treehugger.com — "Today Toyota joined almost every other major car company who had already unveiled plans for producing cars that run on energy supplied by the electric grid. Announcing the official plug-in Prius based on the most popular hybrid vehicle to date..."
Jul 25, 2007 View in Crawl 4
buelldozerJul 26, 2007
There's a joke in there somewhere...
tomatopadJul 26, 2007
Range of 8 miles is pathetic.Range of 8 miles is pathetic.Range of 8 miles is pathetic. Not even enough to get up to the grocery store and back. For $20-25,000 I'd expect something that I could actually get some use from.
monkeywafflesJul 27, 2007
lol.. accidents.. like 3 mile island?where.. sure the damn thing melted down... but that was in 1979 ;) Not the 80s.And.. nobody died, hell, nobody was even injured... More recent accidents at nuclear plants have led to the same. Check out davis besse.. had a 5' hole in the reactor head.Still.. no injuries, no deaths.So, what the f**k are you talking about?
monkeywafflesJul 27, 2007
Wow, anyone who mentions 8 mile range as mentioned gets dugg down.. It is a valid point, and burying their comments doesn't make the fact go away.So, $1/gallon for the electricity, but only an 8 mile range. So your savings, given the Prius' 50mpg rating (give or take... a lot) you are saving not a whole heck of a lot at a time, and I bet this model costs more.great for going to and from the convienient store, but not much else.
prisoner24601Jul 27, 2007
Toyota alone has already sold over a million hybrids. Fears of catastrophic battery problems have been *demonstrated* to be unwarranted. It is true that there is some limit/tradeoff to just how much larger or more powerful a battery should be and still be safe, which is why Toyota is taking "baby steps" with only an 8-mile range for this prototype. In principle, however, there's no more of a fundamental concern of Plug-In Hybrids than there is for the existing Prius.
prisoner24601Jul 27, 2007
Nickel is a metal. It will be recycled. There's NO chance that people are going to "throw away" their battery pack from a hybrid. The raw metal alone makes a used battery pack far too valuable to just throw away. That's true for all the major battery types they might use. These batteries have next to zero chance of ending up in a landfill or being otherwise released into the environment. The base materials in the pack are far too valuable.Owners will trade in their battery packs at their dealer for refurbished ones every 100,000 miles or whatever. No one will throw them away like a handful of AAA's.
ferretmanJul 28, 2007
This really is good news....I'm pleased to see it. This gives a lot of folks with their own solar- and wind-systems a chance to power that puppy completely cleanly.Get the mileage up and the price down another notch and the Prius (and similar technologies) will finally become reasonable.Ferretman
leesoongAug 3, 2008
Only the Prius roof top solar panel option can add extra recharging ''free'' solar power into the car.No solar panel = burning coal and nuclear reactors, so the Plug In Prius is only useful when combined with the Solar Panel.Most people drive to work, park, work, then go home. For the 8 to 12 hours the car is sitting in the sun - it could be ''harvesting'' some sunlight to directly recharge the Prius battery.Sunlight alone wont keep the car running all week, but every little bit of 'free energy' means using less coal/nuclear/gas power.The Solar panel Prius means saving money on fuel by capturing free energy from the sun. Every sunny day. It's a good thing!