OMG Toyota want the price of fuel to rise.

[onearmedbandit]

Additionally, by selling a bunch to those with lots of money and a statement to make, it gives them a test vehicle and funding for their electric/hybrid vehicle research. Fine by me. I wouldn't expect something as early as the Prius to be wonderful, but you've got to start somewhere.

Richard

Exactly. Toyota didn't get to where they are by not being smart.

[Shadows]

It might look like a pretty crazy statement for a representative of a car company to make when they don't even have a half decent alternative on the market yet.

But imagine what people would say if he said that after they do.

[Argyle]

When I left back home the fuel price was NZ$2.40 per liter and the VOLVOS were still going strong on the roads, known to consume allot of petrol.. Ethanol is introduced in Sweden, available in most petrol stations but it did not hit the market as good as it was hoped, due to cheap diesel engines came with environmental partical filters and got government subsidy..

On the contrary there's no big ute or v8 culture in Sweden, just too expensive to own one..

[Indiana_Jones]

Toyota want the price of fuel to rise so they can sell us more cheap to run cars.Drop dead Toyota....
Mr Alistair Davis wants family's to suffer so he can up his market share....

I miss BMC

-Indy

[spacemonkey]

I don't... at least Toyota's engineers can build a car with at least some degree of reliability and crash safety!

[Indiana_Jones]

I don't... at least Toyota's engineers can build a car with at least some degree of reliability and crash safety!

My Landcrab always started after I replaced her tired old battery, granted she liked to drip a little oil.

I'd like a Princess when I think about it, such a cool car

-Indy

[onearmedbandit]

It might look like a pretty crazy statement for a representative of a car company to make when they don't even have a half decent alternative on the market yet.

But imagine what people would say if he said that after they do.

He wasn't referring to hybrids in the article though, rather smaller displacement more fuel economic vehicles. Which Toyota have plenty of.

[Indiana_Jones]

Let's save the planet!



-Indy

[davereid]

Tata Motors has the compressed air car for you(google it, it's like $5000 for a brand new, full size car that runs on air, crap range but goes 100) Would be faster to fill than an electric car too(unless it's the hyper compressed air that diving tanks need, in which case it's expensive and far to fill up)

The problem with compressed air engines is the same as the Chevy Volts main problem.

Which is, that it is not using a primary energy source, it is rather storing and using energy created somewhere else.

So for your chevy volt to be charged, a power station was required.

Exactly the same for your compressed air car. A power station makes electricity, which runs the compressor at the filling station which fills the compressed air tank up.

Except that Boyles law tells us that compressing the air will create heat. Thats energy lost, that we had to provide from the power station.

So all these technologies are useless unless you have plentiful and green electricity. At the moment the world does not.

[spacemonkey]

I disagree with you on that one, national grid scale electrical generation used even at it's worst is still vastly more efficient than the average internal combustion engine in power to emissions ratio, so much so that your still better off with the air or electric cars.

[Banditbandit]

I don't... at least Toyota's engineers can build a car with at least some degree of reliability and crash safety!

Yeah .. what he said. I spent many ights in the 1970s keeping BMC cars on the road ... never want to do that again ...

[Banditbandit]

I'd like a Princess when I think about it, such a cool car

-Indy

The 1940s to 1960s Princess ? Yeah that was cool ...

The upgraded 1800 in the late 1970s ? A typical piece of British vehicle junk ... one of the reasons the industry collapsed ...

[mashman]

From what i've seen, NZ has seasonal shortages of electricity anyway, especially in the winter. I can see the addition of a few thousand electric cars really taking the strain off the grid

[spacemonkey]

More seasonal media panic/media hype than a shortage IMO

[Swoop]

From what i've seen, NZ has seasonal shortages of electricity anyway, especially in the winter. I can see the addition of a few thousand electric cars really taking the strain off the grid

Like a few years back when the South Island hydro lakes were extremely low.
They'll just start up the coal fired power stations again.
Electric cars powered by coal...