I Hate Prius Drivers

Next-gen Prius coming in January with more power, efficiency

Five years on, it’s still the most popular way to conspicuously consume under the guise of saving the planet. Toyota hasn’t been resting on the success of its green badge of targeted consumerism, so we’re going to see a new Prius at the 2009 North American International Auto Show in January, according to Toyota President Watanabe. The 3rd-generation Prius will grow in size, and engine displacement will be bumped to 1.8 liters to increase performance. Despite the increase in size and sprightliness, weight will reportedly hold steady. Further changes are in store after the launch, with plug-in and Li-Ion updates to come.

The nameplate will also move beyond a single model and become a sub-brand during the reign of Prius the III. More body styles are coming, and if you think the Prius is a roachy-looking thing, the concept hints Toyota has given us are possibly even weirder. The sub-1,000 pound 1/X might offer a glimpse at another type of Prius, though more realistically, the sad-eyed Hybrid X vannish concept suggests the way things are headed without the ridiculous pronunciation of its featherweight companion. If things go according to Toyota’s plan for world domination, the Prius will become one of the pillars upon which the marque is built, next to the Corolla and Camry institutions.

Read the entire article at Autoblog Next-gen Prius coming in January with more power, efficiency.

The hidden costs of a hybrid car - KTKA.com by Marshanna Hester (Contact)

It’s got a shiny, front-end grill, fancy technology and gets good gas mileage.

It’s the hybrid.

The sale of hybrid cars went up 38 percent last year. And with gas prices continuing to rise, many drivers are thinking about buying one for themselves.

But there are some hybrid hidden costs that may make you re-think that “green” investment.

“Our only problem is getting enough availability of them. ”

Toyota sells the Camry and Highlander in the fuel-efficient model. Their most popular, the Prius, gets 48 miles to the gallon in the city and 45 miles to the gallon on the highway.

But to get the savings at the pump, you’ll have to pay about $4,500 more for a hybrid than a normal car.

Steve Cain, general manager at Lewis Toyota, says gas mileage isn’t the only reason people are buying it.

“They’re wanting to be green, it puts out fewer emissions,” he said.

But going green could cost you more green in repairs under the hood of a hybrid.

Cain showed me under the hood of a Prius.

If the battery went bad after the 8-year, 100-thousand mile warranty expired, he says drivers could replace a cell instead of the entire battery. That cost is $400 to $600.

But–

“If you had to replace the whole battery system, you might be looking at $3,000 to $4,000 to replace the whole thing,” Cain said.

A battery for a normal car ranges from $90 to $160.

And you may want to think twice before taking a hybrid your local mechanic. That’s because many of them aren’t familiar with the car’s complicated system.

“If it’s out of warranty and they’re not as familiar with the vehicle, it’s going to take somebody a little more time to figure out the problem, than somebody that’s been under the vehicle and trained to be under the vehicle,” Cain said.

How about insuring a hybrid?

Joe Magnuson, an insurance specialist, compared the cost of insuring a hybrid versus the cost of insuring a middle-of-the-line non-hybrid and came up with the following estimated results:

* The Toyota Camry Hybrid runs about 6.5% higher in insurance premiums vs. the LE or XE model

* The Ford Escape Hybrid is about 8.9% higher than the XLT model of the non-hybrid

* The Mazda Tribute Hybrid is about 7.8% higher in insurance cost than the non-hybrid “I” Sport model

* The Honda Civic Hybrid is the anamoly, as it is only .8% higher in auto cost than the non-hybrid ‘LX’ model of the Civic

Insurance rates for hybrids are higher because the vehicles are heavier. As a result, they cause more damage in accidents.

Read the entire article at The hidden costs of a hybrid car - KTKA.com.

I deserve a tax break because I’m better than you are.

stamford times - Committee gives the green light for higher tax breaks on hybrids By BEN LEVINE

STAMFORD — The city would like to see drivers thinking green the next time they go to purchase a car.

