I usually don't dabble in celebrity news because, frankly, there's so much of it when it comes to the Prius. But when I saw that Demi Moore had gotten a 2010 Prius for her birthday, I decided to post it for a couple of reasons:

As a South Carolina football fan and hater of all things Tennessee orange and white, this story is just too good to pass up commenting on. Earlier this week 3 Tennessee football players were arrested in connection to an attempted armed robbery. The details of the attempted robbery don't really matter to Prius enthusiasts, save one: their getaway car was a 2010 Toyota Prius.

My guess is that they were hoping to use the EV mode to evade the cops.

Have you ever bought a new car and had trouble sleeping the first night? It's kind of a surreal story, but PriusChat forum user R2Pre2 shared the details of her first 24 hours of Prius ownership: She bought her new 2010 Prius, brought it home, had it stolen by thieves, and then retrieved by the police thanks to the Safety Connect feature installed in her package V Prius.

Jason Emery over on FireEngineering.com put together a very thorough and interesting article on how to prepare the 2010 Prius for vehicle extrication in the unfortunate event that it may be needed. This isn't a "OMG! Don't touch a hybrid because you WILL DIE!" kind of article. In fact, it's totally the opposite.

The article takes an in-depth look at how to make the Prius as safe as possible while responding to an emergency situation. It even goes into how to remove the roof off of a 2010 Prius with a solar panel.

With winter approaching and Toyota having put a "stop sale" on all Prius OEM all-weather mats, we're all going to be looking for some high-quality, well made rubber mats to keep the mud, slush and snow from ruining our Prius' carpet.

I was catching up on some DVR'd TV programs last night and noticed on The Office that Ed Helms' character, Andy upgraded from his Gen 2 Prius to a spankin' new 2010 Gen 3. Those of you who watch the show regularly know that Andy's 2nd Gen Prius was somewhat of an extension of Andy's character and has played a prominent role in a few scenes.

There are still no hard details on the Plug-In (PHEV) Prius, but we at least finally have a picture of what it'll look like.  Toyota has chosen the 2009 Frankfurt Auto Show as the place to release more details, but it doesn't start until September 15th.  What we do now know is that the charging port for the Plug-In Prius will be just below the driver's side mirror (same side as the gas tank door).  We also know that Toyota will release 200 test vehicles to Japan, 150 to the US, and another 150 to Europe to commercial and government fleets by early 2010.

If you were around on Earth Day for the PriusChat Earth Day Live Chat with Doug Coleman from the Prius product team, you already know half the story.  The Prius will have a factory-installed iPod integration option for Navigation-equipped models beginning with August production and most likely hitting the shores in September.  What Doug couldn't (or wouldn't) tell us back in April was the price of this upcoming option.  Today we have news from Toyota's Flickr and Twitter feeds that the

The July sales numbers are in, and they are looking very good for the Toyota Prius.  Prius sales jumped 48% from June 2009 to July 2009, and 30% from the year-ago month.  The July sales were the best-ever for the Prius, and were surely fueled by the positive word of mouth created by PriusChat forum members like you.  Keep up the good work!

Were you one of the over 19,000 new Prius owners in July?

I received a note from Adam Vaughan, Deputy Editor for the Guardian, that he's looking for current Prius owners who want to have a look at the 2010 Prius and be quioted in a story to run later this week.  Any UK PriusChatters who want to take him up on the offer?

Here's his note: