Seriously, Toyota.  I was making a JOKE when I wrote on April Fools' Day that Toyota is going to co-produce the Volt with GM.  This time, though, it's not the Volt at the center of the conversation, it's the Prius.  And this time, it's not a joke.

Thanks to PriusChat forum members cwerdna and JSH, we now know that GM has elected to kill off the Saturn two-mode hybrid Vue that was slated for production last November (but delayed).  GM has also decided to rid its lineup of the Chevy Malibu Hybrid, a model that increased fuel efficiency by a pretty pathetic 1 MPG highway.

Isn't it about time for GM to kill off all of their silly "half" hybrids and focus their wasting of government money on the Volt?

The Chevy Volt Deathwatch continues...

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.

The Chevy Volt will have a new name and a new manufacturer when it goes on sale in November 2010 - the Toyota Jolt.  According to sources within Toyota and GM, the decision was made after President Obama's auto task force deemed the Volt to be too little, too late and too expensive to save General Motors.  To save on production costs for both companies, the re-badged Toyota Jolt will be manufactured at the NUMMI plant in Fremont, California.  NUMMI is the same plant where the GM/Toyota co-produced Toyota Matrix/Pontiac Vibe is made.

Bob Wilson (user bwilson4web) put together a fantastic analysis of what the January 2009 Hybrid sales report can tell us about who hybrid customers are and what drives them to purchase a hybrid automobile.