And speaking of love, I love this spot.

Danny’s Prius v review on Prius Chat

2012 Prius v review

Microsoft and Toyota Motor will announce a collaboration between the two companies later Wednesday, they said.

Details of the tie-up between the world’s biggest software maker and world’s biggest auto maker will be disclosed in a video conference by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, and Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor, at 1 p.m. PDT (8 p.m. GMT).

So what will happen to Entune? Details as this develops.

“Toyota announced the one-millionth US sale of the Toyota Prius. It is the third milestone for Toyota’s hybrid lineup in the last six months that started with the announcement of worldwide Toyota Prius sales topping 2M in October 2010 and overall global Toyota hybrid sales passing 3M last month.”

Time for my Gramps Simpson reminiscence. I remember a time when people would come up to me and ask, all the time, did I have to plug my car in and did it really only have a top speed of 35MPH. I remember when seeing another Prius on the road was an unusual circumstance and we waved at each other.

Now Prius truly is a main stream vehicle. It’s just another car on the road.

Which kind of cool.

Congratulations to everyone at Toyota and to the million of us owners here in the U.S.

So it goes with Marty Padgett’s piece on carconnection, “Why Detroit Isn’t The “New” New Orleans“.

I was directed to this piece by John Voelcker, an associate of Padgett’s. I’ve read, argued with and agreed with John’s writing for years. Basically, John is a good guy and so, I am sure, is Mr. Padgett. Which leaves me wondering, what was the impetus for carconnection to deliver what’s really a flame at the people of Detroit. Was it really one sentence in some Jalopnik piece? And how many sentient beings out of their teens really take Jalopnik seriously about anything?

Let’s start with the straw man. Padgett writes…

They’re both withered and pretty much defenseless–but does that mean Detroit is the new New Orleans? Does it deserve some kind of federal intervention? Here’s what our colleague, Jalopnik editor @RayWert says:

“Detroit’s New Orleans-like loss of population received no telethons or FEMA assistance. America doesn’t care about Detroit people.”

About what I would expect from Jalopnik. And Padgett deftly explains that no, you don’t get FEMA assistance for the kind of slow burn economic disaster that’s befallen Detroit for the last two decades (or more). That’s obvious. And without reading the Gawker piece (after years of wasting my time, I just don’t bother giving Nick Denton the click) I can’t really further delve into why Wert wrote what he did. Nor do I care to. I’m much more interested in what Padgett wrote for his site.

My argument with Padgett begins here:

And yet Detroit got cash anyway. The city and its suburbs–via automakers and by extensions, suppliers, employees, and dependents–received billions in bailout loans in 2009 that probably prevented the city’s head count from falling twice as far.

We have to parse this one carefully to really see the folly contained inside. On the exterior, it seems to a reasonable, common sense remark but it isn’t and here’s why.

“Detroit” didn’t get the “cash”. GM, Chrysler and Ford have been getting the cash. The difference is enormous. That, for the most part, GM, Chrysler and Ford care really care less about Detroit and the other former locations where they once made cars is self-evident. In the rush to “stay competitive” the big three have off-shored as much production as they possibly can ignoring any tie to the communities left behind in the desolation.

Then Padgett drops the trickle down bomb, “The city and its suburbs–via automakers and by extensions, suppliers, employees, and dependents–received billions” but it’s a weapon of misdirection. Again, the people of Detroit, the city of Detroit didn’t get this money. The automakers who have become pseudonymous with the city they once built cars in got the cash. Some of that federal largesse went to facilities in Detroit, much of it, arguably most of it, did not. None of it went to the people of Detroit or the city of Detroit to help them grapple with the problems they face.

Padgett continues…

That doesn’t even begin to account for the ongoing subsidies Detroit gets indirectly from federal programs for investing in green-car technology and in sub-federal money that keeps factories alive when they probably weren’t viable on their own account.

Again, the difference between the city receiving monies and the car companies, two thirds of which are now located the suburbs surrounding the city, cashing in is enormous. In many cases the big three have invested that subsidy money, as they have to, domestically. Have that money been spent in Detroit? No, not in its entirety by any means.

As for factories that “weren’t viable on their account” who is to blame for that? The people of Detroit? Are they somehow less productive employees than other places? Or maybe it’s the city of Detroit, maybe the city itself is to blame? I think the blame for the viability of factories rests solidly, but not solely, on the car companies, their managers and executives. Those same executives, by the way, who have been real benefactors of the government bailouts Padgett mentions. Those execs have been collecting their salaries and bonuses while their former factories decayed and their business models were invalidated. Blaming it on the city or on the employees isn’t just wrong, it’s malicious.

