Holy crap. His summer house must be straight up the side of a mountain if he uses a quarter of a tank to go 75 miles.

It`s pretty possible. Remember, Japan is mostly mountains. And usually, distances are measured in a straight line, not the length of actual road travel... When you`re going over mountains, it is anything but straight.

Here's the part of the NY Times article that caught my eye:

" ... Nissan and Mitsubishi have also announced plans to leapfrog hybrids with new electric vehicles. ..."

I believe it was GM's posturing/threats to build hybrids, in the first place, that originally caused Toyota to panic ... and not want to be left behind in the hybrid game, that caused them to hurry the Prius to original production.

Wouldn't it be great if Nissan & Mitsubishi's saber rattling had the same effect? And who knows ... maybe it already has.

I think it's cool, and here recently I've wondered a lot if even here in the states we might find ourselves in a world where there are a lot MORE small cars running around. Not that we'll stop seeing gargantuan SUV's and pickups any time soon but that with new models coming out and/or coming over here... how might it be to see cars like the Yaris, Mini, Smart or really any car that seems smaller than most to a lot of people in the new world as it could potentially be, knowing that these cars were smart from the get-go?