Last month I reported on some Car & Driver spy photos that indicated Honda would be building a hybrid-only car that looked almost exactly like the Prius. Today, Honda confirmed that those spy photos were genuine — and that their designers don’t have any creativity.

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Car and Driver

Although we can’t reproduce the photos here due to copyright issues, suffice it to say that the Honda test model looks almost exactly like a Prius. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery — but in this case Honda appears to have crossed the line to outright copycat.

With the exception of the headlight and taillight shapes, the Honda is a carbon copy.

I mean really, I’d expect the Honda designers to have a bit more creativity.

Check out the original Car and Driver article and pictures.

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]]> http://gas2.org/2008/07/23/late-to-the-high-gas-price-party-honda-building-prius-clone/feed/ http://gas2.org/2008/07/07/toyota-prius-to-get-solar-power/ http://gas2.org/2008/07/07/toyota-prius-to-get-solar-power/#comments Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:29:27 +0000 Nick Chambers http://gas2.org/2008/07/07/toyota-prius-to-get-solar-power/ Toyota’s next generation Prius, due out as early as next spring, will be outfitted with solar panels to help run the on-board electronics, according to a report from the Nikkei newspaper.

Smaller start-up car companies, such as Th!nk, have plans for solar power augmented cars on the books too, but the incorporation of solar panels on the Prius would mark the first time a major car manufacturer has done such a thing with one of its models.

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A team at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have revealed a potential revolution in hydrogen cars, after driving 650 miles on one tank of liquid hydrogen. In a recent test, the scientists set a new world record after they installed a super-insulated hydrogen gas tank in a standard Prius hybrid that was able to keep a full load of the liquid without evaporating for six days.

The tank, weighing in at around 300 pounds, removes a heck of a lot of obstacles to the advancement of hydrogen-powered cars. Current versions, such as the fleet of hydrogen-electric Toyota Prius’s used by various city governments across Southern California, run on compressed hydrogen gas, and have a limited range of around 80 miles between refuels. Even a pretty unambitious three-gallon tank fills the entire trunk of a Prius, yet still only enables a range of approximately 200 miles, not really enough to compete with gasoline-only vehicles.

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Not only that, their top ten list for new car searches (see below) now contains mostly fuel-sippers including the Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic Hybrid, Toyota Yaris and Honda Fit.

The Prius first appeared in the top 10 most searched vehicles list last summer.

Patrick Olsen, Cars.com editor in chief, had this to say about it:

“It’s not surprising that the Prius became the No. 1 most searched vehicle on Cars.com at the same time gas reached a $4 national average. Surveys have shown $4 to be the tipping point in consumer purchase behavior, and we are seeing that ring true in shopping patterns on Cars.com.”

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Toyota Prius sales have topped 1 million and dealers in most markets simply can’t keep them on the shelves. Toyota says domestic inventory is limited by production capacity in Japan, which is shared by the Asian and European markets. The U.S. supply is at its lowest level in two years (Wired).

Imagine a high-speed train that could get you from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two hours forty minutes. Well, that dream is now one step closer to reality as the California High Speed Rail Authority has cleared environmental impact assessments and is beginning construction of what will be the most substantial high-speed rail network in the U.S. But don’t make travel arrangements just yet. The project is not scheduled to be completed until 2030 (gas 2.0).

A joint biofuel effort was announced Thursday involving Air Bus, JetBlue, Honeywell, and Aero Engines that plans to study ways to make commercial aviation fuels out of second-generation feedstocks such as algae (Green Tech Blog).

A new wave of nuclear power plants in the U.S. is likely to cost $5 billion to $12 billion a plant, two to four times previous estimates, driving up electricity bills for consumers and inevitably reigniting public concerns about the costs and benefits of nuclear power (The Wall St. Journal).

Photo credits:

Karl Gunnarrsson via flickr Creative Commons License

compicpie via flickr Creative Commons License

Bistrosavage via flickr Creative Comons License

Greeks are not to be considered as the most environmental conscious citizens of this planet but rules are made to be broken. Over the last couple of months more and more environmental friendly, or green if you will, commercials air on Greek radio stations. Greeks are now bombarded with commercials about new hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius and the Honda Civic, but if you thought that was it, you were wrong.

There are commercials evangelizing detergent’s and packaging superiority for products like SKIP and bottled water Korpi. According to a commercial, lowering the laundry’s temperature to 30C not only saves energy but also keeps clothes clean because of SKIP’s ability to dilute in cold water. Bottled water Korpi commercial claims that due to bottle redesign, the company managed to reduced plastic usage by 10% per bottle, a fact that enabled the company to sell 6 million less bottles, according to Korpi’s annual sales figures.

Whether such claims are hyped or not, is left to be seen. What really matters is that companies and marketing specialists realize and see the critical mass of eco-friendly Greeks out there.