The new Prius is set to get 94 miles per gallon! I will stop while you consider how awesome this is…..done OK.

The next Toyota Prius will offer an astonishing 113 mpg, according to a report in the U.K.’s AutoExpress magazine. (Note: 113 mpg in the U.K. is equal to 94 mpg here in North America). “The whole electrical system has been redesigned to improve economy” said a Toyota engineer was quoted as saying. “We are working on a prototype that runs solely on the electric motor in slow traffic, but switches to engine and motor drive when higher speeds are needed.” The 0-62 mph time will also be improved by more than a second, according to the report, bringing it to well under 10 seconds. Much of the improvement can be attributed to the use of lithium-ion batteries instead of nickel-hydride units. The lithium-ion batteries are smaller, lighter, and have greater electrical output.

These will be out in 08. Now what is stopping all cars from moving into this range, or above? Why don’t we have plug in hybrid everything. We could set up solar shades over most parking lots and let people plug in there cars during the day to recharge, it would be utopian in scale. Instead of using that parking meter to pay for god knows what it is used for now, we could use that revenue to pay for small solar and wind installations to power everyones plug in hybrid vehicles during the work day.

Even if we don’t use distributed generation to power the plug in aspect of the hybrid, its more efficient to control pollution and efficiency at one location rather than try and make hundreds of thousands of cars more efficient.