Aussie Motoring

If there’s one thing I like about a Toyota Prius … apart from it’s great fuel consumption … is the fact that you can never mistake it for anything else. There’s something unique about the shape that makes a Toyota Prius instantly recognisable and marks it’s driver as someone special

But now there are rumours coming out of Japan that the Toyota Prius is about to undergo a facelift that could take this car to a whole new level. There are no other production models out there that come fitted with solar panels but once the new Prius hits the streets there could be.

It seems that the rumoured facelift could include roof-mounted solar panels to provide power to run the airconditioner. Hmmm I checked … it’s not April 1 so this could be an interesting development in a car that Toyota can’t produce enough of to keep up with the demand.

I come from back in the time when any self respecting Aussie teenager spent Saturday’s working on his car. Back then a dual throat Webber was a great start to turning a placid little Mini into a fire-breathing monster and if your exhaust pipe wasn’t wider than the funnel on the Manly ferry you were inferior.

It’s easy to think that those days are gone now that we have let computers come between drivers and their cars. I mean how the heck to you turn something like a Prius into a machine that will drop wheelies in all forward gears?

Well perhaps they haven’t gone away after all and in a world of high-tech cars we know have geeks instead of the petrol-heads of old.

These days it’s not about tuning your carbies and playing with the timing - it’s all about tweaking your onboard computers and it’s a world where geeks rule. These days you don’t hot up your Prius - you hack it instead and hacking your Prius has become a mandatory for any self-respecting geek.

Back in October 2001 NewScientist.com ran a story on self-parking cars and suggested that they were just around the corner.

Unfortunately that corner was a few kilometres further away than NewScientist.com realised but now they really are just round the corner if you live in the US - or parking right outside your house if you live in the UK.

In the UK vehicles that are able to parallel park themselves are a reality and for just $700 extra you can buy a Toyota Prius fitted the accessory. The driver is still responsible for speed and braking but turning the wheel is all handled by the technology.

You can read the full story - and see the video - here.

The technology hasn’t arrived in the US just yet but it’s not far away - while for us here in Australia … well it’s probably still around the corner and several kilometres down the road.

While the Honda Civic hybrid (pictured) and the Toyota Prius - perhaps the best known hybrid in Australia - did not seem to attract much attention at the Brisbane Motor Show that could all change in the next few years.

A recent survey by KPMG of 140 automotive executives from around the world found that almost 90% of them felt that sales of hybrid cars were set to boom in the next five years.

What that means for the local Aussie manufacturers does not look good. No one has a hybrid on the horizon and the industry is still geared towards big vehicles that are less fuel-efficient than the market may want.