Toyota Prius News

  • Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid prototype, tested in November 2010

    Last week, Toyota said it expects to sell 16,000 or more 2012 Prius Plug-In Hybrid models in the U.S. next year, once the car is launched (in June or before). For all intents and purposes, it's a standard Toyota Prius hybrid with a larger battery pack that uses lithium-ion cells. The car can be plugged into a wall outlet to recharge the battery on grid electricity. Still, we wonder whether the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In may be the car that gets U.S. car buyers more comfortable with plugging in their cars? There's a huge amount of familiarity with the Prius brand--it's why Toyota is expanding...

  • Environmental Working Group 'Meat-Eater's Guide'
    When Did Cars Become The Yardstick For Measuring Pollution?

    If you've ever visited a museum or a manufacturing plant, you've probably heard a tour guide say something like this: "And if you laid all these bottles end-to-end, they'd stretch clear across the state of Kansas!" Through time and repetition, certain comparisons have become standardized, so that...

  • 2011 Nissan Leaf
    Nissan, Mitsubishi, Toyota Turn Electric Cars Into Backup Batteries

    Ask most people which car would be best to have in a disaster and they’re likely to name something like a Humvee. While the now deceased gas-guzzling Humvee be good for navigating through deserted streets and clearing obstacles in the road it can’t help you cook a meal. But it turns out...

  • 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Drive  -  March 2011
    2012 Plug-in Toyota Prius: What Do You Want To Know?

    Toyota may have started the hybrid revolution with its original Prius, the first mass-produced gasoline-electric hybrid car and the vehicle which quickly became the eco badge of honor for celebrities and city dwellers alike. But ten years after the first Prius rolled into the U.S., Toyota is now...

  • 2012 Toyota Prius V station wagon, Half Moon Bay, CA, May 2011
    Prius Shortages Will End For 2012, Sales Will Rock, Toyota Says

    It's been a tough couple of years for Toyota. First was the entire sudden-acceleration mess, along with multiple recalls covering almost 10 million cars. Then came the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which devastated Toyota's intricate global network of parts and assembly plants. But with a return...

  • 2011 Nissan Leaf
    2011 Nissan Leaf Generates Constant Buzz: Musicians Beware!

    The Leaf generates massively more and constant high frequency sound feedback

  • 2011 Toyota Prius with PLUS Performance Package

    Pretty much every Toyota Prius hybrid you see on the streets looks the same. Wild customization is generally limited to personalized plates that promote the driver's green credentials, solar panels, eco-living, or general hybrid luv-luv-LUV. That's about to change. Toyota announced today it will offer something called the "Prius PLUS Performance Package," made up of "cool and fun accessories" that upgrade the ur-hybrid with "sporty looks" and "performance handling," courtesy of the Toyota Racing Department (TRD). What does it mean? Well, when the first item listed on the press release is...

  • U.S. Environmental Protection Agency adminstrator Lisa Jackson and President Barack Obama
    White House, Feds To Push For 56.2-MPG Fuel Economy In 2025

    The two Federal agencies that set gas mileage and emissions standards for future cars may propose rules that require corporate average fuel economy to reach 56 miles per gallon by 2025. News reports out of Washington, D.C., indicate that the Obama Administration is urging the EPA and NHTSA to push...

  • 2011 Toyota Prius
    Never Fear, More Priuses Will Be Here! Or Not. It Depends

    If you want to buy a new 2011 Toyota Prius hybrid these days, you may have to scramble. Supplies are down to 3,000 units, which is less than 10 days' worth of sales. In auto industry terms, that means "sold out," and dealers are charging higher markups on the few precious Priuses they still have...

  • How A Hybrid Works, infographic used courtesy of AutoMD - cropped version
    How Does A Hybrid Car Really Work? This Infographic Explains It

    As we've said before, we love infographics. Some of our favorites come from AutoMD, which did the one we ran two weeks ago on rising gas prices and simple ways to boost your gas mileage. Now they've tackled the perennial question: How does a hybrid car work? Specifically, they dissect the third...

  • Gettin' real in the Whole Foods parking lot. Image: Fog and Smog Films
    Whole Foods Plus Prius Equals New Westside LA Hybrid Rap

    The phrase "west side of LA" conjures images of the surf at Malibu, high-dollar real estate and, on the grittier side, the gangs from the bad old days of Venice Beach. Park those images next to the little video below from Smog and Fog Films. On the west side, apparently even mock-gangster rappers...

  • 2011 Toyota Prius
    After 11 Years, Two-Millionth Hybrid Car Sold In United States

    Sometime early last week, someone somewhere in the U.S. bought a hybrid car. And while we may never know exactly who that person was, the car was the 2-millionth hybrid-electric vehicle sold here since the very first Honda Insight went on sale in late 1999. Industry trade journal Ward's Auto...

  • Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid prototype, tested in November 2010

    The 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid isn’t set to go on sale until early next year, but we already know quite a lot about the car. This is mostly thanks to the fleet of Prius Plug-In Hybrid prototypes running around the country, an early version of which we drove back in 2010. However, some new details of the production car were revealed during a recent press event for the 2012 Toyota Prius V. After analyzing some of the feedback Toyota received from drivers of Prius Plug-In Hybrid prototypes, the company reportedly decided to make several tweaks to the car before its official launch...

  • Auriga Leader hybrid cargo ship
    How To Send Hybrid Cars From Japan? Diesel-Hybrid Cargo Ship, Of Course

    In this day and age, when it comes to being green, looking at the end result is never enough. You have to take a life cycle approach to assessing how green something is, which in the case of cars, means looking at how they are manufactured and delivered to your driveway. Unfortunately, most cars...

  • GE Solar Park
    More Sites Install Solar Carports For Electric-Car Charging

    It's the green ideal: Charging an electric car or plug-in hybrid using electricity generated purely from the sun. But it's not fiction; a handful of large, multi-space solar carports are popping up in areas as diverse as Silicon Valley, New York City, Detroit, and Tennessee. The latest one...

  • 2001 Toyota Prius
    2001-2003 Toyota Prius Recall: Steering Nut On Early Hybrids

    Toyota has issued a recall notice for its very earliest hybrids, the 2001 through 2003 Prius sedan models. The company will replace the pinion-shaft attachment nuts in the electric power steering box, which could loosen over time if the wheel is "repeatedly and strongly turned" to the full-lock...

  • Members of Deeplocal work on the Toyota Prius 'Charged Life' project
    Making Music With A Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid & Unattended Baggage

    About a year and a half ago, Scion launched a new webmagazine called ScionAV. The goal? To engage potential Scion shoppers (i.e. Millennials) on lifestyle topics like music, film, and fashion. It's the way marketing works in the Social Media Age: you don't just talk to customers in showrooms, you...

  • 2011 Toyota Prius
    Toyota Prius Gas Mileage

    The 2011 Toyota Prius hybrid gets the best gas mileage rating of any car for sale in the U.S. market today. It's rated at 51 mpg city, 48 mpg highway, for a combined rating of 50 mpg--and that's a number no other car can match. At least, no other car that doesn't plug into the wall for some (2011...

  • 2010 Honda Insight

    Hybrid cars seem to bring out strong beliefs among car buyers, both pro and con. On the pro side, they get better gas mileage, offer some small degree of all-electric running, and let buyers display (to varying degrees) their green credentials. On the con side, they're usually pricier than similarly equipped gasoline-engined cars, and the payback on that extra cost is debatable and varies greatly with driving behavior, length of ownership, and comparison set. There's also a fair degree of back-and-forth between hybrid enthusiasts and proponents of clean-diesel vehicles, whose sales are rising...

  • Estella Warren
    Toyota Prius: Estella Warren's Weapon Of Choice

    Here is what we know about Estella Warren from her Wikipedia page: • She is a fashion model, with a portfolio that includes work for Victoria's Secret, Chanel, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. • She is a swimsuit model, which is like being a fashion model, except the fashion is less important...

  • 2010 Toyota Prius
    You’ve Got a Friend in Me: Toyota’s Electric Car Social Media Network

    Any press relations firm will tell you that in the modern world companies need an active Internet and social media presence in order to best sell a product, but what if you could go one step further and create your own social media network? That’s exactly what Toyota is planning, with the...

  • 2004 Toyota Prius
    Does The Toyota Prius Hybrid Hold Up? Consumer Reports: Yes

    Gas prices are going up, smaller cars are better than ever, and once again, U.S. car buyers are turning their sights toward higher gas mileage. For that, there's nothing that beats the 2011 Toyota Prius, with its 50-mpg combined EPA rating. But will that Prius hold up? Will the battery pack and...

  • Gas pump
    Dollar-A-Gallon Gasoline? Yep, Briefly, One Day In LA (Video)

    Even if some of us suspect that cheap gasoline may never come back for good ... well, we can dream, right? In the face of national gas prices averaging $4 a gallon, and fillups that can cost three figures, several hundred lucky drivers in Los Angeles hit the jackpot yesterday morning: They paid...

  • 2010 Toyota Prius high-voltage battery pack
    The Ultimate Guide: Toyota Prius Battery Life, Cost, and Warranty

    Like many articles, this one started with a reader question. Casey Krakowiecki wrote: I'm interested in buying a new Toyota Prius hybrid. I hope you can answer a couple of questions that will help me. (1) Are the rechargable batteries guaranteed for 8 years? If they fail at 7 years and 11 months...

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