If you pay 7-8 bucks for gallon of car juice, you will be forced to drive one of those.

If I were hellbent on a hybrid and only limited to the crappy Prius or crappy Insight, I’d probably to the ultimate green thing and just walk myself to death, with my last steps being toward a compost bin, in which I would lay and become one with the stench of the earth.

Wait a sec – greenies stink more in life than they do in death. Just gimme a big gas engine so I can let their biking butts become one with my front bumper.

There is the proof that another 75,000 people don’t dive cars for the driving experiance but just to work, home, and the where ever else people that own priuses go.
Me myself Iwill stick to my 556hp and enjoy every second of it.

that’s drive cars not dive cars.

Fortunately (for Toyota and Honda) and unfortunately (for enthusiast like myself), a lot of people just don’t enjoy driving. For example, my mother, a mid-50s aged woman who works 25 miles away from work in Denver, prefers to take public transportation and just drive back and forth from the train stop. If there was a away that she could drive less, less noise or less involved, she’d do it.

And there are MILLIONS of people in the same boat, especially in big metros, that rightfully see driving as a chore. I just commuted approx. 10 miles in Atlanta from work, some of the worst traffic in the US, in some of the most ridiculous humidity you’ve ever experienced. It sucks the life out of you. So, there is definitely a market for simple, fuel efficient, transportation that gets you from A to B. And once we get to plug-ins, where you can go 10-15 minutes without gas, I don’t see how anyone of these people would at least not consider buying one.

Myself on the other hand, I like to maintain some combination of WOT and sideways momentum and tire squeal when I’m driving, but in traffic and commuting with everyone else, it just isn’t possible.

And I thought the 370Z was ugly.

I’m gonna call bull$hit on that one

Looks like Toyota is more than ready to open up a can on Honda, and anybody else who wants to challenge them in hybrids
Honda’s sales crown reign will be short-lived
DrFill

Its probably good that the Japanese drive priuses, I almost got taken out by one in a CR-V today. If they had 556hp it would be chaos.

…and if youre sitting there asking yourself, I wonder if A4 supports the stereotypes about asian drivers? Yes, I do.

LMAO, A4. I shudder to think of it…

Fill you know these are numbers from Japan right? Who cares?

Stereotypes are based on fact.

Think about it.

So ugly!

Caddy V “Me myself I will stick to my 556hp and enjoy every second of it.”

Yea well I’m sure you can use all of that HP on the highways and not killyourself or get arrested for speeding. The only thing 556hp is good for is impressing weak minded individuals on this board like SJ A4 etc.
Unless you take the autobahn to work or have a private track (which you will say you have be its the internet) your hp, much like your CTS V withthe bad rear axle is USELESS!

people NEED fuel economy but DO NOT want to drive these tiny cans of death. Thats why electric cars make so much sense. My truck weighs 4300 lbs and can tow 1000 lbs of cargo for a range of 75 to 100 miles. It is speed limited at 85 MPH but gets there like a 4 banger. It is now 10 years old with no battery problems and roughly no regular mainenance. Costs 75c to charge and has ac power steering and ABS 4 wheel disc brakes. I just can’t go more than 100 miles a day.. This same drivetrain could be upsized for larger trucks and downsized for midsize passenger cars. I can’t wait for the plug in vehicles to come out. I drive approx 32 miles a day and if I had low fuel/mainenance costs, I could afford more payment/vehicle cost. I think Toyota will be the first to get the 2011 Prius plug in to market, but I want the larger car that can withstand a crash at 50MPH with a Full sized SUV. You can replace the car, but you can’t replace the driver. Competition will drive these car companies from producing Prius/Insight sized death traps to midsized/pickup classed Plug in serial Hybrids. A pickup is the perfect vehicle to make into a plug in hybrid. Most people use a pickup like a family car 80% of the time. So the engine can be a large generator for the battery pack, making the pickup like a freight train locomotive. I would pay the premium for a full sized pickup that could pull like hell and get high quiet city MPG’s. Toyota has been the leader in Hybrids, but I hope someone else like Ford who knows trucks, will build a serial plug in hybrid truck….I’m a buyer. I want to live, so the squatty, little Prius/Insight cars go to my neighbors.

