PriusChat

My niece, my sis and I all have the 2008 Prius and have loved them (mine has 110,000 miles). However, my niece's spontaneously caught fire in her driveway and she hadn't been driving it for over 8 hrs. It was totaled by the fire and the neighbor has a video that shows it was concentrated in the hood area, so possibly electrical or engine related. She notified Toyota and after a month of the melted car left in her driveway, they came to inspect and said cause was "undetermined" and they took no responsibility for it. She wasn't asking for anything but did want the car replaced because she had not intended to buy a new car for many years. My family has had Toyotas for years, and we have 2-Rav's, 2 Sequoia's, a Highlander and a Prius now. We are loyal Toyota owners. We were very disappointed in how they handled this situation.
Anyone else have this kind of response from them or any other fire issues? I remember the Ford fire issue and how they recalled all of them and probably...

Super Electric Car test in 2004: Eliica - Super Electric Car - Part 4 of 6 - YouTube

Latest prototype with right/left/review cameras!

SIM-Drive, SIM-WIL EV boasts 218-mile range
351-km (218-mile) range
1580 kg (3483 pounds).
Top speed 180 km/h (112 mph),
0-100 km/h acceleration 5.4 seconds.
Li-ion battery capacity 35.1 kWh, with a 3-hour charge time.
Seats: 5
Drive System: outer rotor direct drive in-wheel motor
Drive: 4WD
Driving energy consumption（in JC08 mode): 99.7Wh/km...

I wanted to know if HOV access was "driving" Prius sales in Northern Virginia (NoVA).

To find out, we recorded the following data for any Prius we saw in NoVA during the last two months: (a) first 3 digits of license plate, (b) Prius type 1,2,3,c,v, and (c) HOV access as regulated by Clean Fuels license plates - three versions, logo on the left, right , middle . We deleted duplicate entries, and ended up with 122 Prii on our data base.

Survey Results:
122 Prii total
4 Gen1's and 100% with HOV access (all CF logo on left - best free HOV access)
61 Gen2's and 44% with HOV access (40% CF logo on left; 60% logo on right)
51 Gen3's and 21% with HOV acesss (~40% CF logo on left; 60% logo on right)
5 Prius v's and one with HOV
1 Prius c no HOV
0 We saw no Prii with newer Clean Fuels (logo in middle= lousy HOV access)

Conclusions
Bottom line is newer Prii are not getting good HOV access, but older Prii get great...

Sounds promising !

BMW Unveils 2014 535d Sedan and Redesigned 5 Series

So Saturday afternoon, my wife and I are watching Smithsonian channel and found out about:
Source: Flying gyrocopter jump-jeep gets $3m from DARPA • The Register

Just the thing for wolf hunting in Alaska or dealing with DC...