2017 Toyota Prius Prime: Efficient new hybrid shines

The 2017 Toyota Prius Prime, a plug-in gas-electric hybrid, is a new addition to the country’s largest selling hybrid family. It replaces the Prius Plug-in and it’s the most ambitious Prius on the market. Its exterior design, full of sharp angles and a unique narrow exterior light design in the mainstream automotive industry, removes the stodgy image of previous Prius models. The Prime is chock-full of technology, most visibly the navigation system and infotainment center. It’s an 11.6-inch vertically oriented high-resolution touchscreen, and it dominates the dashboard. It’s standard on the Prime Premium ($29,965) and top-line Prime Advanced ($33,965). It’s

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Oscars: Hyundai debuts clever Academy Awards ad with Jeff Bridges' actor friends

What do Kim Basinger, David Duchovny, Richard Dreyfuss, Catherine Keener, Michael Madsen, Mandy Patinkin and Martin Sheen have in common with Jeff Bridges and what do the eight actors have in common with the Academy Awards and Hyundai? It’s simple. Bridges has been the voice of Hyundai for the past three years, and the South Korean automaker is the exclusive automotive sponsor for the Academy Awards broadcast. But Bridges is also nominated as Best Actor for his performance in Crazy Heart. And therein lies the problem. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences prohibits sponsors from running advertising featuring

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#226, Newport Car Museum visionary Gunther Buerman

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:56 — 43.9MB)Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | MoreApproaching its fifth anniversary, the Newport Car Museum is the largest automotive museum in New England. It celebrates seven decades of modern industrial car design represented in more than 85 vehicles. It’s all the vision of owners Gunther and Maggie Buerman. The couple, who live in Highland Beach, Florida, and Newport, R.I., opened the museum in 2017. It’s located about 20 miles north of Newport in Portsmouth. Gunther Buerman, originally from Mannheim, Germany, moved as a young boy with his family to New York.

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#224, Cars.com editor reports on EVs, NY Auto Show

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:31 — 31.6MB)Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | MoreJoe Wiesenfelder, the executive editor of cars.com, recently returned from the New York Auto Show. Electric vehicles continue to be emphasized in the automotive market space, and Wiesenfelder is our guest on this episode of The Weekly Driver Podcast to discuss it. Co-hosts Bruce Aldrich and James Raia talk with the veteran journalist about the influx of new manufacturers in the EV segment as wells as the health of the segment. Can any new EV carmaker, Rivian to Lucid to Polestar to VinFast, challenge

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#139, Cars.com index reveals ‘Made in America’ gains importance

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:41 — 47.6MB)Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | MoreKelsey Mays, senior consumer affairs and vehicle evaluations editor for Cars.com, knows what it means for the industry and consumers when a vehicle is made in America. It means a lot. According to research from Cars.com in its recently released 2020 American-Made Index (AMI), 70 percent of shoppers consider a car’s U.S. economic impact a significant or deciding factor in their vehicle purchase. Mays is our guest this week on Episode #139 of The Weekly Driver Podcast. Co-hosts Bruce Aldrich and James Raia discuss

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#79 Autonomous future featured at GPU Technology Conference

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:54 — 34.2MB)Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | MoreThe huge truck cab couldn’t have been any more conspicuous. It dominated the back of the main showroom at the recent GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California, and attracted plenty of attention. The all-electric prototype from TuSimple is aimed at providing cheaper, more-efficient long-hauling trucking. TuSimple, with offices in China and the United States, is among numerous startups working to automate parts of the long-haul trucking and parcel delivery industries. As part of the technology, semi-trucks would be allowed to operate beyond the

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#178, Nvidia expanding the future of autonomous vehicles now

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:15 — 52.5MB)Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | MoreNvidia, an American multinational technology company based in Santa Clara, California, began in 1993. It originally designed graphics processing units (GPU) for gaming, professional markets and mobile computing. Since 2014, Nvidia has diversified its business, focusing on three markets: gaming, automotive electronics and mobile devices. Danny Shapiro, Senior Director, Automotive, is our guest this week on The Weekly Driver Podcast. Co-hosts Bruce Aldrich and James Raia discuss with Shapiro the ever-evolving status of autonomous driving. The Nvidia GPU (GTC) annual event in San Jose

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#134, Vermont artist Chris Miller’s stone truck

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:07 — 45.5MB)Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | MoreChris Miller, a sculptor who lives Maples Corner, a hamlet outside Calais, Vermont, began carving about 45 years ago. He works in granite, wood and marble, and his work is featured in private collections and sculpture galleries. It all gets its share of acclaim, including one of his most unique creations — a stone truck. Miller’s truck sculpture was inspired by a stone creation of a Volkswagen Beetle built in Ithaca, New York in 1976. It’s also an homage to an automotive phenomenon. As

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Hyundai and Kia Issue Recall Over Oil Pump Fire Risk

Hyundai and Kia, the South Korean automakers, have issued recalls for nearly 92,000 vehicles due to a defect in the oil pump that could potentially cause fires, according to regulatory filings. The recall is the latest in a series of similar actions taken by the companies this year over concerns of fire risks from defective parts. The recall involves an electronic controller for an oil pump assembly, known as the “Idle Stop & Go” system, which may contain damaged components from a supplier. These faulty components could cause the pump to shortcircuit and overheat, leading to a risk of fire.

