships have lost more than 20,000 unit sales.  Couple the gas pedal scare with the latest news of brake problems with the Prius in Japan and you have the right mixture to create consumer hatred for a long time to come.  Perhaps if Toyota would have responded faster to eradicate acceleration faster, as far back as 2002, they wouldn't be in the mess they are in now.

In Japan, shouldn't the CEO go fall on a sword?

Toyota announced that they will be showing off their latest in green technology at the Frnakfurt Auto Show with the Plug-In Prius hybrid.  The all new Prius is known as the 2010 PHV or plug-in hybrid vehicle will be released later this year, with Toyota promising 500 sold to fleets world wide.

Unlike other traditional Plug-In style electric cars, the 2010 Prius PHV will only have a limited distance of 12 miles to run on battery alone.  After reaching a distance of 12 miles the plug-in battery is depleted and the Prius returns to standard hybrid mode.  The hybrid mode of this PHV is similar to that of what's found in existing model Toyota Prius's.

Toyota has had to ramp up production of their hybrid Prius, especially after the recent launch of the second generation.  According to industry analysts Toyota has already received orders for 80,000 new Prius's, which will require increases in production to 7,000 more units per month.

Contributing factors to the increase in demand would be the new Prius lower price.  No doubt this is in response to the Honda Insight being released to compete in the passenger car hybrid market.  Also, in response to slumping sales in Japan, Toyota has revamped the last generation Prius to help compete with the newer advanced base model.

Hopefully this increase in Prius production is a sign that world economies are starting to turn around.  I'd love to start reading some positive automotive news in the near future.

We're not talking world wide, because that happened about a year ago, but Toyota has officially sold over 1 million hybrids in the United States.  This sales figure includes all hybrids under the Toyota and Lexus branding, quite a feat.  Gas prices last summer obviously helped drive the hybrid market, but there is something to say about having over 1 million hybrid cars on the road today from one manufacturer.

Toyota has been dominating the hybrid market with over 75% of the market share.  Furthermore they have been offering 6 differnet hybrid badged cars under Toyota and Lexus manufacturing, where other domestic manufacturers are simply trying to catch up.

Continually pushing the hybrid envelope, Toyota plans to offer a luxury edition Priusy hybrid in 2010.  No doubt, if anyone has any money left, greenies will be buying this luxury early adopted technology right off the manufacturing line.

Hybrids are getting a lot more attention as gas prices go up. Now you see more and more of the popular but ugly Toyota Prius on the roads. Hybrids are good cars because they get great fuel mileage but its limited to the city. Once you get out on the freeway you will see very little difference between a hybrid model car and its regular non hybrid model.

If you do mostly city driving a hybrid is a great choice as it gains electricity back with regenerative breaking. This means when you stop it uses generators to gain back energy as you stop. When you are not stopping and going like on the freeway you can see why Hybrids do not do well on freeways.On a freeway you might not like a Hybrid being they usually have like a 1.3 liter gas motor that will be powering you. They use a small motor so it does not burn much gas and at freeways speeds you wont have much passing power.

There is another way to get good fuel mileage and you wont have to worry about any of these set backs the hybrids have. What I am talking about is a diesel vehicle. Diesel engines are more efficient than gas engines but you don't usually see them in cars but in big trucks. In Europe diesel engines are very popular but in America they are not. As fuel prices go up they are starting to make more sense in the USA too.

One diesel car the Jetta Beetle can get 50 miles per gallon without any hybrid technology! The same goes for the other 2 models Jetta makes that runs on diesel. All 3 models get great fuel mileage and have none of the set backs a hybrid has. These are not the stinky diesels of the past but clean diesels of the future. One guy even did some minor modifications to a diesel beetle and he is getting a steady 70+ miles per gallon! He added a different spoiler and a free flow catalytic converter among other things and that was all it took.

A Jetta is also a good bit cheaper than a Hybrid and you never have to replace batteries. Honda may bring over a diesel in the near future, the Honda Civic Diesel! If you want good fuel mileage without hybrid set backs take a look into a diesel car. They might just save you a lot of money!