Padgett continues to erect straw creations for ceremonial burning…

The second point’s much worse. “America doesn’t care about Detroit people” is political plutonium.

And then he launches into some sideways thing about George Bush. Look, honestly, America doesn’t much care about Detroit any more than it cares about Wilkes-Barre, Cleveland, Gary, Pittsburgh, Rochester, South Bend, Flint or Milwaukee (to name just a few cities). America, passively or otherwise seems to be pretty comfortable allowing the industrial part of our economy to wither and die only to be replaced by the service economy, yes, a nation of fast food and hotel employees. I don’t want to get off track and dig into the politics of all of that but I do think it bear mentioning that if we, as a nation, cared about this sector of the economy and the cities and states that depended on it, we might have talked about building other things or modifying the ways we build things here. Instead, most of us were perfectly content to encourage and subsidize the big three to move as much manufacturing out of this country as possible. If that is “caring” I’ll take apathy.

It’s inflammatory, much like the Jalopnik post that inspired Padgett to write what he did but I do think there is something valid in the comparison. Not a direct one to one comparison, life and reality is seldom that simple. But as a metaphor things like the image below help us see things differently. They force to re-evaluate the so odiously misnamed common wisdom and perhaps, see more truth than we did before. This is one of the first page of Michael Moore‘s 1996 book, “Downsize This!”

The top image is the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that was bombed by Timothy McVeigh. The lower image is a closed factory in Flint. Before you dismiss the comparison, again, not a direct one, consider the following. The Murrah tragedy was the act of one man intentionally trying to destroy federal property and maim and kill. The second image, the Flint factory was the direct result of auto executives making intentional decisions to close a local factory, fire workers there and demolish the building. They’re not the same acts by any means but the point Moore makes in his book is simple and obvious, both acts had much the same results. Lives were ended prematurely. Families were destroyed. Communities were devastated. Was this the fault of those workers? Were they just not good enough? Did they deserve what they got?

In his second to last paragraph Padgett blames Detroit’s ills on, “the unions, and an overbearing, overburdened city government”. Notice what’s missing?

Padgett won’t get an argument from me that some unions have, at times, been out of control. But it’s difficult to blame the big three’s ills on the unions, after all, did the big three also sign onto all those contracts? If those contracts are burdensome or badly negotiated, why did they agree to them?

And Detroit’s civis issues have been well publicized. Their laughable civic government is, well, laughable. And not defend them but allow me to add this. Anyone who has ever run a business can understand this. A growing business is one that is typically much more simple to manage than one that is shrinking. Detroit has been a basket for a long time because of an ever more eroding tax base, and ever increasing burden of costs associated with managing a shrinking economy. For anyone, even the best of civic leaders, Detroit would be a serious challenge.

And ponder this for a moment, what’s been run worse? The city of Detroit, with no federal help and a shrinking economy or the big three car companies with tons of federal assistance and a mandate from the government that they are too big to fail?

Padgett closes with the follow…

New Orleans has levees. Detroit has denial. They’re both Achilles’ heels, but one doesn’t have to be.

Wow, game, set, match. If only Detroit would just pick itself up by its rusty bootstraps and be a real city, it wouldn’t be losing population at a ridiculous rate, turning over entire blocks into improvised gardens and still be host to innumerable empty factories, homes and offices.

I would say that there is some serious denial taking place but it isn’t on Detroit’s part. No, it’s denial from those of us who think that a city devastated by outsourcing, rampant with private enterprise management as malfaisant as the very worst of its civic mishandlers, can just bounce back with a good attitude and the power of positive thinking. Detroit, as a place full of people, is emblematic of the what’s happened to once vibrant middle class this country had. And we ignore that lesson at our own peril.

My note: The title of this piece is, obviously, a line from Pink Floyd’s “Time” which, for some reason I only half understand, was resonating in my head while I wrote this. -russell

Which doesn’t mean I don’t care rather, I’m hoping you’re picking me up in a few other places. So, let’s get that out of the way first.

You can hear me co-hosting What Drives Us with Priuschat.com‘s Danny Cooper and a panel of experts that I very lovingly and sincerely call stellar. If you’re interested in the future of transportation, in all its forms, listen, please. You search for “What Drives Us” on iTunes, we’re there. You can also download us or stream the show from the site.

Since I last posted we haven’t really heard much about the Prius v, other than the somewhat interesting variant for sale in places that are not North America. The Prius + has two important differences from our version. The Prius + has a third of row seats. We haven’t seen pictures of this third row yet. Unlike the Prius v, all the shots I’ve seen have the back hatch closed and there are no interior shots of this semi-mythical third row. It will be interesting to see how Toyota deploys this feature in the global version of the big daddy Prius.

The other difference is one that is quite intriguing to me, it’s a lithium Ion battery pack Toyota is placing, wait for it, under the hood. My assumption is that this is to make room for the third row of seats and they’re using Lion cells here as opposed to the NiHM packs Toyota uses everywhere else. Lions are smaller so this makes sense when trying to stuff them into under the hood. I have to question the wisdom of placing Lion cells next to a motor but I’m no engineer and Toyota’s record, late night jokes aside, on these matters is pretty solid.

Rumor is that the “v” will sell for a starting price of $28,500. Not bad pricing. If you think that’s high, don’t feel too bad. Japanese future owners of the “v” will be paying about $36,500. for their version.

The noisemaker saga took a surprising turn for the even more ridiculous this week when two companies ran afoul of actually selling cars to buyers for two, exact opposite reasons.

If you recall, late last year congress pass a bill requiring manufacturers of hybrids and EVs (not all quiet cars, just hybrids and EVs) have some kind of noisemaker warning pedestrians when those vehicles are running at ow speed or without the ICE running. This all takes affect around mid 2014.

So Nissan was so much in a hurry to have these installed now is somewhat beyond me. Suffice to say, their eagerness bit them on the ass when a shipment of Leafs was held because they had these noisemakers. Yes, there’s a law in the U.K. that a vehicle produce extraneous noise between the hours of 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. Leaving the Leaf to sit on the dock while the noisemakers were disabled.

Across the pond, the first shipment of Hyundai’s delayed Sonata hybrid sat, buyers waiting anxiously for their Sonaten. The problem here is that Hyundai has, as an international default, a switch on the noisemaker so you can manually bypass it. Again, rather inexplicably Hyundai decided that this switch was a very bad thing here in the US and held up the shipment while they rewired the vehicles removing the switch and the ability to shit the pointless noisemaker off.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Full specs here via Prius Chat

Prius V, what we do not know:
-Pricing
-What it’s like to actually drive it
-Upper end options details, such as what size is the larger screen

Prius PHV
Mostly nothing we didn’t already know.

Prius C, What they said:
-Smaller Prius, four doors and hatch, looks very “Sciony”
-”Hybrid hybrid MPG that isn’t a plugin”
-Nothing about pricing
-Set for delivery in “the first of half 2012″

What do you think?

Want to the reveal LIVE? Just click here. Danny Cooper, Linda Weidemann and I will be doing commentary.

-The real core truth about Prius is simple, it works, all the time, under any condition and it delivers. This is the basic stock Prius offers and which Toyota trades in on the Prius brand name. You don’t have to have to a lot of disclaimers and exclusions, it just does what it does better than any other hybrid on the market right now.

-Three adults, two dogs and the every other cubic square inch of my car stuffed with luggage and xmas presents. Almost 2,000 miles with high winds, rain and in some places snow and freezing temperatures. The vehicle remains comfortable and still delivers 44.9 MPG with utterly no effort whatsoever. In fact, let me add in that I probably averaged 70 MPH on the freeway in horrible driving conditions with three different drivers, two of whom can’t even spell “hypermiler.”

-Plasmacluster doesn’t get half the favorable pub it deserves.

-Whoever put the accessory plug and power outlet in the console should be beaten with a stick.

-I love my sunroof. Yes. Even in the winter.

-Heated seats.

-The downside to the aerodynamic shape of Prius? You have to handwash the thing if you expect the back end to be clean.

-A lot of people still think you have to plug-in a Prius or that it can’t go over 70 MPH. A lot of people.

-The regional popularity (or un-popularity) of Prius is amazing. Contrast the difference in visibility of the vehicle in different parts of the country is just striking.

-I can’t shake the feeling that, deep down, some of the manufacturing differences between the second and third generation Priuses leave the third generation feeling less solid, less tight, more plasticky. It’s small things but overall they add up to a feeling I have to acknowledge.

-Why is the front passenger seat so much less comfortable than the driver seat? It shouldn’t be.

-Cupholders. Please. No, really. Please.

-A light in the upper glovebox would be nice.

-My window washer tank needs to be replaced, again. Tedious and annoying. And frankly, potentially hazardous when driving 1,000 miles home in the winter.

-A rear view camera that could be activated while driving would help, a bit, make up for Prius’s still mostly mediocre rear view issues. The camera is there, just give me a button.

-There is no reason or excuse for the seat heater button to be placed in a position that requires me to fold in half, while driving, to turn it on.

-Did I mention how much I despise the location of the audio accessory plug? Oh boy.

-And where’s my USB connectivity for my MP3 player? Seriously. It’s 2010, almost 2011. In excusable in a car such as Prius.

