Without meaning any disrespect to the workers at the Tsutsumi Manufacturing plant in Toyota City, watching them work as like watching the perfect ant farm. It’s rare to see such organisation in human activity. Although being that this is Japan (the Switzerland of the east perhaps) it wasn’t overly surprising.
What do you do when the “eco-friendly” car you’re manufacturing is actually horrible for the environment to manufacture? Re-engineer nature, obviously!
While most of the cars on show at the Tokyo Motor Show are high performance cars (this will change when it opens to the public soon), Toyota still chose to show off its Plug-In Hybrid Prius. While it’s not completely electric it’s certainly another step in the right direction in terms of moving towards full electric vehicles.
Toyota is planting giant 18-feet Solar Flowers all across major cities in the United States. It’s all a Prius marketing campaign, but as long as they give me free power and Wi-Fi, I’m game.
Sure, it was the Prius that made Hybrid engines popular, but Toyota were actually working on hybrid technology long before that. Their first hybrid engine, the Gas Turbine Hybrid, started development back in 1965. It took 12 years, but the engine eventually made it into a prototype Toyota Sports 800, which was shown off at the Tokyo Motor Show in 1977. It had a 22kW engine with a 2-speed transmission.
I’ve spent most of today with the folks at Toyota checking out their new 3rd-Gen Prius. And if you think this is just a car for hippies and smug environmentalists, you’re very wrong – this is a gadget fan’s dream.
Trust us: If there’s one time you can get away with a not-so-green lifestyle, it’s when you’re dead.
The 2010 Toyota Prius gets 21 km/litre while bringing dead trees back to life. But maybe more our speed, the car also features a really nifty “Tracer Display” unlike anything we’ve seen in dashboards before.
Toyota claims that their upcoming plug-in model Prius averages 65 mpg in real-world testing. That’s about 15 more than the 2010 Prius—the current leader in fuel efficiency.
The dashboard looks primitive, especially next to the Ford hybrid dashes that grows leaves when you hypermill. But it’s rated at 50mpg under mixed driving, and is supposed to be faster than the old model.
