"With a pathetic 8 mile battery only range and Nimh batteries. Is Toyota serious about this?"

8 miles sounds like a good first step to me. About 60 percent of the days that I drive my car, I put less than 8 miles on the odometer. And remember. This is just their first plug in model. Maybe next year's model will get 9. The year after that will get 10.

It might have been a good first step decades ago. With current technology it is more than likely lip service. A diversion like hydrogen fuel cells.

That diversion was used to kill the eV-1.

This blog seems to be a hate blog. Lets hate GM for making a better car. Lets hate everyone for not doing what the blog master wants. Foolish. Very foolish.

I am often critical, but I always offer alternatives to what I am critiquing. Do I hate corporations that are destroying the human friendly climate of planert earth with GHG?

I hate what they are doing. I wish they would switch to investing their considerable financial resources to the more profitablwe path of renewable energy, energy conservation, organic agriculture,and plugin hybrid vehicles

It might have been a good first step decades ago. With current technology it is more than likely lip service.

Let's say I'm currently driving a nonhybrid car that gets 35 mpg. Let's assume that's what the plug-in Prius gets after it's depleted its 8 mile "only electric" range. Now let's say I drive my car 300 miles every 30 days. 60% of those days, the mileage is 8 miles or less. Let's say the average is 7. That's 126 miles running on just electricity (7 miles x 18 days). For the remaining 174 miles, 96 of those miles will be all electric (8 miles x 12 days). That leaves 78 miles where the Prius will be running on gasoline.

So I've gone from using 8.57 (300 miles % 35 mpg) gallons of gas a month, to just using 2.23 (78 miles % 35 mpg). That's a 74% reduction in gasoline consumption. That sounds like lot more than "lip service" to me.

Take a breath amzngdrx

Did you read the article and the Toyota press release?
The vehicle appears to be essentially a Prius with double sized battery and charger. The intent appears to be testing and evaluation of the concept. Consider the effects of real-world use on range and battery longevity (a real issue by the way). The expectation seems to be that battery energy densities are going to rise in the coming years. This will shrink battery size or/and increase range.
Depending on one's living situation, 8 miles range for round town can be reasonable. In my own case there are many days of <8mile usage, and nowhere is it suggested that this is the ultimate range of Toyota's final product.

- Mike

The Prius aftermarket conversion has a 40 mile range on batteries. but only under 25 mph of course.

How much of your driving is under 25 mph? 10%?

With the under powered Prius electric motor it will never be a viable plugin hybrid. Toyota could boost the power of the electric motor of course.

Why hasn't that been done? Toyota engineers surely know what needs to be done to make a plugin hybrid work.

My guess is that the US oil/ auto lobby has threatened trade restrictions on any foreign automaker that produces a viable plugin hybrid for the US market.

Toyota has wimped out under the pressure from the mighty lord cheney of halliburton. It's just that simple. It's why cheney won't release even the list of those who attended his pre-9/11 energy meeting.