Even mighty Toyota isn’t immune to the downturn in sales in the United States due to the horrible current economic climate and credit crisis. Revenue is down nearly 70 percent for the Japanese giant, a situation that it is anything but familiar with. So, Toyota has created a team headed by its President Katsuaki Watanabe that will focus on ways to spend less money. Expect the automaker to extend incentives to more of its fuel efficient models, not just full-size pickup trucks and SUVs, and move quickly to bring more fuel-saving models to market as quickly as possible, especially new hybrids.

If Toyota plans to spend less money overall but more on hybrid development, expect to see its larger vehicles be affected the most by the budget cuts. Models that aren’t segment leaders when it comes to fuel efficiency are likely to wait a bit longer for model refreshes as more hybrids are rolled out instead. It should be noted that this is exactly the strategy that General Motors is taking, except that GM is extremely close to running completely out of money while Toyota has got plenty in reserve. GM’s continued life depends on its fuel-savers while Toyota’s motive is continued profitability, making it painfully obvious that The General should have gotten a much earlier start on its hybrids and EVs.

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First Honda said it was going to press the reset button on its hybrid efforts and come out with something bolder than the Civic Hybrid. Then it laid out plans for a number of hybrids that would be priced considerably more aggressively than the Toyota Prius. One of the concepts, the funky CR-Z, has already got people abuzz.

More details have emerged about the first hybrid to appear, a 5-door hatch with unique styling that’s based on the Fit, but three inches taller and one inch wider. It will use the Civic Hybrid’s Integrated Motor Assist technology and mate that car’s 1.3-liter engine with 94 hp to a 15kW electric motor powered by a nickel-metal-hydride battery pack. Fuel economy, according to insider predictions, will be somewhere around 71 - 82 miles per gallon, but that’s based on Japanese domestic use. Expect a drop for U.S. comparison.

Honda is considering a return to the name “Insight” for its first new hybrid, which we’re all for. The Insight was a brilliant little ride, and we never understood why Honda let it go. Though it was low on practicality with only two seats and not much storage, it was a purpose-built vehicle for big mpg numbers. This potential new Insight will be Honda’s global hybrid, and the company expects to sell 100,000 of them in the U.S. annually. Add this to the other three hybrids Honda is planning, and Honda’s hybrid future — assuming it delivers as promised — looks quite bright.

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BMW is full of gas – literally. It has unveiled a new concept vehicle that can run solely on lightweight hydrogen. A previous version of its Hydrogen 7 concept car was a bi-fuel design, taking both gasoline and what many experts believe is the fuel of the future.

“The mono-fuel Hydrogen 7 is the (result) of more than 25 years of hydrogen development by BMW,” noted Tom Baloga, Vice-president of Engineering for BMW in the US. “It demonstrates BMW’s support for a hydrogen infrastructure by producing an internal combustion engine that produces truly near-zero emissions and simultaneously cleans the air of certain pollutants.”

The previous version of the BMW Hydrogen 7 did have one key advantage: if the lightweight gas wasn’t available, a motorist could switch to gasoline and keep running. But the downside is that the car’s big V12 powertrain had to be compromised to handle both fuels. And that impacted performance, mileage and emissions, according to BMW officials.

The tiniest amount of NOx does come out of the tailpipe, the natural result of the compression-ignition cycle in an internal combustion engine. But, “The BMW Hydrogen 7’s emissions were only a fraction of SULEV level, making it one of the lowest emitting combustion engine vehicles that have been manufactured,” contended Thomas Wallner, a mechanical engineer who leads Argonne’s hydrogen vehicle testing activities. “Moreover, the car’s engine actively cleans the air. Argonne’s testing shows that the Hydrogen 7’s 12-cylinder engine actually shows emissions levels that, for certain components, such as Non Methane Organic Gases (NMOG’s) and Carbon Monoxides (CO’s), are cleaner than the ambient air that comes into the car’s engine.”

BMW’s approach to hydrogen is unusual, though not entirely unique. Most manufacturers working with this “green” fuel are using it to run fuel cell stacks. At their most basic, fuel cells combine hydrogen with oxygen from the atmosphere, producing water vapor and electricity. That current can be used to run a vehicle’s electric motors.

Burning hydrogen in an IC engine is generally considered less efficient, but it also makes it easier to switch to the fuel without completely rebuilding the automotive infrastructure. Other makers, including Ford and Mazda, have also been experimenting with this approach, the Japanese maker, for example, field-testing hydrogen-powered versions of the rotary-powered RX-8 sports cars.

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Paparazzi asked celebrity Paris Hilton about going “green”  and buying her new hybrid Yukon. Mrs. Hilton says “everyone” should buy a hybrid. Why? They are “awesome!” She even brags she has “the first one.” What might Mrs. Hilton mean by saying she has the first hybrid, a type of vehicle that’s been on sale for many years and is actually quite popular? All the commercials for the GM hybrids say “limited availability.” GM only recently began selling the very expensive hybrid SUV, so demand may not be that high. Paris probably meant the first hybrid Tahoe sold from that dealership but it’s also very possible Paris Hilton has the first hybrid Yukon IN THE WORLD!

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