Father, Infant Son Killed In I-83 Crash - Pennsylvania News Story - WGAL Lancaster

HUNT VALLEY, Md. — A two-car crash killed an infant from Harrisburg, his father and left five other people injured Tuesday morning along I-83 in Hunt Valley, Md.

The accident occurred in the northbound lanes about 3 a.m. near Shawan Road.

Erika Braun, 19, of Harrisburg was driving a 2001 Mazda 626 on I-83 when she hit a guardrail on the left side of the road, Maryland state police said. The impact ejected a passenger, Clint Jones, 24, out the car’s rear window. After hitting the guardrail, the car reentered the road and broke down in the right lane.

As the car sat in the lane, Braun, Ronnel Offer and Demarco Offer got out. Ronnel then went back inside to get his son, 2-month-old Tyler Offer. As Ronnel pulled out his son, a Toyota Prius slammed into the car and everyone outside.

Ronnel Offer, 25, died at the scene. Tyler Offer was taken to Sinai Hospital where he died. Braun, the mother of Tyler Offer, suffered what police described as “non-life threatening injuries.” Demarco Offer was flown to the hospital, with injuries deemed critical at the time. Jones, who had been ejected in the initial impact, was also flown to the hospital with injuries deemed critical at the time.

The driver of the Prius, Joe Nimely, 42, of York, and his passenger Celia Nimely, also of York, suffered “serious injuries” in the crash.

Police said they do not believe alcohol was a factor in the crash and their investigation is continuing.

Read the entire article at Father, Infant Son Killed In I-83 Crash - Pennsylvania News Story - WGAL Lancaster.

A new report alleges that Toyota, the world’s largest auto company, is violating workers’ rights at Prius hybrid plants in Japan.

The National Labor Committee (NLC), a New York-based human rights group, has been investigating working conditions at Toyota Motor Corp., and the labor used to produce its best-selling Prius hybrid cars.

In its 65-page report released in June, NLC includes first-hand testimony of factory conditions in “Toyota City,” outside of Nagoya, Japan — less than 200 miles southwest of Tokyo — where the largest auto company in the world employs some 70,000 people.

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.

Low-wage temporary workers make up one-third of Toyota’s Prius assembly-line workers, mostly in the auto-parts supply chain. They are signed to contracts for periods as short as four months, and are paid only 60 percent of a full-time employee’s wage.

Parts plants run by subcontractors advertise standard, nine-hour, five-day-a-week jobs. But according to the NLC, “the typical shift was 15 to 16.5 hours a day, from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. or 1:00 a.m.”

In 2002, Kenichi Uchino, 30, died while working at the “green” Tsutsumi plant that assembles the Prius. During the 13th hour of a routine 14-hour day, Uchino collapsed on the shop floor of the internationally lauded “sustainable” factory, which uses sulfur-oxide-eating paint and boasts 5 percent emissions reductions. A Japanese court ruled that Uchino’s death was caused by exhaustion from overwork.

His wife, Hiroko Uchino, described a grueling lifestyle that included an 85-hour workweek prior to his death. The NLC published his time cards, which reveal that he was “putting in 106.5 to 155 hours of overtime … in the 30 days leading up to his death.”

Much of this overtime went unpaid. (Toyota explained Kenichi’s extra hours as “voluntary quality control activities,” says the report.) But in court, his survivors were able to win pension payments.

The NLC also alleges that Toyota — through its subsidiary Toyota Tsusho — has joint business ventures with Burma’s military regime. The charges arise from an agreement between Tsusho, Suzuki and the junta to set up parts and material plants in Burma, and produce vehicles for the military government. These ties remain despite a 2001 declaration from the company that it ended contracts with the Burmese government.

In the wake of the report, the company wrote a letter to stockholders: “Toyota has carefully considered the current environment in Burma, has conveyed to Toyota Tsusho Corporation its concerns about that environment, and has asked Toyota Tsusho to reconsider its business activities in the country.” As the largest owner of Tsusho’s stock (more than a third), Toyota itself has a role to play in cutting these ties.

The NLC report also connects the company’s overseas misdeeds to the American economy. Millions of dollars in car parts shipped by Toyota Tsusho are received by Tsusho America, which distributes them to Toyota assembly plants in the American South. This influx of foreign auto infrastructure uses an overwhelming ratio of non-union labor, fueling the diminution of union density in the auto sector.

What’s more, a memo leaked from Toyota’s Georgetown, Ky., plant to the New York Times in late 2007, exposed “management’s plans to cut $300 million in labor costs across Toyota’s North American operations over the next three years.” To do this, Toyota plans to introduce tiered wage scales and reduced health benefits for U.S. Toyota workers, which should come as little surprise to an American auto workforce that has suffered similar attacks from Detroit’s Big Three manufacturers for the past three decades.