-And stuff the lawyers in a sack and tell them that customers come back and buy vehicles from your company based on usability. Stop playing around with not allowing me to change things on the MFD while the vehicle is moving. I have an adult passenger in the front passenger seat, it’s stupid to not allow them to make adjustments. Oh, and if you think it’s convenient to pull over on I-95 to do that, you’re effing nuts. This kind of stuff drives owners crazy and makes your vehicles less appealing which translates to less sales which means less money for Toyota Legal to protect.

-PWR mode rocks.

The bad news, front and center is the object of Toyota’s press release today, some new little bit of evil called, “iheartradio”.

Here’s Toyota’s press release.

Now, why would I hate something called, “iheartradio”? How about this tidbit from the PR release linked above:

Toyota Motor Sales (TMS) U.S.A., Inc. today announced that it will be working with Clear Channel Radio’s iheartradio, incorporating more than 750 of America’s favorite radio stations and other exclusive content into select Toyota vehicles beginning in 2011. This is the first partnership Toyota is announcing for mobile application integration. More details will be released at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2011.

Aside from what has to be one of the most brain dead stupid names I’ve ever had the bad luck not to avoid, it’s from Clear Channel, one of the most vicious media consolidators in the history of this country. Clear Channel has done more to kill and eliminate local radio (and damage music in general) than anyone in my lifetime. Clear Channel has taken over hundreds (well over 1,000) stations and linked and syndicated them removing local control and programming in favor ot network broadcasts and automated, computerized formats. Aside from that, and homogenizing musical playlists, buying up venues and promoters to further consolidate their hold over performance as well as radio, Clear Channel’s only accomplished more quickly what was probably an eventuality, making terrestrial commercial radio, more or less, irrelevant.

So that’s why I’m not all that happy to see Toyota fluff up the covers and invite Clear Channel to now orchestrate what I can listen to in my Toyota.

Oh yeah, thank Beelzebub I can now listen to Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck and Ryan Seacrest with just one touch courtesy of iheartradio and Toyota. Yeah, that’s the kind of programming I want to have permanently installed in my vehicle. And yes, that’s right from the press release.

I don’t know all the details of how iheartradio will be implemented in the 2011 Toyotas but I can tell you that this is the kind of move that will have me considering something other than a Toyota for my next vehicle. Like all of us, all the serious time I spend with my Toyota product is inside it and for me, what I can listen to is important, very important. Rather than offer me more freedom to plug in my own content or partner with content distributors such as Pandora who let me “program” my own radio stations, Toyota has brought into the privacy of my (potential future) car the one company I would go a long way to avoid in public and I would never interact in my personal sphere.

It is possible that there is some detail/s in the implementation of iheartradio that might soften that view. I tend to doubt it because, frankly, I can’t really imagine wanting my car buying dollars to go towards furthering a partnership between Toyota and Clear Channel. I hate to say it but there it is anyway.

I think, in a bigger sense, this is very ominous. If this the direction Toyota is going, limiting what I can do inside of their products and forcing me to subsidize, through the purchase of my automobile, a company that I feel very negatively about, then I think that’s a loss for me but what’s more, a loss for all of us. I would much prefer, as I mentioned above, to see Toyota moving in the direction of allowing Toyota owners to create their own entertainment space inside the car. I don’t need to provide a company such as Clear Channel another chance to make me the captive listener I was before these other options existed. Toyota is still behind other companies when it comes to integration of devices like MP3 players and smart phones. And now, they’ve partnered with a company whose single mission has been controlling, tightly controlling what I can listen to. And it’s built into my car? I said “ominous” above because I think it is. I don’t think it’s hyperbole. For so many reasons this is exactly the wrong direction for Toyota and it saddens me to see this happening.

That’s just my personal opinion and YMMV.
-russell

His willingness to honestly admit he was wrong before and he forthrightness in correcting that.

And his passion for greatness and respect for it.

Two things I admire a great deal.

Full driving report and review coming soon.

Every week we discuss a wide range of advanced tech car issues with great panels. This last week featured, Who Killed The Electric Car’s Chelsea Sexton.

Did I mention I’m one of the hosts?

I am.

Ok, now go check it out. Please.

Basically, Dan Edmunds thinks there is a problem with the ESC on the 2004 Prius. And there appears to be one. The diagnosis for this issue is, apparently, the point of the story but it’s only at the end that we hear,

First: I’m going to install new tires. One of them is bad anyway, but it’s a rear, and rear tires don’t cause pull or steering wheel misalignments. Besides, the front ones are worn, too, and worn oddly. There could be excess conicity at work, enough to create sufficient right-hand force to make me have to steer left to go straight.

Yeah Dan, might have something to do with it. At the very least that might make diagnosing the problem a bit tougher.

Truth is, the car needs to be seen by a dealer who can check a few things.