Technology Review offers this sweet article on the growth in hybrid cars.

Indeed, gas-electric hybrids are the first significant break with carmakers’ total reliance on the internal-combustion engine in nearly a century. And the implications of a widespread switchover to gas-electric hybrids are immense for both consumers and the auto industry. Even bumping up the average gas mileage of U.S. vehicles to a modest 40 miles per gallon by 2012 would mean the United States could trim its oil consumption by three million barrels per day—more than it imports from all the Persian Gulf countries. And though buyers would have to pay more initially for gas-electric hybrids, they could save, on average, $5,000 at the gas pump over the 15-year life of a vehicle.

The problem of course is that no one in America actually keeps their car for 15 yrs, so the savings are muted. BUT -- If the price of oil continues to climb, the cars will play an integral part for the auto makers.

Of course Toyota is the leader and eveyone else is playing catch up.

From a business perspective, if hybrids take off in the marketplace, Toyota will almost certainly emerge as the player to beat, thanks to its hefty investment in the technology over the last decade.

So is the $1 billion bet paying off? Yaegashi laughs and demurs. “I hesitate to say we are very much ahead of the others, but I do want to emphasize the difference between Toyota and the other companies,” he says. “We have a six-year advantage in mass-producing hybrids.”


Catching up looks like a bumpy road for other automakers. Even Honda, probably Toyota’s most advanced hybrid competitor, has its work cut out, according to industry experts. “When it comes to engineering the system as a whole, I think Toyota has three, four years’ advantage over the others, even compared to Honda,” says Koji Endo, a Tokyo-based auto analyst for Credit Suisse First Boston. Honda’s models—which include a hybrid Insight and Civic, and an Accord due this year—have less electrical power and are more expensive to produce than Toyota’s, Endo says.


The US guys are further beyond than Honda, but what else is new?

One more reason not to be fat and to give fat people crap...(via an email)

It's Good to Know: The High Cost -- in Your Tax Dollars -- of Obesity

Obese Americans cost the United States about $75 billion in weight-related medical bills every year, according to a study by RTI International and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And the public is paying about $39 billion, or $175 per taxpayer, through Medicare and Medicaid programs for obesity-linked illnesses.

A Soldier's Tale of Fear and Loathing

Worse than Iraq....me thinks so.

"'Permanent bases in Chechnya are even worse than prisons. They are surrounded by three rows of barbed wire, trenches and a mine field, and the soldiers have nowhere to go. They are surrounded by enemy territory,' said Ida Kuklina of the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers.
'Soldiers from normal army bases can go outside the base for a breath of fresh air, or to see girls. But in Chechnya the only time they can get away from their terrible officers is when they are on operations in enemy territory. It's like living on an island.'
The same day Dmitry spoke to a reporter, he had led a search party outside the base to find a conscript who had abandoned his post with a rifle the night before.
'We didn't find anything,' he said. 'But sometimes you find them dead, or sometimes the Chechen police find them and give them back for a ransom.'"

Ballers