Renewable Gossip

2010 Toyota Prius.

As President Obama and other administration officials were yesterday announcing $2.4 billion in grants to produce the next generation of hybrid and electric cars in the US, Toyota was tallying record sales of today’s leading hybrid car, the Prius. The Toyota Prius ranked as Japan’s top-selling car in July, its third consecutive month in the top slot. In the US, July sales of the Prius jumped by nearly 50 percent from last month and were up 30 percent from a year ago.

The $2.4 billion in grants will support the deployment and trial of up to 6,873 plug-in hybrid or battery electric vehicles. It could take several months, or as long as a year, to deploy the trial vehicles. Meanwhile, Toyota sold 19,193 Priuses in the United States in July, plus an additional 5,122 hybrids from three other Toyota and Lexus hybrid models.

“I don’t want to have to import a hybrid car,” said President Obama at an appearance yesterday in Warakusa, Ind. “I want to build a hybrid car here.”

It’s About the Batteries

The majority of the $2.4 billion federal investment is supporting next-generation lithium batteries for advanced electric drive vehicles. “More research and more development of batteries is urgent and critical,” said Dan Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis, in an interview with Christian Science Monitor. “Advanced batteries of different sizes and shapes will be in every car of the future.”

read more