Wired reports that Honda will unveil a new dedicated hybrid today that hits the 60 mpg mark and sell for $19,000.
While hybrids have tended to go upscale in price and equipment or relegated to high end SUV's, this market niche has more of a global vision aimed at neutralizing a price difference between a hybrid and traditional gas powered car.
Look for the car to go on sale next Spring.
A new large four, Toyota's most powerful four. I can't tell if this engine is destined for this country but it's an interesting development for a large SUV where bigger is usually considered better. Toyota will switch production at its new Mississippi plant to the Prius from its Highlander SUV.
The 2009 all-new Highlander will be equipped with either a 3.5L V6 or a 3.3L hybrid powerplant. Toyota is expanding the Highlander's powertrain line-up for 2009 by adding a more fuel efficient 2.7L four-cylinder engine. The new engine produces 187 horsepower at 5,800 RPM and 186 lb-ft at 4,100 RPM, making it the most powerful four cylinder engine in Toyota's line-up.The new 2.7L engine comes with a 6sp automatic transmission. Toyota has not released the fuel econ figures as yet, these figures will be announced closer to the January 2009 launch date. The Highlander was first launched in 2001. The Japanese deportee version is called the Klugger. jamaica-gleaner.com
J R writes greenmesh:
When looking for hybrid mileage information, ask what MPG is in Winter. My 3 year old (Toyota) Highlander gets 28-30 in Summer, but drops to 21-23 in Winter because the gas engine must run more often to provide heat for passengers. It was better the first Winter but refineries were forced to change additives and that made MPG worse.
The new federal mileage stickers (in effect after this vehicle was purchased) are a more realistic assessment of hybrid mileage. Everyone knew a Toyota Prius didn't get 60 mpg, but that was the law and the number was legal and every other manufacturer used the same standardized testing.
Ethanol reduces mileage. I have given up trying to fill up with pure gasoline because that option just doesn't seem to exist in the York area anymore. Every pump seems to sport the 10% mix with sayings like "enriched with ethanol" and pictures of corn stalks.
Corn based ethanol is a counterproductive alternative form of energy helping to increase food prices and lowering the national fleet fuel efficiency. Compared to gasoline and diesel, the gas mileage in ethanol is the least. Ethanol yields about 30% less gas mileage than gasoline. The stuff even takes more energy to produce from field to consumer than it is worth. Ask our politicians why they love it so much.
My neighbor Chuck says his Chevy pickup with a 6 liter V-8 gets 11 mpg whether he runs it hard or takes it easy. It's basically a simple, large displacement energy converter that doesn't strain or change it's operating function to adjust for load.
Hybrids use several tools to squeeze mileage out of a gallon of gas so mileage can vary widely.
Finish reading 'Hybrid mileage variations' »I was thinking about this while lying under my
motorcycle doing the 6000 miles service.
Being green around the year 2000 meant driving a tiny hybrid Honda Insight with a "Save the whales" bumper sticker plastered between those funky rear fender skirts. These lone conservers were few and far between navigating a sea of SUV's, consuming 5 times the fuel, labeling them liberals.
I have never understood the label liberal because it's often applied to one who chooses to conserve resources (or reduces profit?); which would be conserve-ative..? It's one of those strange spins of economic-politics, like having a trade embargo with Communist Cuba for 40 years when Communist China has become our dominant trade partner and labor force.
The innovative minds of yesterday that invented (and capitalized on) modern convenience, today capitalize on those inventions and innovate new layers of surcharge and ownership, adding layers upon layers of costs to consumers.
Green today means more about marketing than solution. Under the complicated layers of production of products and energy delivery, consumers have realized that they need to take steps to simplify and extract value out of everything that empowers their existence, but are left with more green static than tools to fix problems.
Capitalism is this wonderful/horrible thing where opportunity seems unlimited yet the long-term prognosis screams metastasized cancer without a moral thread sewing the futures of consumers together.