As NLC Director Charles Kernaghan says, if Hollywood celebrities — such as actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz — can popularize green driving, they can also help end Toyota’s sweatshop labor regime and its ties to Burma’s dictatorship.

Says Kernaghan: “We hope that these same celebrities will now also challenge Toyota to improve its respect for human and worker rights.”

Read the entire article at The Dark Side of the Toyota Prius — In These Times.

It’s not the economy, stupid. It’s the pensions.

Everything now in the hackerama is about the kiss in the mail. The body-building firefighter, the ex-Senate president groveling for the job at the Boston Public Library, the gangster’s brothers, and of course Sen. Jim Marzilli, the perv in the Prius.

They’re all after the same score. A fatter pension check, while they’re still young enough to enjoy it for, oh, 40 years or so.

Read the entire article at Alleged Prius perv might have a kiss waiting for him - BostonHerald.com.

2010 Toyota Prius: New Toyota Prius To Get Solar Panels As “Symbolic Gesture”

Toyota plans to install solar panels on the new Toyota Prius hybrid as a response to a “growing demand for green cars,” reports Reuters. The panels will be supplied by Kyocera and would be able to power part of the air-conditioning as a “symbolic gesture” as it’s “very difficult to power much more than that with solar energy.” Yes, despite solar power not being “seen as a viable solution to power cars,” you’ve got to give the super number one best awesome automaker from the land of the rising sun credit for trying to make that tint of marketing around the brand glow ever more green. More below the jump.

“But solar power is not seen as a viable solution to power cars. Solar panels are expensive due to rising silicon prices and storing energy is difficult, the source said. It was unknown how much the solar panels on the new Prius cars would cost, or how many solar-mounted versions Toyota would build.”

We’re next expecting it to start using soybeans in the seat cushions — you know, to make it even more green. True, they’ll have to work with Ford on that one — but they’ve done it before. You know, for the children. [Reuters via The Guardian]

Read the entire article at 2010 Toyota Prius: New Toyota Prius To Get Solar Panels As “Symbolic Gesture”.

The tweak? Not putting enough gas in his Toyota Prius, according to our man Paul, who captured this hilarious spectacle in Silicon Valley’s ritzy Los Gatos neighborhood. Even better, this occurred next to a Jazz/Wine festival where Lexus was showing off some of their own hybrid vehicles. In the end, it took eight people to move the battery-laden ride. Perhaps Toyota’s green advertising is too convincing, or maybe a new walk-to-charge system is being tested.

Read the entire article at Moment Of Zen: Prius Owner Achieves Infinite Mileage With Minor Tweak.

As much as it may hurt to have to fill up your car every month (or week), the price of gas still isn’t high enough to make trading in for a hybrid a reasonable solution for most, a reality punctuated by the Gas-Mileage Savings Calculator from Edmunds. The calculator takes the value of a trade-in compared to the cost of a more-efficient vehicle and, based on driving distances and the cost of gas, determines how long it would take to break even. For example, we took a 2006 Explorer XLT V8 and compared it to a new Jetta SportWagen TDI at $4.25 a gallon and 1,200 miles a month. At that rate it would take four years to make up the difference. The price of gas would have to rise to a ridiculous $16.50 a gallon to break even within a year — and we don’t expect those prices until 2010 or so. Press release below the jump.

Gas-Guzzler Trade-In Calculator Introduced by Edmunds.com

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — June 30, 2008 — Should you dump the SUV for a gas-sipper? That’s the question everyone is asking these days.

Edmunds.com, the premier online resource for automotive information, helps consumers answer that question with today’s release of its Gas-Guzzler Trade-In Calculator. The tool helps consumers determine the pay-back period and fuel savings associated with trading-in a fuel-thirsty vehicle for a more fuel-efficient one.

“Car buyers think they can save money by dumping their gas-guzzler and purchasing a gas-sipper,” said Philip Reed, Senior Consumer Advice Editor for Edmunds.com. “But when you look at the big picture — total cash out of pocket — a very different situation is often revealed.”

A common example demonstrates the potential pitfalls of ditching that SUV: A consumer trades in a four-year old GMC Yukon, worth $13,483, for a new $21,647 Toyota Prius. The difference is $8,164. If the consumer drives 1,200 miles per month and gas costs $4.07 per gallon (national average), the monthly fuel savings will be $201.34. While this may seem attractive, it will take 41 months to pay back the additional cost of the Prius over the trade-in value of the Yukon.

The Gas-Guzzler Trade-In Calculator prompts users to select the vehicle they are considering and the vehicle they would sell or trade-in. The calculator automatically provides the Edmunds.com True Market Value® prices (the average price that people are currently paying for each vehicle), as well as the anticipated fuel mileage of the two vehicles. Consumers then input their monthly mileage and local gas price, and the calculator displays the monthly fuel savings, as well as the number of months to “break-even”.

