Gas 2.0

Just how popular is the Prius? If you ask Jim Lentz, President of Toyota’s U.S. arm, it is so popular that it could soon sell even more units than Toyota’s perennial best seller, the Camry. Are hybrid cars really that popular?

To date, Toyota has sold two Camrys for every one Prius, but with over a million of the peppy little hybrids sold, and sales growing stronger every year, the Prius may soon join the Camry on the podium of top sellers.

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I’ve always found most body kits to be silly. Side skirts, fender flares, and front splitters usually do little more than add weight and make a slow car look like it’s trying too hard to go fast. But every now and then a good, clean body kit can improve the appearance of a car, and if done right, even improve its aerodynamic properties.

Hybrids seem to be especially popular to make body kits for recently, with both the Toyota Prius and Ford Fusion Hybrid receiving different takes on body enhancements. Toyota is taking the game a step further with its Aerius body kit which offers subtle improvements to the exterior without negatively affecting the drag coefficient.

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A lot can be said about Toyota’s hybrid flagship, the Prius. Heck, a lot already has been said about the odd, egg-shaped, fuel sipping little car. Love it or hate it, the Prius has been a sales success story, selling more units than all other hybrids combined while creating a cult of hypermilers and green geeks.

Looking to cash in on the success of the Prius, Toyota is reportedly planning to launch an entire line of Prius automobiles, perhaps even as its own sub-brand. The first contender for a new Prius badge is likely to be either a wagon or SUV, directly addressing the whole lack of cargo room on past Prius models.

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I am extremely vocal on the topic of electric cars, especially when it comes to their performance potential. Instant torque is very, very fun—to say the least—and makes a lot more sense on the racing circuit than internal combustion engines (at least in short bursts). Makers of high-end exotics are starting to pick up on this trend, though Ferrari is (as far as I know) the first supercar maker to confirm it will be adding and electric-hybrid to its lineup.

Of course, they claim this is to improve handling and not fuel efficiency. But hey, I’ll take what I can get from the prancing horse.

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There was a time not too long ago that you couldn’t have paid me to buy another new American automobile. Don’t take that statement that wrong way; it wasn’t for lack of trying. I love the lines of the true classics like the ‘57 Chevy or the ‘65 GTO. But somewhere in the last few decades, the American manufacturers seemed to just give up on making a good product—and I went through several modern American pieces of junk before I gave up trying too.

Yet in the last two years there is one major American manufacturer, who, above all others, seems to have come out the other end of a dark tunnel with a clear vision for its future and a line-up of solid, well-designed cars on which to build—Ford.

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As an undergrad in college, I had the privilege of twice attending the annual Specialty Equipment Manufacturers Association (SEMA) Show in Las Vegas. SEMA is mostly known for wild, outlandish, and powerful versions of street cars; it isn’t the kind of place you go to find people discussing fuel efficiency and hybrids.

But 2009 is a year of reckoning and big changes are afoot in the auto industry. One sign of the times: M&J Enterprises has brought to this year’s SEMA a Ford Fusion Hybrid equipped with an aero body kit to reduce drag.

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Touring bands are notorious for their environmental footprints, but more and more the bands and their fans are taking steps to make the activity less damaging.

When it comes to music, the Beatles—fueled by my parents’ large collection of vinyl—dominated most of my early life. The White Album is like my musical comfort food; it’s what I go back to when I need to feel rooted. But in terms of the music that has influenced and shaped much of my adult life, there is no band more important than Phish.

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Yamaha didn’t pull any punches at last week’s 2009 Tokyo AutoMotoShow, bringing no less than five (5!) innovative new eco-conscious motorcycle concepts to a predominantly car-centric show in a bid to monopolize 2-wheeled press coverage and establish Yamaha as the leader in 2-wheeled hybrid technology.

Did it work? Maybe!

More about the seemingly production-ready HV-X hybrid concept—including video—after the jump…

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According to CEO Carlos Ghosn, unlike its other Japanese rivals, Nissan has made a strategic decision to cede the standalone hybrid wars to them and will not make hybrid-only models such as Toyota’s Prius or Honda’s Insight.

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Subaru’s AWD Hybrid Concept Car

Based on comments made at the Tokyo Motor Show by Ikuo Mori, president of Fuji Heavy Industries (the company that makes Subarus), Subaru is well on their way to releasing their first gasoline-electric hybrid in 2012.

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I don’t normally get excited about hybrids. They’re pretty humdrum if you ask me, and I was into performance vehicles way before I was into alternative fuels. The Prius is boring, the Fusion is just a Fusion, and the Insight and downright ugly.

But Honda seems to have been listening, having announced that the aggressively styled CR-Z concept hatch will make it into production as a 2011 model for Japan and America. This is a hybrid car I could actually see myself driving.

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Chrysler is arguably in the toughest shape of the Big Three Detroit automakers, both financially and with its future lineup. You can point plenty of fingers at reasons why, including the lack of effective, fuel efficient vehicles, but Chrysler was once considered the most innovative of the big three, always thinking big while breaking the bank.

One little-known car from the annals of the Auburn Hills automaker is the Patriot, a purpose built hybrid electric race car that was to use turbines and natural gas to achieve purported speeds of 200 mph.

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The American hybrid landscape is shifting under our feet.

With the perceptible movement of a slow landslide, Ford hybrid sales have been dramatically increasing over the last year—sales in September were up 73% from last September. According to Automotive News (subs. req’d), this brings Ford within a few thousand units of overtaking Honda to become the second largest seller of hybrids in America.

These numbers are significant because, according to Ford hybrid marketing manager David Finnegan, “More than 60 percent of Fusion Hybrid sales have been from non-Ford owners, and more than half of those are customers coming from import brands, mostly from Toyota and Honda.”

Confirming Finnegan’s assessment, the established hybrid juggernaut, Toyota, has seen sales of its hybrids plummet 28% in the same time period. Toyota still blows all the hybrid competition out of the water—capturing nearly 66% of all US hybrid sales—but the speed with which the changes are taking place certainly bodes well for a healthy and competitive hybrid marketplace in the future.

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BMW’s Simple concept–which kinda looks like a Stealth Bomber with training wheels–is a hybrid trike that gets around 120 mpg.

The Simple (which stands for Sustainable and Innovative Mobility Product for Low Energy consumption) does 60 mph in just under ten seconds and has a top speed of 125 mph. The car weighs just over 900 lbs and has a super low drag coefficient of 0.18. Read the rest of this entry »

This one really made me giggle.

Tuning powerhouse Tommy Kaira has given the third generation Toyota Prius an aggressive makeover that is purely cosmetic.

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