Toyota Prius News
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Toyota has been the reigning king of the hybrid automotive segment pretty much since they introduced the Prius over a decade ago. Speaking of decades the question for a little while has been what is next for Toyota, especially with the introduction of the Chevrolet Volt and all-electric cars like the Mitsubishi “I” and Nissan Leaf that we have been reporting on for months now. Toyota isn’t one to leave the industry or their consumers hanging—especially with controversy they faced earlier in the year. In November, Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) introduced the details...
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Toyota Starts Sharing Its Prius Plug-in PrototypeOver the Thanksgiving holiday the team over at GreenCarReports.com were lent a Toytoa Prius Plug-in Prototype to test. The plug-in Prius is one of those cars Toyota enthusiasts have been waiting for and speculating for quiet some time—some even call it a super Prius. Now that our sister site...
Jonathan McGrew -
Hybrids Don't Cost More To Repair or Run, But Payback DebatableIt's a concern that comes up over and over: If I buy a hybrid car, won't I have to spend thousands of dollars to replace the battery pack in a few years? The answer is, No. Not only are automakers required to warranty the high-voltage battery packs in hybrid-electric vehicles for 8 years/100,000...
John Voelcker -
Toyota To Service, Not Recall, Hybrid Cooling-Pump ComponentsToyota plans to service approximately 650,000 of the more than 2 million Prius hybrids it has built to date, to correct a potential flaw in a cooling pump that could cause overheating. About 390,000 of the affected models are in the U.S. While the company hasn't yet released details on what it...
John Voelcker -
2010 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid Prototype: Drive ReportThe main thing to understand about the Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid is that it's not an "electric car" as many people use the term. Yes, it plugs in to any electric socket to recharge the 5.2-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack. And, yes, its Hybrid Synergy Drive system uses electric torque...
John Voelcker -
Gran Turismo Game Goes Green: Virtual Electric CarsDepending on your demographic, the new PlayStation 3 Gran Turismo 5 (GT5) video game is either your single most essential purchase this year, or a completely baffling piece of technology that you'll probably never buy. Ironically, the same could be said for the current wave of electric cars we've...
Antony Ingram -
You have to feel a little sorry for CODA automotive. A few months ago the Santa Monica firm was striding towards a December launch of its 2011 Sedan. Then as a prequel to announcing its first all-electric car would be delayed by nearly 9 months its Senior VP of Sales and Marketing left, closely followed by its CEO. But it looks like the period of grief is over for the firm as it announced today that it has entered into a partnership with Hertz to provide electric cars for select rental markets in southern California. The press release announcing the partnership does not go into the specifics...
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Video: Really Bad Prius Driver Slams Police Car, Then TreeFor all the grief Toyota Prius hybrid drivers get, you'd think they were some deranged combination of green storm troopers and mentally defective traffic impediments. But every now and then, a Prius driver does do something jaw-droppingly idiotic. Take, for instance, the unidentified (and possibly...
John Voelcker -
EV Vs Gas Vs Diesel: Breaking Down The CostsThanks to the limited availability of electric cars on the market thus far and lack of parity between EV models and their gasoline or diesel counterparts, comparing the relative costs of the three isn't the easiest of tasks. The human race wouldn't have got very far if we'd only ever done what was...
Antony Ingram -
Lexus Surprises With New Lexus CT 200hLexus didn’t get as good of a response from debut of the Lexus HS 250h last year as they would have liked, but that seems to have spurred them to make something even better. Let us introduce the all-new Lexus CT 200h. At first glance you might mistake the CT 200h for a Mazdaspeed3, but this...
Jonathan McGrew -
2010 Los Angeles Auto Show: Honda Electric Car to Make DebutHonda will jump into the electric-car and plug-in-hybrid fray at the 2010 Los Angeles auto show with a new EV concept. The automaker also confirmed it will lay out the plans for a new plug-in hybrid platform during the L.A. show, which opens to the media on November 17. Honda's entries into the...
Martin Padgett -
2012 Toyota Prius Minivan: Better Images From Japan, Via Italy!Toyota announced a year ago that it would apply the Prius model name not only to the current five-door hatchback, but to other hybrid vehicles as well. The first of these will be a 2012 Toyota Prius minivan, variously called the Prius Alpha or Prius Verso, though we don't yet know exactly what...
