Since opening our doors, Maita Toyota has kept a firm commitment to our customers. We offer a wide selection of vehicles and hope to make the car buying process as quick and hassle free as possible.
You've probably seen your fair share of Ice Bucket Challenge
videos online this week, which are meant to raise money to fight
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often called "Lou Gehrig's
Disease." Hopefully, you've seen ours. We've watched a lot of these videos, but haven't seen one that makes an alt-fuel point quite like a new video from Toyota.
Julie Hamp, the CCO of Toyota North America, lost a sister-in-law to ALS
last year, so for her the cause is personal. Instead of just dumping
icy-cold water on her head, Hamp uses water from the FCV fuel cell
vehicle parked next to her. Because, of course, a hydrogen fuel cell car
emits nothing but water vapor.
Toyota didn't run a lot of hydrogen through the car to collect water, it
just got enough to top off the ice bucket. Using the water emissions
from a hydrogen vehicle in a creative way is not a new trick. Two years
ago, the California Fuel Cell Partnership made the point that you can drink the emissions (just like Mercedes-Benz did earlier this year),
but admitted that "fuel cells produce about the same amount of water as
gasoline vehicle – about 1/3 cup for a full day of driving." Still, for
a good cause, we'll accept the mix of tap water and "emissions."
Check out the video below, if you haven't had enough already.
For all the hype surrounding driverless cars, no one
knows exactly what their broader implications may be. This week one car
designer suggested automated vehicles could deal a setback to trends in
the U.S. toward less driving and more sustainable modes.
Will driverless cars promote more sprawl? Photo: Wikipedia
At the Automated Vehicles Symposium in San Francisco, Ken Laberteaux,
senior principal scientist for Toyota’s North American team studying
future transportation, spoke with a Bloomberg reporter about the
potential for unwelcome outcomes, including more sprawl.
“U.S. history shows that anytime you make driving easier, there seems
to be this inexhaustible desire to live further from things,”
Laberteaux said. “The pattern we’ve seen for a century is people turn
more speed into more travel, rather than maybe saying ‘I’m going to use
my reduced travel time by spending more time with my family.’”
He said tolling could be a potential solution, but then went on to
question the political practicality of that approach. “We’ve created an
entire culture and economy based on the notion that transportation is
cheap,” he said.
Angie Schmitt
is a newspaper reporter-turned planner/advocate who manages the
Streetsblog Network from glamorous Cleveland, Ohio. She also writes
about urban issues particular to the industrial Midwest at Rustwire.com.
