Oil Conscious

With the price of gasoline now gathering back to a healthy and more affordable price, will our thoughts on being more fuel efficient go with the wind. Will we stop caring about being oil independent, purchasing hybrid cars, or even stop thinking about our precious environment. We as a nation have to stop and think, do we keep spending billions of dollars on petro which in turn the majority of that money goes in to the hands of countries which aid terrorist regimes, or do we become energy conscious and rid ourselves of these hate spewing leaders like Ahmedijinad and Hugo Chavez. Lets wake up America.link

Toyota to Offer Certified Used Hybrids

Toyota will become the first automaker to offer certified used hybrid vehicles under a program announced yesterday.

Though certified used cars have been a reliable choice for millions of Americans seeking an inexpensive way to get into a car under warranty, hybrids have always been excluded from the programs. Used hybrid buyers were on their own, without the backing of a manufacturer's warranty.

Toyota's program, according to Autoblog, will not cover hybrids under the same warranty program as non-hybrid cars, but instead will "reside alongside the automaker's standard certified pre-owned program." Certified used Toyota hybrid "will have passed a thorough examination with 174 individual points, 14 of which are hybrid-specific. Assuming a hybrid were to pass the inspection, it is then covered under a warranty that includes seven-year/100,000-mile limited powertrain coverage," and seven years worth of roadside assistance.

The car's batteries, however, will not be covered under that warranty. Instead, Kicking Tires explains, "Toyota hybrid batteries come with an eight-year/100,000-mile warranty," beginning with the initial purchase of the vehicle. That warranty will be now transferred along with the car -- so the battery will be covered until the car itself has been on the road for eight years or 100,000 miles.

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Fisker’s California Dreaming

By LAWRENCE ULRICH
Published: January 12, 2009

IS IT REAL? Henrik Fisker, the chief executive, said it is. The Karma S concept – or “Sunset” -- is a plug-in hybrid two-door, hardtop convertible. It’s an offshoot of the $87,900 Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid that’s scheduled to begin deliveries later this year.

WHAT THEY SAID The Cailfornia-based company founded by Fisker – the designer of such beauties as the BMW Z8 and Aston Martin Vantage – has opened an engineering center in Pontiac, Mich., to help bring the Karma and Sunset to market. Both cars will be assembled by Valmet in Finland in a plant that built the Porsche Cayman and Boxster.

WHAT THEY DIDN’T SAY Whether the company can really, truly find anything close to 15,000 buyers a year for exotic cars with a largely unknown name and unproven technology. Yet Fisker said the company has 1,300 preorders for the Karma, with 22 United States dealers lined up and 18 more in the wings. “With this car, you’re changing what luxury is, projecting a new image of who you are and what you stand for,” Mr. Fisker said.

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World automakers' global race to get green on display

Daniel Howes

Beneath the gloom weighing on the Detroit auto show, there's a global race under way and it's powered by electricity.

Today, China's BYD Auto Co. Ltd will formally unveil two gas-electric hybrids as well as its lithium iron-powered E6 electric car, which the five-year-old automaker from Shenzhen expects to make available in the finicky U.S. market within two years. How and through what distribution channel remains to be seen.

"We think electric cars are a good choice to enter the U.S.," BYD Chairman Wang Chuan-fu told me Sunday through an interpreter, "... and there will be less competition."

I wouldn't be so sure. To walk the carpet of a noticeably subdued (and more spacious) North American International Auto Show is to see a global industry opening a new competitive front as it grapples with its present and future in more profound ways than at any time in a generation. Yet if there's one word you'd be hard pressed to hear anywhere, least of all among General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., it's "surrender."
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Cities give 'green' light on parking perks for hybrid drivers

By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY
Many hybrid car owners, who often get tax credits and special use of HOV lanes, are getting another perk: parking privileges.
An increasing number of offices, hotels and others are giving drivers of hybrids free or reduced-cost parking or reserved spots closer to entrances, similar to those for the disabled or for pregnant women. They're following at least a dozen cities, which introduced such perks in 2004.

"It really encourages people to buy hybrids," says Maureen Lacey, of Boston University Medical Campus' parking office. She says the medical center's preferential first-floor parking for hybrids, begun in 2007, was so popular that in October it doubled to 100 the number of available spaces.

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