Diesel Jetta

The average lifespan of a battery in a new electric car might surprise you, it did me.  I suspected the usable life of a battery pack in todays electric cars would not be significant enough to necessitate the larger sticker price and it turns out I was wrong.  Furthermore, taking into consideration the cost of regular maintenance on a typical combustion engine, even when you do have to replace an electric car battery you may still be way ahead.

Testing Usable Life Span

There have been specific cases of electric cars like the Toyota Rav 4 EV reaching 100,00 miles on it's original battery with no significant loss of battery life.  The battery in question is the Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) battery, which is composed of cells, otherwise known commonly as the rechargable batteries you buy in the store.  In electric cars however instead of say a AAA or D battery, the NiMH battery in your electric car utilizes cells on a much larger scale.

Testing on the NiMH Electric Car battery life was done by the Southern California Edison, Electric Vehicle Technical Center(pdf).  They state that the likely hood of your typical electric car cell battery life to be anywhere in the 130,000 to 150,000 mile range.  Considering you don't have to perform regular maintenance like oil and air filter changes, over the life of the vehicle the cost of replacing the battery would be far under gas engine maintenance costs.

Cost Of Replacing Electric Car Batteries

The cost of replacing the battery in a Toyota Rav 4 EV, in the example above, may be the exception to the maintenance cost comparison rule.  Recent figures put the RAV 4 EV NiMH battery replacement cost at $14,000.  This would be for a custom pack that would provide 2000 usable cycles, compared to 1000, which translates into about 8 years of normal driving.  The NiMH for this particular vehicle seems high, but smaller vehicles like the new Toyota Prius have battery replacement costs of uner $3,000.

In closing, before jumping on the bandwagon and becoming an early adopter, check out what the replacement cost for the battery will be.  However, as years pass and electric cars become more popular, the price of these NiMH replacements will be dropping dramatically just like any technology that becomes old hat.

NiMH Battery

The Toyota Prius hybrid car has won the 'Greenest Technology' Award at the British Techology Awards.  Talk about a mouthful of crap, award, award, award.  Ironically this green technology was found right along the likes of the Apple iPhone, BBC iPlayer, and Nintendo Wii.

The vote was taken online and in the UK the Prius gets all kinds of rockstar lavish treatments.  For example, a Prius owner gets a break on their parking permits.  I'm sure this huge discount on a parking permit offsets the incredibly high price tag of early adoption.

Prius Win

A Toyota Prius starts at $22,000 and a yaras 5 door starts at $14,200 for a difference of $7,800 how long will it take to save gas enought to pay for the difference? We look at the lowest gas prices in several different states and cam up with a average cost of $3.50 a gallon. If gas prices stay the same for the next 5 years here is what it will cost for 10,000 15,000 and 20,000 miles a year

• 34 MPG average for the Yaris 50 MPG average for the Prius that what I get in my 06 Prius
• 10,000 294 Gallons a year for the Yaris and 200 Gallons for the Prius = 1029 for the Yaris and $700 a year for the Prius a $329 savings a year
• 15,000 miles a year $1543.5 Yaris and $1050 for Prius saving $496.50 a year with the Prius
• 20,000 miles a year 588 Gallons a year $2058 Yaris and 400 Gallons a year $1400 Prius $658 savings a year

So lets look at 5 years at 20,000 miles a year $3280 in total savings 10 years $6560 but what if gas raises 50 cents a year your gas cost would rise about 100 each year. 5 years would become 4280 and 10 years would become $11,060 in the case you would save a few thousand so buying a Prius is only a good deal if gas prices continue to rise and you drive $20,000 miles a year

Toyota has announced that they will be upgrading the batteries in their upcoming 09 and 2010 model year Prius hybrids.  Furthermore they will be upgrading the tiny 1.5 litre engine to the one currently used in the Camry, a 1.8 litre.

The new batteries will be made with nickel-metal hybride packs.  Everyone is still waiting around on the Lithium Ion on battery pack with plug-in capabilities.

Toyota Prius