3rd generation Toyota Prius
Toyota announced the arrival of the latest version of the Prius hybrid car on May 18th. You see quite a few of the new Honda Insight hybrids as rental cars on Okinawa at the moment. It will be interesting to see how the sales of the new Prius compare to the new Insight.
The Toyota Prius is a fantastic bit of technology, it’s just a little bit too big, and a little too ugly plain for me.
On a related note, I just read on the Guardian website:
“America’s gas-guzzling automobiles were heading towards extinction yesterday as Barack Obama set strict limits on car exhaust emissions and directed producers to make a more fuel-efficient vehicle fleet. The policy requires US auto makers to produce cars and trucks that achieve an average 35.5mpg by 2016, and will reduce America’s carbon dioxide emissions by 30%.”
After a bit of time with a calculator. I managed to work out 35.5mpg is 15km per liter. 15 kilometers a liter is what my little Suzuki Swift is meant to do.
The articles don’t make it clear as to whether all cars will have to have fuel efficiencies above 35.5mpg or if the motor companies only have to produce some cars in their range that meet this new standard. Hopefully it won’t be the latter.
TRAVEL 67 : Chris Willson Photography 
According to yahoo news today, Toyota is planning to have solar power system combined into their hybrid system in a few years. I wonder how the car would look like. You would have no choice for color of the cars?? 🙂
I know this is an old post, but . . . .
The guidelines are for a manufacturer’s total line of production – an average of the fuel economies of all vehicle types offered. Basically, each manufacturer has to offer a small, highly efficient vehicle to off-set the higher-consumption large trucks and SUVs that Americans seem so strongly to feel that they need. It only works if you sell one efficient car for every one SUV/truck, but that is just not generally how things look on the roads in the US. If you are in a smaller car, you are surrounded by all these monstrously huge vehicles looming over you, hurtling along at 70 or 80 mph.
I really wish Honda’s hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle would catch on. The problem we are facing is not to keep burning petrol/gas more efficiently, but to stop using it all together.