Episode 5 of the What Drives Us podcast is available for listening!

This week Russell and I were joined by Tony Schaefer again, your friendly PriusChat moderator, to talk about recent green transportation news.

Hosts: Danny Cooper & Russell Frost

Episode 4 of the What Drives Us podcast is up! For those of you who have subscribed through iTunes, it should have downloaded it for you on Saturday.

This week Russell and I were again joined by Evan Fusco to talk about recent events involving the Prius and other green modes of transportation. Episode 4 is a little funky because, due to weather, I got kicked off the recording the first day when we were chatting. Russell and I finished up Friday while Evan played around in Las Vegas.

Nissan just posted a press release with lots of new information about the Nissan Leaf EV that includes the purchase process and we have a commercial that Nissan is going to air during the Winter Olympic games. Check out the commercial and then read the press release below.

With all the recent PHEV talk surrounding Toyota lately, one might think that they forgot all about their future commitment to electric vehicles (EVs). No so, according to information released by Toyota today. Toyota plans on releasing a small, urban commuter lithium-ion battery electric vehicle (BEV) to market in model year 2012. Most likely the EV will be released in 2011.

Here's some more information from Toyota. Video (B-Roll) below that.

The specs are finally out! The important ones: The Prius PHV will be able to reach max speeds of 60 miles per hour in electric-only mode (EV). When fully charged it will be able to travel up to 13 miles in EV mode. It can be recharged in approximately three hours from a standard 110V electrical outlet or one and a half hours at a 220V outlet.

There's a pretty big thread going over in the PriusChat Forums regarding the announcement of the Nissan Leaf EV.  We won't go into too much, but will give the general overview:

Toyota Motor Corp plans to start mass producing plug-in hybrid vehicles in 2012, with a projected first-year output of about 20,000 to 30,000 units, the Nikkei business daily reported on Saturday.

No word on how many will reach the U.S., or when sales will start here. Toyota has said the vehicle will be powered by lithium-ion batteries developed and produced by its joint venture with Panasonic. The cars would be able to run up to 18 miles on battery power alone before a backup gas powerplant kicked in.

Wired's Ben Mack wrote an article yesterday about engineers at the University of Technology Sydney who have built a plug-in Toyota Prius they claim is capable of reducing power shortages by returning energy to the grid.

A Japanese press publication has scooped that the 2010 Plug-in Prius will have 20km (12.4mile) EV range.  Remember that this PHEV Prius will only be available to Toyota's fleet customers and its purpose is to be a field test for future commercially available Plug-In Prius models.

Toyota's intention is to offer an affordable plug-in limiting the EV range rather than to offer an expensive plug-in with big battery.

A day after the US government's auto task force told GM that the Volt was "too expensive to be commercially successfully in the short term," and that the Volt was too little, too late, GM has asked the federal government for $2.6 billion in low interest loans to finish developing the Volt along with 2 other variants of the Volt PHEV.  This $2.6 billion request raises to $10.3 billion the amount in aid GM has requested under a Department of Energy program designed to support the development of fuel-efficient vehicles.