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At the 2010 Geneva Motor Show, Porsche unveiled a hybrid supercar that gets 78 MPG and does 0 to 60 in just 3.2 seconds. In fact, it's faster than Porsche's latest supercar, the Carrera GT. Meet the Porsche 918 Spyder plug-in hybrid concept and begin drooling!

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Toyota Motor, reeling from a public-relations fiasco over accelerator problems, on Wednesday reported dozens of complaints in North America and Japan about brake failure on its popular Prius hybrid.

Toyota is a pioneer in fuel-sipping hybrids and any new question marks over the safety of the Prius could deal a major setback to its efforts to recover from massive recalls and heavy losses inflicted by the global economic crisis.

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The Ford Fusion Hybrid sedan was soundly voted the 2010 Car of the Year. While not the first-ever hybrid vehicle to win this award (even for Ford), it is notable that the 2010 North American Car of the Year (NACOTY) was given to a U.S. automaker for a hybrid amidst one of the worst times to be selling any kind of car, much less a hybrid. And yet, the Fusion Hybrid helped Ford set record sales in hybrids in a year when overall industry demand for gas-electric cars tanked, bolstering the appearance that Ford is doing something right.

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"Toyota is planning a larger version of its popular Prius hybrid, which will be powered by a new kind of battery, a Japanese newspaper reported Friday.

The new Prius, either a station wagon or SUV, is set to go on sale by the end of next year. It will be the first from Toyota Motor Corp. with a lithium-ion battery, which is more powerful than the nickel-metal hydride battery, now in its hybrids, according to the nationally circulated Yomiuri newspaper."

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FedEx is announcing today that it has converted 92 of its trucks to diesel-electric hybrids (using lithium-ion batteries), bringing the total number of hybrids the company has to 264. There are a few reasons why these conversions are noteworthy. First, despite a bigger and more powerful engine (going from a 5.9L 175 HP diesel engine to a 6.7L 200 HP one), the converted trucks show an improvement of 44% in fuel economy, a decrease in particulate matter (PM) emissions of 96% (!), and a reduction of NOx emissions by 75%

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oyota Motor Corp's Prius hybrid was Japan's best-selling car in June while Honda Motor Co's rival Insight ranked fourth, helping the two hybrid leaders dominate the list of top-selling models.

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Looks like $4 level is the tipping point for any future changes in driver behavior, according to a new survey put out by Cars.com.

The survey found that if gas were to shoot to over $4 a gallon again, 40 percent of car shoppers would "consider purchasing a new fuel-efficient car right away."

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Amid questions over the viability of General Motors and Chrysler, Ford will detail its fuel-efficient car strategy and show off an all-electric Focus and hybrid Fusion sedan on Wednesday.

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The cost of entry to Hybrid-land (next to Fuelcellandia) just got a whole lot cheaper. Beginning March 24, the 2010 Honda Insight will be on sale, with the entry-level LX model selling for $19,800. That makes it the lowest-priced hybrid on U.S. roads.

hybrid honda honda insight

Seems shrinking gas prices haven't deterred Toyota's need for hybrid developin' speed. Starting with the third generation Prius and the new Lexus hybrid, the HS250h, which are being unveiled at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, the car company has announced that it will launch as many as 10 new hybrids by the early 2010's.

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Chris Cox of Derry, N.H., got tired of waiting for the electric car of the future. In August, he took matters into his own hands and had his 2008 Toyota Prius converted into a plug-in hybrid, which doubled its gas mileage — Cox now gets up to 100 miles per gallon for 30 to 40 miles at a stretch. Although the Prius is already a hybrid gas-electric model, the additional battery that Cox had installed enables him to travel more than 20 miles on all-electric power (compared to just two miles without it) before the gas engine kicks in.

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Hyundai's been making so many announcements about electric vehicles and hybrids lately you'd think it was ZAP. The Korean automaker's promised to put a hybrid subcompact, a hybrid mid-size and a plug-in competitor to the Chevrolet Volt on the road within five years. There's even some speculation at least one of them could be stamped "Made in the USA."

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Navistar is now offering customers of the International DuraStar Hybrid medium-duty truck a battery-lease program—the first of its kind in the North American commercial truck industry—that shaves $10,000 off the initial purchase price of the truck in exchange for making 60 monthly lease payments on the battery.

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