After a public hearing Monday night, the legislative and rules committee doubled the amount of property tax residents can exempt on the purchase of fuel efficient and hybrid vehicles that get at least 40 miles to the gallon.

Under the proposed ordinance, residents can exempt the first $4,000 on the purchase of a qualifying vehicle on or after May 31 of this year.

Under Connecticut statute, residents are exempt from the state’s 6 percent sales tax on the purchase of hybrid vehicles that get at least 40 miles to the gallon.

The ordinance will be voted on by the full board at its regular meeting on May 5, and if passed for publication, another public hearing will be scheduled for next month before it is put to a final vote for adoption.

Ann Schepes, a Glenbrook resident who has owned a Toyota Prius since 2002, said she felt the ordinance should be expanded to all owners of hybrid vehicles regardless of when they were purchased.

“It doesn’t seem fair to give the exemption only to those who purchase vehicles from here on out,” Schepes said.

Eileen Heaphy, D-8, has said she supports making the exemption available for all owners of qualifying vehicles, but her motion to expand the ordinance was defeated in committee.

“My belief is that we want to encourage people to buy hybrid cars moving forward, not to offer a retro-active benefit,” said Arthur Layton, R-17.

After the brief public hearing, the board decided to increase the exemption from $2,000 to $4,000 in order to give residents more of an incentive to purchase hybrid vehicles.

“I felt the original ordinance didn’t go far enough,” said Heaphy who proposed amending the ordinance. “(The $2,000 exemption) gives you a piddling savings that is not going to inspire anybody.”

With the increased exemption, if residents purchase a qualifying vehicle such as a Toyota Prius or Honda Civic Hybrid, they stand to save about $135 on property taxes.

Read the entire article at stamford times - Committee gives the green light for higher tax breaks on hybrids.

Are Hybrids Too Quiet? - Wheels - Autos - New York Times Blog By RICHARD S. CHANG

It happened again last Friday. I was walking with two friends to our car in a parking garage when I got a strange feeling that we were being followed. When I turned my head, I saw the front slope of a Toyota Prius, which was rolling quietly a few feet behind us.

It only freaked me out a little before I stepped aside. Some people haven’t been so lucky:

[Jana] Littrell, who is blind, was walking through a bank parking lot in the East Bay town of Albany a year ago when her foot was run over by a Toyota Prius backing out of a parking space. She wasn’t injured and the driver apologized effusively, she recalled. But the experience shook her up.

“It has definitely put me more on my guard,” said Littrell, who teaches Braille to newly blind adults. “But I don’t know how much good that’s going to do me if I can’t hear the car coming.”

Hybrid cars run solely on their electric motors at low speeds, which means they are virtually silent to pedestrians. For anyone who’s ever been in a hybrid (or electric car), the silence is one of the first things you’re aware of.

According to The Associated Press, early results from an ongoing study at the University of California-Riverside found that “hybrids operating at slow speeds must be 40 percent closer to pedestrians than combustion-engine vehicles before they make enough noise for their location to be detected.”

But so far, this hybrid creep seems to be an afterthought to the companies that make the cars. Two carmakers we spoke to said that it was never part of the discussion when developing their electric or hybrid vehicles. “It’s an easy fix,” one said.

Read the entire article at Are Hybrids Too Quiet? - Wheels - Autos - New York Times Blog.

It’s not easy being green, Hollywood discovers - Going Green- msnbc.com By Michael Ventre

‘Movie production is an inherently high-polluting business,’ consultant says

Leonardo DiCaprio are active in helping to push climate change initiatives, but the movie industry is not as green as you might think.

Mario Anzuoni / Reuters

In the parking lots of Hollywood’s studios, the Prius reigns supreme as the current status symbol. Stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and Amy Smart are active in helping to push climate change initiatives. Efforts are taking place throughout the movie and television industries to recycle materials and cut down on water consumption.

