If that were Ford, they would have released the car anyways and then done a cost-benefit analysis on recalling them regardless of the deaths incurred.

If this were an announcement from GM, most of you would be making comments like “F’in loosers can’t get anything right”.

So step up and make the comments about Toyota, if you have any credibility at all.

Toyota knows which batteries they could use, but they like all car makers don’t really want to have batteries in a car at all. No one wants to go out on a limb for Lithium. NiMh chemistry is the safest, most robust battery structure out there for automobiles. The problem is that Chevron…yes an oil company…owns the rights to the large format NiMh batteries and they have no reason to let the general public have them. If you put 8 of these large format batteries in a Prius, it could go 30 miles on electric power only. This would result in a combined MPG in the Prius of over 100MPG! Wont happen anytime soon until the government steps in and makes these products safe from patent stealing and shelving. I don’t buy Chevron gas because of this crap. Make billions of dollars from oil, buy technology patents and never let them out. This is what they are doing with our money at the pump!

Deanster: I think Toyota HAS done their cost-benefit analysis homework. 200,000 Priuses sold a year * (a ballpark estimate of) $5000 to replace batteries + $2 billion lawsuit (see rollover Explorer debacle) = not worth it to crank out explosive Li-Ion batteries.

Any illusion that Toyota cares about you, or the environment, or society in general is pure hogwash.

I’ll step up, it takes guts for them to announce that the technology is still too immature for real usage in automotive. There!

jdasch1, not to mention that Chevron doesn’t pay their suppliers too well.

This is BS you know damn well those batteries are not going to explode. Oil companies have their sticky fingers in this I can smell it. Most likely to do with the Chevron Patent as jdash1 has said.

I really think Prius sales will plummet when the Volt comes out. After the market settles down, I think I am gonna buy some GM stock.

04Focus, your point being?

i agree with ford sucks, i deff plan on getting some gm stock when the market settles. The volt will be a crowd pleaser and gm has deff stepped up its own game and is going to make things better. I dont like toyota but im glad they are successful, its makin gm step up thier game and will back on top. A year or 5, who knows but they come to win. No american wants to lose. And if your american and reading this……you know what i mean.

Alright everyone! Let’s go buy some GM stocks. Hell, they’re making boat loads of $$$ in China.
Seriously, isn’t the new Tesla electric supercar using Lithium-Ion batteries?

according to gm sales toyota`s just randomly explode in the streets.

Ford_Sucks – Of course Prius sales are gonna go down when the Volt comes away. By how I understood this article, it seems that we will have the current Prius hover around us with its NiMH, EV-1 style technology for another 4 years. This could really blow in Toyota’s face unless for the next 4 years they take the Tundra, Land Cruiser, Yaris, and whatever car that they can get their hands on and make it into a hybrid for the PR.

Also, I would buy GM stock now while its still relatively low priced before GM starts to rise again and their stock price rise with them.

And yes odie, Tesla will be Lithiom-Ion – its one of the most advanced batteries available right now.

CTS driver: that was funny.

I’m never buying another toyota, but the Prius wos one of my favorites.

Commodore: you’ve got the right idea on buying GM shares. I’d set up a plan that pickes up the same amount (in dollars) of shares all the time.

The Volt is a winner, if it’s fast enough and you can drive it a good destance between charges

Plus the Prius is unreliable and full of electrical gremlins. I know, I get them as trades all the time. People cannot wait to get rid of them and get in to a superior GM car. Can’t wait till the Volt comes out, we’ll need to expand our parking lot just to accomodate all the buyers tradeins.

GM sales: I think the Volt will be a low-volume seller. After a while, when the price goes down and there are “current owners” to share their experiences in the cars, it’ll get hot

Again Veda my friend you are so drunk on Toyonda juice its ridiculous. I agree with Deanster and bcjohnso99 if this article was GM saying the same thing people would just talk xxxx and say how GM doenst have their act together and yadda yaddya yadda…..and GM_SALES I also agree the Volt is going to be an awesome car. You know why because GM can do something that Toyonda can’t..and that is build a car the consumers WANT to drive/own/be seen in that just HAPPENS to be very fuel efficient. Not like toyondas approach of “to hell with the styling lets just slap some Hybrid logos on it and watch the uneducated masses (or asses in my opinion) just roll in.” Toyota is full of lies and “electric gremlins” right GM_SALES?? hilarious & pure comedy.

jack, i didnt like hybrids due to styling they were all barftastic, but the volt looks pretty darn spiffy, if it all works out well it will be a nice little commuter car for that whopping 16 miles a day i drive to and from work.

I’m going 35 one-way, in a big Olds (wife doesn’t drive)

MOVING FORWARD AND NOT BACKWARD…..AH AHHHH!!

I guess you folks struck a nerve….

I’m definitely drunk on Toyota juice. Having grown up in Dearborn MI, father spent 35 years working at GM, brother as long on Chrysler assembly line, I have Detroit’s mentality embedded in my nerves. Detroit will never surpass Toyonda because Detroit doesn’t understand or care why people buy cars. It’s still stuck in Henry Ford’s “You can have any color as long as it’s black” mode, that people will buy what Detroit builds because it built it. That’s called arrogance.

It expects its versions of sexy design and features to sell, and that people don’t notice that time, expense and inconvenience of repairs set American vehicles apart from those putting them under. It thinks in quarterly earnings and thinks car owners look just as far ahead. It hasn’t figured out that Consumer Reports actually reflects consumer values.

The Big Three (Big Two, now, I guess) could be profitable in a half dozen years if they decided to compete aggressively, long term, for the red dots in Consumer Reports’ April reliability table. Check it out for yourself: The red-dot car manufacturers (notably Toyota and Honda) lead sales year after year; the black-dot car builders lead losses year after year. It started with the Volkswagen Beetle and micro-bus in the 1960’s – reputed to go forever if you adjusted the valves religiously – and hasn’t changed since.

I buy a Honda or Toyota confident it will need little or no repair beyond regular servicing for a quarter-million miles. (Our ‘85 Accord was at 23,000 mi. and counting with one replaced alternator when someone made us an offer we couldn’t refuse on our Prius.) I expect our Prius to go that long, including the battery. And it won’t use the Li-ion battery until it can perform as reliably as long. Good for them!

And if the nation needs automotive improvements so badly that the government steps in to force the builders to provide them, Detroit throws all its resources to lawyers and lobbyists to fight it instead of doing society a favor and actually solving the problem. GM and/or Ford could have made a serious commitment to make electric cars work; instead they refused to improve or promote them, leaving them to twist in the wind before crushing virtually every electric car they built. And someone already reported Chevron got the battery patent and buried it.

Therefore I won’t buy stock in GM or buy a GM product because, even if it builds a superior technology, it will come in an unreliable package that will break down at an inconvenient time (every breakdown is inconvenient) and cost me up the wazoo to fix. Toyondas cost up the wazoo to fix, too, but it happens only a fraction as often. When GM starts routinely collecting those little red dots, I’ll definitely buy American and salute when I do it, because I’ll know Detroit finally is on my side.