On Earth Day, Toyota started taking “early reservations” for its plug-in hyrid Prius, which will be available in 15 U.S. states starting in early 2012. Now comes word from the Nikkei business daily, via Reuters, that Toyota plans to make plug-in technology a standard feature for the Prius by 2014. That would mean there’d be a lot of hyper-thrifty Priuses tooling around the planet: According to Toyota, the plug-ins are capable of driving 14 miles on electricity alone and attain an equivalent of 134 miles per gallon. (Real-world testers have reached a more realistic but still impressive 83 mpg.) Last year, Toyota announced that cumulative sales of the Prius had reached two million units worldwide, and that the company was aiming to sell a million hybrids vehicles a year by 2015.
--Reed McManus