Meanwhile, trucks that carry equipment from studios to locations and back continue to emit exhaust from diesel engines. Generators that provide power at locations also run on diesel.

Hollywood might not be quite as green as you would think.

“Movie production is an inherently high-polluting business,” said Frank Bohanan, a consultant with the GreenSpeed Automotive Group.

“You usually must move large numbers of people and equipment fairly long distances, often to remote locations,” he said. “Once you get situated you have to power lots of lights and other equipment, many times by using diesel generators that are not especially clean. Throw in a few special-effects explosions, and you clearly have left a significant carbon footprint along with many other types of pollution.”

Read the entire article at It’s not easy being green, Hollywood discovers - Going Green- msnbc.com.

Don’t Fall to Green Fatigue By Matt Koppenheffer April 22, 2008

Want to keep the planet and your portfolio green? The Fool shows you how in our special series on Earth-friendly investing.

It’s not easy being green, but there are still plenty of companies hoping to cash in on consumers’ growing interest in environmentally responsible lifestyles.

This can definitely be a good thing. Toyota (NYSE: TM) took the car market by storm with its iconic Prius hybrid, and carmakers like Ford (NYSE: F) have bowed to ensuing demand and beefed up their hybrid offerings. Whole Foods (Nasdaq: WFMI) is using solar energy to generate part of the power for a handful of its stores. Heck, even Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) claims that it is able to save enough energy to power almost 150,000 homes per year simply by using skylights and light sensors in its stores.

But there’s a flip side to all of this. As green living gains momentum, more companies are seeing dollar signs, and more green products are coming to the market. I wouldn’t be surprised if another year or two finds us overwhelmed with marketers pushing green products on consumers from every direction, guilting us into spending more to save Mother Earth. We may risk ending up with mass “green fatigue,” never wanting to hear the word “green” again.

Shoppers are already growing skeptical. An article in the Las Vegas Review Journal noted that while more people are concerned about the environment, consumers are increasingly dubious about many products’ eco-friendly claims. The article specifically mentioned very mixed reactions to the new green line from Clorox (NYSE: CLX).

Read the entire article at Don’t Fall to Green Fatigue.

Awash in eco-dilemmas MARIAN SCOTT

The supper dishes are piled up in the sink and Jason Hughes and Jen Auchinleck are debating how to wash them without harming the planet.

Him: “I refuse to use the dishwasher. The dishwasher soaps all have phosphates in them.”

Her: “I don’t feel any guilt. Are you going to spend an hour doing the dishes or spend an hour with the kids?”

Who’s right?

The answer might surprise you.

Using a dishwasher is a better environmental choice, according to a 2004 study by researchers at the University of Bonn.

Washing dishes by hand uses twice as much energy and five times as much water, it found.

As Hughes and Auchinleck - both Montreal community organizers with a longstanding commitment to green living - have discovered, the path to environmental sustainability is littered with vexing dilemmas and sometimes startling conclusions.

Yet never has the urgency of reducing our ecological footprint been more apparent. (more…)

How green is your ride? - AutoWeek Magazine By J.P. VETTRAINO

‘Environmentally friendly’ means different things to different people

Some car folk have asserted, with a hint of sincerity, that the greenest car ever sold is the Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. Of 38,000 Silver Shadow variants built between 1965 and 1980, some 90 percent are still registered and roadworthy.

By this measure of greenness, Aston Martins and Ferraris probably run a close second, though it’s a safe bet that more of those have been wrecked. As counterpoint to these enduring automobiles, the National Automobile Dealers Association reports that 12 million cars and trucks were scrapped in the United States in 2006. “Scrapped” in this context covers a range of possibilities, from systematically recycled to submerged in country ponds.

In a thoughtful debate on environmental impact, few will hold fast to the notion that a Silver Shadow is the greenest car. But the point is taken. With attention focused on sexy propulsion sources, considerations such as manufacturing, duty cycle and disposal get lost in the roar. Does anyone really know what the most ecologically friendly car is?

