Welcome to a new feature on PriusChat - the Monday Morning Prius Diary.  Each Monday morning I'll start out the day by telling you a little bit about where I went in my Prius over the weekend and how my car played a role in my trip.  Our first Monday Morning Diary is actually going to be a Tuesday Morning Diary due to the Labor Day holiday weekend, but you get the idea.  Please post a comment in the discussion thread sharing your Monday Morning Prius Diary with the PriusChat community.  Here we go...

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.

Cash For Clunkers was a little too good to the Toyota Prius, leading to shortages across the country in August and an actual decrease in sales over July's numbers.  Compared to August 2008, though, Prius sales were through the roof, up 45.7 percent.  When will the Prius show back up on lots?  Will September's numbers decrease substantially due to the lack of C4C and no stock?  September has been a month of spiking gas prices (at least on the East Coast) due to hurricane season, so it should be an interesting month for the 2010 Prius.

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:

Would you be interested in a hybrid with the exterior of a MR2 and the interior of a Prius?  The rumor mill is heating up lately with more news of the rumored Prius coupe that I told you about back in March.  The "Prius Coupe" will carry the same 1.8 2ZR-FXE engine that the 2010 Prius has, but it will bump up the horsepower to 136 ponies.  In order to compete with the upcoming Honda CR-Z, the Prius Coupe (MR2) will be a 2+2 seating configuration.

Many of you don't know, but we've been spending the last couple of weeks closing on a new house and moving the PriusChat Empire to it's new home in Charlotte, North Carolina.  After a week of water leaks and other homeowner-related joys, my Macbook hard drive crashed on me yesterday.  

No worries, though.  Installed a new one last night and ran my Time Machine backup from about 10 minutes before the hard drive went kaput.  Now I'm good to go.

Back to our regularly scheduled PriusChat programming!

Now the action is starting to pick up as Prius Drive Thru makes their way into Madison for the Green Drive Expo.

Here is video from Day 3 of the Prius Drive Thru Summer tour across America.  Looks like Russell and crew are going through some beautiful parts of the US.