Dr. Sultan Rahaman, aka rahamanmd on the PriusChat community forums, is featured in an article in today's Orlando Sentinel. It's an interesting article about Dr. Rahaman moving from being a long-time BMW owner to a first-time Prius owner.

Toyota has come up with a fix for their floor mat woes - a 6-inch zip tie and a warning to use common sense.

Toyota spokesman Brian Lyons told Automotive News: "We have reviewed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration what we're calling a semipermanent floor mat installation process, and we're providing these instructions to our dealers."

Dealers also are to attach a label to the wire tie warning dealers and customers to ensure that the mat is secured with restraining straps and not to stack one mat over another.

The nominees for the 2010 Green Car of the Year have been announced, and to no one's surprise the Toyota Prius is on the list. Here's the full list of nominees:

• Audi A3 TDI
• Honda Insight
• Mercury Milan Hybrid
• Toyota Prius
• Volkswagen Golf TDI

Last year's winner was the VW Jetta TDI, and I don't expect the Prius to win this year given Ron Cogan and the rest of the award jury's lean toward diesel/performance vehicles.

The winner will be announced Dec. 3.

TOKYO — Toyota's Prius hybrid was the top-selling car in Japan in September for the
fifth straight month ... Toyota Motor Corp., the world's biggest automaker, sold 31,758 Prius cars last month, according to the Japan Automobile Dealers Association.

Toyota said this week there was a backlog of Prius orders, numbering in the several thousands. Customers ordering the cars now won't get them delivered until after May 2010.

The Honda Fit is 2nd, while the Honda Insight has dropped back to 5th place.

It's time again for the Monday Morning Prius Diary! That's not my photo above (thanks, Flickr), but I spent the weekend as a groomsman in a very good friend's wedding. The weekend was a blast, but it left me no time to show my lovely 2010 any attention. We did take it on the trip, traveling from Charlotte to Greenville, SC and averaging about 53 MPG.

I just received word from a Toyota dealership that Toyota has put a "stop sale" on the Prius All-Weather floor mats. That basically means that Toyota dealerships across the country will not be receiving any new shipments of all-weather rubber mats until an undetermined future date. Dealerships have not been told that they can't sell any stock that they have on hand, so if you want a set before the snow/ice season kicks in this might be the time to buy.

Yesterday Toyota announced an impending recall on all driver's side floor mats for the 2004-2009 Prius. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has asked that any Gen 2 Prius owners take out any removable driver's floor mat and not replace it with another mat until Toyota comes up with a remedy.

The good folks with the Prius Team have shared some details in the PriusChat forums about the Prius I and a "price adjustment" on the Prius II-V models. The Prius I is the "base" model Prius that was announced to compete with the Honda Insight on price, while still offering the MPG and size of the Prius. Between January to May, Toyota probably was pretty worried about the Insight cramping the Prius' sales figures. So they came up with the idea of the Prius I, a "stripped, not equipped" version of the car.

It doesn't look good for the future of solo-driven Priuses in California carpool lanes. The stickers granting that privilege to 85,000 hybrid owners are set to expire Jan. 1, 2011. There are proposals to extend the deadline, but they would exclude most of the vehicles that originally qualified for the program, such as the Toyota Prius, the Honda Civic hybrid and the original Honda Insight.

I put over 600 miles on my Prius this weekend going to Columbia for a football game on Friday and then back on Sunday for a family member's birthday.  Unfortunately, other than driving, my Prius got no attention in the washing/waxing or modification department.

Did yours?  Any exciting tales from your weekend?

Feel free to post them in the comment thread or head on over to our Facebook page and leave a quick comment.

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