“Americans hate high gas prices,” said Reed. “However, it’s important to calm down and look closely at the dollars and cents. If people make a panicked car-buying decision they could lose thousands of dollars just to save hundreds of bucks at the pump.”

Read the entire article at I Feel Gassy: Gas-Mileage Savings Calculator Shows True Cost Of Trading Your Guzzler For A Sipper.

They’re the most expensive things that most of us buy except for our homes. They’ve spawned a huge media industry of magazines, television shows and Web sites. Whichever one you choose is thought to reveal a great deal about your character, taste, income and whether or not you’re a heartless gas-guzzling polluter. Why then are so many cars so ugly?

Perhaps you think they’re not, but after weeks of searching for a new car to buy, I do. Bulbous bodywork, fussy interiors, tasteless upholstery and irritatingly overcomplicated dashboards are just a few of their design crimes. I’ve also been befuddled by incomprehensible technical specifications and possibly dubious environmental claims. Any car that scored highly in one respect, seemed to fail on another. (Take the Toyota Prius, which claims lots of green points, but few for looks, maneuverability or anything else that makes driving enjoyable; although the G-Wiz, the hideous little British eco-car, is even worse.)

Read the entire article at Cars span the globe. So why don’t they look better? - International Herald Tribune.

The hybrid Toyota Prius car has been exposed as being less economical than a diesel SUV.
The Prius has been compared by a British motoring website with a Jeep Patriot and found to use half a litre more fuel per 100 kilometres than the SUV.

The motoring website also reveals the main advantage of hybrids - the fact the engine does not idle at traffic lights - has no more benefit than a modern diesel with stop-start technology.

Read the entire article at Radio New Zealand News : Latest News : 200806300813 : Prius found to use more fuel than SUV.

The Honda Civic hybrid is the latest victim of the hybrid tax break exemption. Beginning on July 1, the tax credit for owning a Honda Civic hybrid will be sliced in half, from $1,050 to $525, on its way down to zero. If you recall, owners of hybrid vehicles are only eligible for the full tax credit until the manufacturer sells 60,000 units of that particular hybrid vehicle. Then a phase-out process begins, eventually reducing the credit to nothing except that warm glow you get from the batteries exploding saving the planet.

If you’re looking to get the most bang for your hybrid buck, it’s best to avoid the Honda Civic hybrid, Toyota Prius and Toyota Camry hybrid—the tax credit on the latter two have already been reduced to zero. There’s a good number of eligible hybrids, but at the rate people are snatching up these vehicles, don’t expect the full tax credit to last.

Read the entire article at Buy Your Civic Hybrid Today: Tax Credit Halves Tomorrow.

The last thing backers of plug-in hybrid vehicles needed was the sight of a Toyota Prius powered by the cutting-edge technology sitting in flames beside the road.That’s exactly what they got earlier this month, when a plug-in Prius operated by a South Carolina electric cooperative caught fire and was burned to the automotive equivalent of “well done.”

No one was injured in the fire, which apparently started when sparks from loose connections in the car’s battery compartment ignited the upholstery. But the incident certainly hasn’t helped advance the cause of the plug-in hybrid.
In its unmodified, off-the-showroom-floor state, the Prius is a “traditional” hybrid powered by both an electric motor and a gasoline engine.

A plug-in version of the car powered by lithium ion batteries, which could go farther on electric power and could be recharged between trips, isn’t expected from Toyota until 2010 at the earliest. In the meantime, a variety of after-market companies will convert a Prius to a plug-in for anywhere from $7,000 to more than $20,000.

It was an after-market plug-in converted by Hybrids Plus of Boulder, Colo., that went up in flames. It was one of 10 acquired by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Assn. of Arlington, Va., and distributed to member utilities for field testing. “We really just want to see how these things work,” said project manager Andrew Cotter.

The cooperatives’ fleet of plug-ins has been parked while an investigation was conducted. Although the report, issued Friday, said the batteries themselves weren’t at fault, lithium ion batteries have been under a cloud since a series of recalls two years ago related to fires in laptop computers and other devices.

Carl Lawrence, chief executive of Hybrids Plus, acknowledge that the incident was caused by “an assembly problem,” which comes as a relief to backers of plug-in technology.

“I was worried that this would turn into a major incident, but actually most people seem to understand that this was an incident that didn’t involve the batteries,” said Felix Kramer, founder of CalCars.org, a Palo Alto-based advocacy group. “In fact, the batteries came out of it looking very good.”
Toyota, which officially takes a hands-off policy toward after-market plug-in conversions, said this is the first incident of this it’s aware of. There are at least 150 plug-in hybrid conversions on the road, according to Kramer, about half of them in California.

Read the entire article at A Prius on the barbie | Up to Speed | Los Angeles Times.