I think Toyota dropped the ball on the styling here. They could have evolved the Prius into a more angular, interesting face. Instead, just as Honda releases it’s angular and more interesting Insight, they massage the front end of this thing into a lumpy, ugly little thing.

Not to say the Insight’s pretty or anything, but I’d say it’s a step above this loaf of bread that got halfway-sat on in the car on the way home from the grocery store.

Merge onto a crowded yet swiftly moving freeway from a short ramp, and it’s easy to see why 556 horsepower is desireable. In many cases, torque and horsepower can act as a safety feature.

When horsepower and torque are used unwisely and in an unbridled fashion, though…

…well, we all saw those pictures in our driver’s education courses many years ago (some more recent than many others).

Jordasche, what model EV truck do you drive? I’m interested in knowing more about it.

beatus- I totally remember those, man.

The scare tactics were intense. I swear they showed us a picture of a strawberry milkshake spilled on the road and told us it was a teenage girl.

While 99.9% of men everywhere drool over 556hp CTS-V’s, boys like 1115 jerk it to a pack of D-batteries strapped to the roof of one of those little toy cars you pull back and it scoots across the floor.

beatusmongous- Its a Ford Ranger EV pickup with NiMh batteries. Quite an amazing truck. Too bad Chevron bought the patent rights for the battery so it can’t be built until the patent runs out in 2015. They are doing ‘research” they say. I say, I have a battery that is completely recyclable, repairable not throwaway, and as duriable like no battery I have ever seen. Some of the vehicles have over 100k miles on them with the origional batteries. Chevron bought the rights to shelve them….its part of their business plan to squash any ways that may destroy their business. The US government needs to buy the patent and give it to the public so all can get on with it. The Lithium battery story is a short lived one and they know it. Lithium is in short supply, in counrties we don’t like, and NOT recyclable. This Large Format NiMh battery is the answer to battery powered cars. Toyota actually perfected the technology. The electric car is easier to build than a gas car, but the batteries are the linchpin for their success.

jdasch1- Too bad about the patent, I’ve been following that whole story and I agree that the US Gov should grab that patent, if a private company gets a hold of the patent they could lock everyone else out of using it, and that’s just not what we need.

In my research, I’ve found that lithium is recyclable. But the process is more difficult to do than the process of NiMH. But, yeah, NiMH is much more durable. Lithium lasts about 18 months, whereas NiMH can go for years with constant use. But when NiMH batteries die, they die quickly.

But these particular batteries are virtually INDESTRUCTABLE. Thats why they NEEDED the patent rights for ALL large format NiMH batteries. If these batteries were mass produced, big oil would be hurting for certain. Its all part of their business plan….squash the forces that may take them to much lower profits. Its survival for them, its a matter of national security for us. They paid like 220 million for the rights, I say pay them a billion and call it a great deal. Just 160th of what we have paid for AIG. I don’t believe in the conspiracy crap out there, just that the lobbying from big oil is sooooo powerful it makes good people like our politicians sooooo weak to act in this matter. Maybe the new President will get wind of this issue and make some phone calls. Maybe?

jdasch1- I kinda hope so. That’s some spending that people will give him a a hard time for at first though. Oh wait.. People give him a hard time when he doesn’t button his shirt right.

But if they sit tight maybe they’ll realize that it would be a sound investment.

I doubt anyone would give him a hard time for buying the patent rights for the NiMH batteries. First off, he says he’s for alternative energy, and this would be a demonstration of that view, and second, it would be another step in getting us away from foreign oil. Maybe the money saved from the hydrogen could go towards this.

However, the problem is that Chevron must be willing to sell the patent, and I really don’t think they want to. If the government forced Chevron to sell the technology, that would be just as wrong as the first bailout. In this case, I think we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. We may just have to stick it out until 2015. After all, it’s only 6 years away. I, for one, may be in a better position to buy an EV at that point.

Im holding out for the SR-5 model with fake the hood scoop.