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.

http://www.facebook.com/PriusChat

So, the only tale I have from this weekend is another football trip, and those must be getting pretty boring for you guys (although a 56 MPG round trip excited me).

What did you do with your Prius this weekend?

If you have wanted your engine block heater installed, now is the time. Do you need one? Just search the Gen II forums for the info on why. Don't have an engine block heater?

Jim Lentz, president of Toyota Motor Sales, has been urging his Japanese bosses to allow him to start a Prius subbrand for the US market.  It appears that new Toyota president Akio Toyoda has been listening.  According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Toyota executives announced at a recent dealer's meeting in Las Vegas that they are considering offering new hybrid models larger and smaller than the current Prius hatchback.  Perhaps the Prius MR2 will be a reality?

Back in July you probably first heard about an upcoming Prius app right here on PriusChat.  Toyota released their Prius app in the iTunes App Store yesterday, and so far the response from iPhone users has been, well, underwhelming.  What does the app do?  Does it....

Need a reason to move to Colorado?  Here's one: the state will give you up to a $6,000 tax credit toward converting your plain-old Prius into a snazzy PHEV Plug-In Prius capable of getting 2,500 miles on a tank of gas.  Clayton Cornell over at Gas 2.0 put together a great article on the ins and outs, and he crunched the numbers for all you "When will it pay itself off?" people.

This weekend my wife and I loaded up the dog and tailgating supplies to head to Athens, Georgia and the University of Georgia for the South Carolina/Georgia football game.  We started out basically where we left off last weekend - 100 miles and 60 MPG into a tank.  Our first stop was in Greenville, SC Friday night to drop off the dog at his grandparents house.  Trip from Charlotte to Greenville: ~120 miles, 56 MPG.  4 MPG drop isn't bad for all interstate driving.  The next morning my Dad and I gave my 2010 Prius a much-needed wash.  It had been before our move