PHV Prius photos I took at the LA Auto Show

I attended the LA Auto Show today. I took some photos of the Plug-In Prius. The Toyota and Lexus exhibit was HUGE compared to other manufacturers - except Ford, which also had an equally huge exhibit, and also oriented towards "going green," but then again everyone seemed to be "we're green!" in some way or another. Interestingly, the list of technical specs, data, and info available on the PHV Prius was almost non-existent. There was only the little placard that I took a photo of (which pretty much summarizes the differences between the normal Prius and the PHV Prius - all of which are already available in news articles that most of us have already read). Also, I did not see any Toyota employees anywhere around the car to answer questions.

 

Fisker had it's Plug-In Hybrids at the autoshow also, and crowds were gathering around the cars. Very good response from the public! The specs, as can be seen in the below photo are 50 mile EV-only range, or a 100mpg combined equivalent over 300 miles total range.

The 40mpg 2011 Ford Fiesta will arrive at U.S. dealers in June 2010.

The Porsche Cayenne Hybrid powertrain was on display, and it looked like it was production ready. They are likely just undergoing final road testing.

 

Toyota's new Sienna minivan will be at U.S. dealers in February 2010. All of the displays said "prototype" on them, but the Toyota representative said that's the production version. As you will notice in the last photo, the rear seats are electric and recline. The third row of seats folds down (for storage) electronically with the push of a button.

The gauges of the Lexus HS250h have the charge/discharge based on gas pedal or braking displayed on the left side of the left gauge in the photo.

The Lexus LF-Ch hybrid prototype was on display. The LF-A supercar was also there, but I'm not uploading the photos unless someone requests them.

BMW's sign on the wall pretty much summed up the direction they are headed with their hybrids. They had the ActiveHybrid 7 and ActiveHybrid X6 on display.

The Audi e-tron electric car stole the show from the rest of Audi's cars. Everyone at the autoshow that entered Audi's display went straight to the e-tron. I think Audi was observing that the public really liked this car. (as I'm sure you have noticed from my photos, attendance was very light - I went on a Friday, and there were few people there. My friend commented to me that it felt like a "press pass" day. Hey, it worked for me - no lines and no waiting for people to get out of my photos!)

The future Mazda 2 is seen in the last two photos (think of it as Mazda's answer to the Toyota Yaris).

The Volt was there, but it was just the same old prototype that we saw two years ago. Nothing impressive. If they had a fleet of production-ready Volt's on the floor that the public could sit in, then I would have been happy. Another noteworthy vehicle at the autoshow was the new Hyundai Avensis (it's a step above the Genesis and it looked great). Also, Jaguar, now being designed by Aston Martin for Tata, had some excellent new cars that put Jaguar back above Mercedes and BMW where they used to be before Ford owned them. Speaking of Ford though, Ford's display made Ford look like a very healthy, profitable company, and the new Lincolns looked excellent! Very nice interiors.