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2021 BMW 530e masters driving tasks

The Grapeville technically extends on Interstate 5 only from Fort Tejon five miles north to the bottom of a six percent and 1,600-foot ascent. More realistically, the challenging driving stretch covers 40 miles from just north of Castaic over the Tehachapi Mountains from northern Los Angeles County to the San Joaquin Valley in Kern County. It’s an ideal location to test drive a car, notably a recent 850-mile trip in a 2021 BMW 530e. The south-to-north Grapevine route seems more arduous than the north-to-south route. Eighteen-wheel trucks often form long, tightly packed convoys in the right two lanes. Speed limit followers

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Toyota no longer king of the green car industry

It’s hard to believe that Toyota, the automaker behind the hugely successful hybrid-electric Prius, is no longer viewed as the green car industry leader. According to Danny Magill, an analyst at the London-based think tank InfluenceMap, Toyota has gone from a leading position to an “industry laggard” in clean-car policy as other automakers push ahead with ambitious electric vehicle (EV) plans. InfluenceMap gives Toyota a “D-” grade—the worst among automakers—saying it exerts policy influence to undermine public climate goals. While companies like Tesla have produced fully electric cars now part of the EV rage, Toyota, focusing on gas-electric hybrids and

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Commentary: Can fuel cell vehicles thrive?

I recently attended a gathering for alternative fuel vehicles, hosted by Sacramento Clean Cities Coalition (SCCC). The SCCC is part of a national network that supports the reduction of petroleum consumption in transportation. Several alternative fuel vehicles were on display, including the Toyota fuel cell car called the Mirai. The Mirai is a good-looking midsize sedan fueled with compressed hydrogen. The compressed hydrogen passes over a fuel cell stack to produce electricity for the electric drive motor. The Mirai has a 300-mile range, takes only three minutes to fill, and drives like any other car. It’s perfect, but where do

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2023 Toyota Prius Prime: Older Hybrid Good, New Better, No Stereotype

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During the past two decades, the Toyota Prius has been as polarizing as any car in the United States. Many consumers associate the vehicle with liberalism and chastise its appearance. Sometimes lost is the significance of the carmaker’s advancement in the hybrid and electric marketplace. The Prius debuted in the United States in 2020, three years after it was unveiled in Japan. It arrived a few months after the Honda Insight, which had limited availability and in only a few states. Toyota’s innovative lineup had mainstream distribution. Approaching its mid-20s, it has surpassed 15 million in global sales. Toyota now

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2017 Toyota Prius Prime: Into the mountains with ease

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Eleven days into coverage of the Amgen Tour of California, I’ve surpassed 1,000 miles while driving the 2017 Toyota Prius Prime plug-in hybrid. My trip began May 10 in Sacramento, and the race just ended in Pasadena. The women raced for four days, including two days in South Lake Tahoe and two days ending in Sacramento. The men raced for seven days from Sacramento to today’s concluding high-speed finale from Mountain High to downtown Pasadena.   As the newest and most technologically advanced Prius since the hybrid debuted in the United States in 2000, the Prius Prime is among the

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The race to improve electric cars globally heats up quickly

SPONSORED CONTENT Last week, USA Today reported Daimler, maker of Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen would launch long-range electric cars. As such, what is the likelihood of electric cars being the first and only car your grandchildren will know? One consideration is defining the use of the term “long range.” Until recently, many electric cars had a range 40 to 100 miles per charge and they required hours to recharge. For commuters with short round-trip drives, limited-range electric cars are satisfactory. But for drivers whose daily driving habits including additional mile for errands and other activities, short-range electric vehicle are problematic. Electric-gas

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Kelley Blue Book: 2013 Scion iQ Cheapest U.S. car to own for five-year tenure

Kelley Blue Book, like many other automotive sites, likes car lists. Arguably the enduring site’s most popular list is its annual compilation of the cheapest cars to own. The new list covers 22 categories for 2013 models. The new list is collaboration with Forbes.com and winners of the Kelley Blue Book Total Cost of Ownership Awards. The list considers many factors: depreciation, fuel, insurance costs, registration fees and maintenance. Add up all the factors and the amount is the cost of the vehicle over five years. Here’s the list in 22 categories with the segment vehicle name, Base, MSRP, 5-year

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