The Prius was a very clever mass marketing plan to educate mainstream car buyers, grooming them into Toyota’s next phase of its evolutionary phase, and that is to roll out a number of full EV cars, helped greatly by the best minds in the USA/UK, that made the TESLA a reality. Now that they have one of the biggest car makers on Earth backing them, we will all benefit from that marriage.

Imagine all that instant torque, sub 6 second 0-100kph times as a standard feature on all electric cars, with 450km ( or much more ) range from a 45 minute charge or a 40 second battery swap at a battery station !

This is the future, people ! Embrace the many benefits, Toyota just sweetened the whole deal, via mixing an electric motor, with a consumer familiar e petrolngined car, so it was easiest to digest. I think it was a bloody brilliant exercise, as EV cars would not be where they are right now, if it were not for Toyota and to a lesser extent, GM.

We wont be driving inferior/inefficient NEW petrol cars off the showroom floor in 20-30 years time…..FINALLY !

ZPM plans to bring a six-seater air powered car to the US market after competing in the Automotive X Prize race in September 2009. The X Prize offers a US$10 million prize to a marketable vehicle that exceeds a fuel economy of 2.3 litres per 100 kilometres.

The ZPM car runs on compressed air only when travelling under 55 kilometres per hour. At higher speeds, the car burns fuel to warm up the air, expanding it and allowing the vehicle to travel on less air per kilometre. Some of the expanded air also goes back to the air tank, recharging the compressed air supply.

This system can operate at close to 2 litres per 100 kilometres, Vencat says. With a 30 or 38litre fuel tank, the cars should have a range of 1,300 to 1,600 kilometres.

The motor can also be plugged in and operated as a compressor to refill the air tank.

Vencat expects that fuelling stations will arise as the car gains popularity.

“The good thing is you could put a compressed air station on campuses, in malls,” he says. “You don’t have the security situation that you do with gasoline.”

ZPM plans to start a plant to manufacture the cars by late 2010 or early 2011

The only thing Toyota and Honda have achieved is to lull gullible greenie communist hippies in particular, and the rest of the motoring public in general, into thinking driving a Prius or Insight is somehow saving the planet and making whales happy. In between feeling superior and looking down their noses they stand at their local Mobil, BP or Shell, just like you and I, and merrily pump evil fossil fuels into their “green alternative energy earth saving machines” then go driving off happily pumping CO2 into the atmosphere just like everyone else.

Hybrid technology simply allows everyone to continue using oil, but now we can all feel good about it cos the motor switches off at the red traffic light.

The oil companies convinced GM to not only discontinue their all electric car, the EV1, but to destroy it. Every example was crushed. The oil companies then bought various battery patents to prevent their use in electric cars.

Tesla may or may not survive, but look at what they have achieved with their all electric Roadster, and with a tiny tiny non existant R&D budget compared to Toyota’s.

So Hybrid’s are a dangerous distraction. There is no dispute that electricity is here to stay. So if Toyota and Honda and others committed their vast resources to developing all electric cars, the few short comings of the Tesla would be overcome very quickly indeed. Tesla have shown that the technology works, and that it exists today, and we could be building thousands of Zero Emission Vehicles to replace cars like Prius.

The fact that Toyota and Honda are condemning us all to another 15 or 20 years of oil burning hybrids with their pollutants and CO2 emissions is at best criminal, at worst insane.

How much does the average household spend on electricity and petrol/diesel/LPG for their cars annually?

What if you came home and “plugged” your car in from the (government subsidised) solar panels on your roof?

What if instead of paying out money for fuel and electricity you are now “plugging” in your car and filling it up from the solar panels on your roof, and then RECEIVING money for putting power back into the grid…

No wonder the oil companies crushed the EV1.

Sadly, most of these posts canning the Prius are justified. It is rubbish cleverly disguised in marketing hype.

All hybrids allow the manufacturer’s to maintain the status quo whilst actually doing very little to advance green technologies.

Look at what Tesla have achieved with their Roadster, with a minute budget a mere fraction of Toyota’s.

8 out of 10 Prius are fleet purchases, Govt and Business – source VFACTS media report circa mid 2007.
But lets get right to the most recent data, 281/385 are fleet – VFACTS June 2008, thats 73% fleet. And with almost no other Hybrid being bought by fleets, Ptrius fleet percentages are higher.

And BTW June private passenger hybrid sales DOWN 27%, private passenger diesel sales UP 24%
June fleet passenger diesel sales UP 111%