CEOs have replaced feudal lords. It's questionable which leader has a greater motivation to support their underclass.
I ran across this interesting, ranting article from a South Africa paper, How hybrid cars cause hunger thetimes.co.za The hybrid part doesn't make sense, but the historical perspective is fascinating.
The author relates modern agribusiness selling food stock to the highest bidder (corn for ethanol) to the emergence of apartheid where black people were forcibly removed from fertile farming land, relocated to unproductive land and forced to work on big commercial farms as underpaid laborers..
Patel points out that in the 2000 years before the British arrived in India, famines occurred once every 120 years. After the British imposed the market on India's agricultural production, famines occurred every four years.Finish reading 'Moral greening of capitalism' »Despite the shortcomings of feudalism prior to the arrival of the British, India's landowners fed peasants when harvests were bad. For millennia, a moral economy prevailed, which ensured that nobody starved.
Killing off the guzzlers
The 51-year-old Michigan Truck Plant, located in Wayne, Mich., will start building the Focus in November when it kicks equipment now used to build the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator SUV to it's Kentucky plant. A third shift will be created to boost production of the Ford Focus.
Ford's Cuautitlan Assembly Plant, located in Mexico, is to begin building a Fiesta subcompact car in 2010. The plant currently produces the F-Series pickup trucks. The Louisville Assembly Plant, located in Kentucky, also will begin producing a new small car in 2011. It is now home to the Ford Explorer.
wsj.com
( Paul Kuehnel - York Daily Record / Sunday News )
The freshman transition program at Susquehannock High School aims to alleviate some of the fear related to high school. Visit students on their first day.
The idea is that eating some foods, like meat, uses more fossil fuel than driving a car, so a bicyclist consuming food uses more fossil fuel than driving a car. bicycleuniverse.info
I don't know where a sedentary person who gorges on meat and drives a full-sized SUV fits into all of this...
I was riding my bike through Harpers Ferry, West Virginia today with a friend and stopped at the site of an old textile plant.
Everyone is familiar with 19th century water wheels powering small grain mills, but what was interesting about this pre-1850 installation was that they used four efficient turbines (see picture below) to drive an entire factory through mechanical transfer.
Water was gradually constricted by narrowing water tunnels, condensing the volume of water creating more power. Think of your finger squeezing over an open garden hose.
It was said that the factory could make fabric cheaper than mills in Baltimore.
Free power harnessed by American innovation 150 years ago ran an entire factory.
No worries about a 30% increase in the cost of natural gas. No hostile foreign governments to feed with our dollars. No commodity speculators to profit by escalation of price brought on by an energy monopoly strangling the economy. No competing for oil with India and China.
Free domestic power by harnessing the flow of nature.
Tunnels that brought water to the mill.
( Paul Kuehnel - York Daily Record / Sunday News )
A random visit to Morgan E. Cousler Park with two Hula-Hoops. Park visitors try their hula and talk about their memories.
I was mowing with my electric lawn mower last night past my neighbor's full-sized Chevy pickup that now sits there for weeks at a time getting dirt circles under the tires. Chuck actually put stabilizer in the vehicle that gets 11mpg because it rarely gets used.
The cheap plug-in electric mower I purchased at the beginning of the summer is great.
Some handle hardware kept falling apart, but that was fixed with some lock washers for $2. It's quiet, doesn't stink when it runs, requires no maintenance and I haven't bought a drop of gasoline for a mower since.
The scooter that replaced the truck for commuting two months ago now has over 1000 miles on it.
Chuck's co-workers asked him if we was going to keep using it now that gasoline has dropped more than 50 cents a gallon. His reply, "No, now it just costs me $3.50 cents to fill the tank instead of $4." He often marvels at how much more money he has in his pocket now that it isn't getting burned up on gasoline to push around a huge metal box.
So as the summer comes to a close and gas prices decline because of a reduction in demand, the question is will people go back to consuming as it becomes more affordable.
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