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HenryTo
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diesel
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 Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 7:09 am Post subject: |
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Update on Toyota hybrid plans.
http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/06/plug-in-hybrid.html
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Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity. - Albert Einstein |
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HenryTo
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HenryTo
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| Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 12:03 am Post subject: |
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Toyota to disclose its new hybrid at the Detroit Auto Show next January - and plans to start producing 100,000 of these a year starting next year:
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Toyota to make 100,000 units of hybrid car: paper
Sat Jul 19, 2008 1:05am EDT
TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) plans to produce 100,000 units a year of a new hybrid-only model slated for release in 2009 at a subsidiary in southern Japan, the Nikkei business daily reported on Saturday.
The new car, which will be Toyota's second dedicated hybrid model after the hot-selling Prius, will have a 2- to 2.5-litre engine and will also be sold under the company's luxury Lexus brandname, the paper said.
Toyota Motor Kyushu Inc, in Fukuoka prefecture, currently builds a gasoline-electric hybrid version of the Toyota Harrier sport utility vehicle, sold as the Lexus RX outside Japan, as well as the Highlander SUV.
Hit by sinking demand for fuel-thirsty SUVs and pickup trucks, Toyota this month announced a big overhaul of its North American manufacturing structure which included a plan to build the Highlander at a truck factory in Indiana from late 2009.
Toyota Motor Kyushu will make adjustments to its factory to switch production from the North America-bound Highlander to the new hybrid model, the Nikkei said.
Toyota aims to sell at least 1 million hybrid vehicles annually in the early part of the next decade -- more than double what it sold last year.
Toyota has said it would showcase a new hybrid model under both the Toyota and Lexus brand names at the annual Detroit auto show next January. |
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HenryTo
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| Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 10:12 am Post subject: |
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Detailed chronology of Tesla since its beginnings as a VC-funded company:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/07/technology/copeland_tesla.fortune/index.htm
| Quote: | Seven Teslas - part of the so-called Founder's Series - have been completed. (The lucky owners: Musk, his brother, board member Antonio Gracias, investor Skoll, Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and of course Eberhard.) The company hopes to ship several hundred more by the end of the year. Musk has set his sights on delivering Tesla's next car sometime in 2010. Called the Model S, it's an all-electric $60,000 family sedan with four doors and a hatchback, which he now plans to build in the Bay Area. He'll need to raise $250 million to $300 million, and he knows it's a long shot that Tesla can grow up and become a real car company. For all the difficulty of getting a few cars built, scaling to thousands and tens of thousands of cars is exponentially harder. Tesla is turning to automotive veterans like former Chrysler executive Mike Donoughe, recently hired as executive vice president of vehicle engineering and manufacturing, to help crack that code. But before it can get to the next car, Tesla needs to make sure the Roadster is a success.
And there are a whole lot of auto buffs and professionals waiting to see what will happen when these cars hit the road for real. Though you can get insurance for a Tesla, a big concern is the amount of heat generated by 6,831 battery cells lashed together. "Never mind whether they will burst into flames," says Bruce Belzowski, assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute, of the Tesla batteries. "What if they plain don't work? There is real uncertainty about these battery technologies, because there is nothing to compare it with - it's so new there aren't even regulations in place yet." Tesla says the batteries have been tested for an equivalent of 40,000 miles with no safety or durability issues.
Tesla's customers don't seem particularly concerned. During all the turmoil, only about 30 of almost 1,000 asked for their deposits back, and those spots were quickly filled. Engineer Earl Cox (who is buying a Tesla, as is his dad, Stanford professor Don Cox) says he has a great deal of respect for Eberhard. "But I would still love Tesla to win," he says. "I would love if Elon Musk went down in history alongside Henry Ford for doing this thing. It is a great car - I don't have any hesitancy about that - and I can't get it soon enough."
Same goes for Stephen Casner, a software engineer who worked with Eberhard and Tarpenning at networking technology company Packet Design. It was because he trusted and believed in his two former colleagues that he put down $100,000 for his radiant red Roadster. What he didn't do is ask for his money back after Eberhard was shown the door and Tarpenning quit. "I guess I just want the car too much," Casner says.
Startups, after all, are always chaotic. The people who found them are often arrogant or overbearing or both. But in a way Musk was right: The bumps along the road are forgettable, as long as the car isn't. |
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