Science can only guide us, and often the science gets buried under hype from all corners with something to sell.

“There’s been a sincere effort to give consumers a rationale for comparing the eco-performance of vehicles,” says Shruti Vaidyanathan, principal vehicle analyst at the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE). “There’s also a lot of hard sell that isn’t based on good policy or science, and there are gray areas in measuring eco-performance. The ends of the life cycle are among the biggest.” (more…)

Bloomberg.com: Opinion Commentary by John F. Wasik

April 21 (Bloomberg) — With the price of oil and gasoline hitting record highs, it’s time to wake up and face the crude truth on how you can save money on energy costs.

As commodity traders push oil prices ever higher as the dollar recedes, there’s little, if any, relief in sight at the fuel pump or from soaring utility bills.

Yet the deer-in-the-headlights attitude that most investors, vehicle owners and homeowners adopt is misguided. There are quite a few actions you can take to beat the escalating cost of energy.

The most-common response to high gasoline prices is to go out and purchase a high-mileage vehicle. This reaction certainly hasn’t hurt the sales of companies such as Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., which offer several fuel-stingy cars, trucks and vans.

If you have a long commute or simply drive a lot, you’ll immediately see the savings. There will be longer times between fill-ups. It may not make sense to pay a premium for these cars, though. The top two highest-mileage cars — the Toyota Prius and the Honda Civic Hybrid — carry retail prices of more than $20,000.

Let’s say you bought a stripped-down Toyota Prius for $22,000, received a $4,000 trade-in allowance and put $2,000 down. You also paid about $1,300 in sales tax. You then finance the balance, $17,300, at 6 percent annual interest for five years, resulting in a payment of $334 a month. You will eventually pay about $2,800 in interest on the loan. If you save $1,000 a year in gasoline costs, it will take you almost three years to recoup your investment.

Even Better Math

Like many who suddenly are cheered by the fact they are getting terrific mileage in their new hybrid car, you may succumb to the buffet effect — and drive more — thus negating some of your savings and extending your payback period.

Two other strategies make more sense. Buy a smaller, less- expensive car for your commute and drive less. The Toyota Yaris and Honda Fit retail between $12,000 and $14,000 for the basic models.

Their fuel efficiency ranges between 28 miles per gallon in the city and 35 on the highway. That’s less than the 48 mpg the Prius claims for city driving, but you can put your savings to better use.

The single-best strategy is to take public transportation or car pool and delay your new-car purchase. If you invested a $479 monthly loan payment, according to the newsletter Fidelity Investor’s Quarterly, in a portfolio earning 7 percent a year, you could turn a year’s worth of car payments into almost $200,000 over 35 years. That’s the miracle of compound interest — if you keep your savings invested.

Read the entire article at Bloomberg.com: Opinion.

The Associated Press: US hybrid sales up 38 percent in 2007; Prius leads the pack By DEE-ANN DURBIN

DETROIT (AP) — Kim Fenske drives a bus in Colorado by day, but when he’s not working, he zooms around the mountains in a 2007 Toyota Prius.

Fenske, an attorney by training who has also worked as a forest ranger, was an environmentalist long before hybrid cars like the Prius hit the market. In the early 1990s, he ran unsuccessfully for the Wisconsin state legislature on a renewable energy platform.

But he recently decided to go one step further and make an environmental statement with his car.

“My decision is a very political decision. I want to get people in this country off their dependency on foreign oil,” said Fenske, 48, who lives at the Copper Mountain ski resort near Frisco.

A growing number of buyers feel like Fenske. U.S. registrations of new hybrid vehicles rose 38 percent in 2007 to a record 350,289, according to data to be released Monday by R.L. Polk & Co., a Southfield-based automotive marketing and research company.

Read the entire article at The Associated Press: US hybrid sales up 38 percent in 2007; Prius leads the pack.