John Voelcker -
Startups are hard. Automaker startups may be harder. But one of the necessary qualities in startups--tenacity--was on display recently from Next Autoworks. New name, new CEO That's the new name of the former V-Vehicles Inc., which attracted funding from famed Silicon Valley venture firm Kleiner Perkins to build a simple, high-mileage, option-free, low-cost vehicle that it believed would find a new market niche and sell in very high volumes. Next Autoworks also announced that it had hired a new CEO, Kathleen Ligocki, who replaces the interim CEO, Kleiner Perkins partner Ray Lane. He continues...
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Toyota Teases New Larger Prius Model Via FacebookA billboard plastered with puzzle pieces that form a side-view of a current Toyota Prius, backed by a sliver of a slightly larger, taller, and more hatchback-like vehicle. This is the first glimpse of the next member of the Prius family, and it's coming soon When, exactly, we can't be sure. But we...
Nelson Ireson -
Cars That Drive Themselves: Google Brings It Closer To RealityFor those that live near San Francisco you might have seen a couple of 2010 Toyota Prius vehicles and possibly an Audi TT with an interesting roof top camera attachment. Those familiar with the Google Maps Street View program probably are saying, ‘Silly, that is just a Street View car taking...
Jonathan McGrew -
Toyota Sells Its Two-Millionth Prius Hybrid ... And CountingWe missed a milestone a couple of weeks ago: Toyota built and sold its two-millionth Prius hybrid earlier this month. The first-generation Prius, the world's first production hybrid-electric vehicle, was launched in Japan late in 1997. It stayed a low-volume car for several years, and wasn't...
John Voelcker -
Bad News For Electric Cars: Consumers Don't Understand ThemDespite the hype and the near-ubiquity of the Toyota Prius (pictured), most Americans remain leery of buying alternative-fuel vehicles. That’s probably because they don’t have the basic knowledge to understand it, according to a new survey conducted by Harris Interactive. The survey...
VentureBeat's GreenBeat -
Toyota Smart Center Benefits Home Efficiency, Not Just CarsWe've seen Onstar from General Motors. We've heard about iPhone apps that allow you to keep tabs on how your 2011 Nissan Leaf or Smart Electric Drive are charging too, and some energy companies are wanting to develop services that keep you updated on the status of your EV. Smart-Grid technology is...
Antony Ingram -
The 2010 Toyota Prius had an exceptionally long model year, introduced in early spring 2009 and delivered to dealers by May or June that year. But now the 2011 Prius hybrids are arriving at dealerships, and Toyota has levied a modest price increase of $250 across each of the four trim packages it offers. The new pricing for 2011 Toyota Prius models starts with a base price of $23,050 for the Prius II package, which is actually the simplest model of Prius you can get as a individual buyer. (The missing Prius I model is even simpler, but Toyota seems disinclined to offer it even to fleet...
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Buyers Do Want Electric Cars, But Don't Want To Pay MoreCost. The issue comes up time and time again with electric vehicles. New technology means new technology prices, and you can bet that after someone asks you what range a new EV has, they'll then ask how much it costs. According to a recent poll by Nielsen conducted for the Financial Times, three...
Antony Ingram -
Exclusive: 2011 Coda Sedan Electric Car - Production Photos!It doesn't get mentioned as much in the press as the 2011 Nissan Leaf and 2011 Chevrolet Volt, but there's a third compact electric car coming to market within the next six months. It's the 2011 Coda Sedan, and now Green Car Reports is happy to bring you the first published photos of the production...
John Voelcker -
Prius Plug-In Hybrid Now By June 2012, Cheapest Plug-In In U.S.?Amidst a flurry of battery-electric vehicle announcements by automakers all over the globe, Toyota reiterated plans to launch six new hybrid models by 2012. But the company will push back the U.S. launch date for its first plug-in vehicle, the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid. Toyota had said this...
John Voelcker -
Another Hybrid Study Misses the Point: It's Not About PaybackSometimes, you'd think that hybrid-electric vehicles were the most important development in the automotive world, if not the entire geopolitical sphere, in the last 15 years. They're not. More than a decade after they launched into the U.S. market, their market share hovers just south of 3 percent...
John Voelcker -
Plug-In Electric Vehicle Sales To Top 3.2 Million By 2015With several big electric vehicle launches due over the next few years and order books filling up quickly, we're sure to start seeing more of them on the roads. Research agency Pike Research has announced that combined sales of full-electric (battery electric, or BEV) vehicles and plug-in hybrid...
Antony Ingram