After all the worst that can happen is you don't get a discount. 

One of the biggest concerns about hybrid and electric vehicles has been the cost of the inevitable battery replacement. Modern cars and built to last and the average age of the vehicles on the road today is closing in on 11 years. Every car I've had has remained in my fleet for a minimum of 8 years and my wife's last car was nearly 10 1/2 when it finally got replaced. 

However users of mobile phones and laptops know that most batteries don't last anywhere near that long and they aren't cheap to replace. Scale that up to car sized batteries and the numbers can quickly get scary. When the +TOYOTA Prius first debuted over a decade ago replacement nickel-metal hydride batteries were priced at $8,000 and lithium-ion packs for the +Tesla Motors Roadster can cost upwards of $30,000.

Thankfully for consumers, the EPA considers hybrid batteries to be part of the emission control system (since they impact the emissions of a vehicle by allowing it to run engine off) and thus requires them to be warrantied for 8 years or 100,000 miles. With this in mind companies like Toyota, +Honda, +Ford Motor Company, GM  and others carefully control how the battery is used to ensure that it lasts for most if not all of the life of the vehicle. 

The EPA warranty rules don't apply to pure battery electric vehicles like the +Nissan Leaf and all of Tesla's machines since they produce no emissions. Nissan opted to offer the 8 year warranty for the Leaf to remain competitive with the +Chevrolet Volt Tesla bumped the Model S battery warranty to 8 years from the 3 years on the roadster. 

So far most hybrid batteries have held up very well. Ford Escape Hybrids in New York taxi service quickly racked up over 175,000 miles with no battery problems. One owner of a 2001 Prius recently had to replace an out of warranty battery. The dealer originally quoted over $4,400 but dropped that to $2,900 after the owner got a $2,500 price for a refurbished battery.

While these prices aren't cheap, I'm not looking forward to the screams of agony when BEV owners have to start replacing their much larger batteries later this decade. 

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Replacing A 2001 Toyota Prius Battery Pack: What It Cost
It's one of the most frequent questions asked about hybrids: What happens if I have to replace the high-voltage battery pack? While Toyota warrants its Prius batteries for 8 years/100,000 miles (or 10…

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There are some amazingly good vehicles on this list and almost all of them really impressed me when I drove them in the past. In fact several of them are among my favorite vehicles in their segments including the +Ford Motor Company Flex, +Mazda USA 5 and the Miata. I've never driven the current Volvo V70 and I thought the Suzuki Kizashi was a mixed bag of nice styling, good chassis and a decidedly underwhelming powertrain.

Reshared post from +Automobile Magazine

The Best Cars That Nobody Buys: We love them, but nobody buys them. What do you think about our picks?

Read More: http://bit.ly/P0xZU3

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The 1991 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme was just a so-so car when it was new over 20 years ago. However its front-wheel drive platform and GM 3.1-liter V6 were really nothing to get excited about.

Why anyone would bother expending the effort to try and "replicate" the look of a $270,000+ Bentley on such a lame platform is a mystery I will never understand.

The other thing I don't understand is people that put detail shots of stuff that just doesn't well executed on eBay listings. Some of the execution on this replica is really poor. I guess the bigger mystery at this point is why anyone would bid over $6,000 for this thing.

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It Came from eBay Hell: Oldsmobile Poses as a 1990s Bentley Continental R – Carscoop
The Continental R coupe built from 1991 to 2003 in just a little over 1200 units is one of the last old school Bentleys before the Volkswagen Group took over shop and began churning out a contemporary…

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Over the past couple of decades we've moved from the birth era of computing where the only inputs were the ones that fed in through keyboards, tapes or cards to a world of sensors. 

As sensors have become increasingly accurate, small and cheap, everything from our phones to our cars has been transformed. I spent my entire engineering career figuring out how to take sensor data in cars and use it figure out what the vehicle and the driver were doing. Once we figured out what we thought the driver wanted and how the vehicle was responding we could send out control signals to make sure the car stayed on course. 

A decade ago phones started to get cameras and gps sensors that could tell the 911 operators where we were in an emergency (or the authorities surreptitiously tracking you).

Those systems were just the beginning though http://fordfusionstory.com/latest/index.php/2012/04/09/the-2013-ford-fusion-will-be-americas-smartest-midsize-sedan/

Now cars have driver assist system that increasingly provide autonomous control before the driver can such as emergency braking, lane departure prevention and automatic parking. In the not too distant future, our cars may know more about us than we know about ourselves. http://media.ford.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=36728

As software engineers figure out how to combine all the signals around us, our phones will tell us what we want to know before we even figure out the question and our cars will simply deliver us to where we need to be. 

Reshared post from +Robert Scoble

The world of mobile just shifted to a new contextual age

Read my blog for how significant yesterday's announcement by Qualcomm is. This is huge and will affect everything mobile for years to come.

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Mobile 3.0 arrives: How Qualcom just showed us the future of the cell phone (and why iPhone sucks for this new contextual age) — Scobleizer
Mobile 3.0 arrives: How Qualcom just showed us the future of the cell phone (and why iPhone sucks for this new contextual age). July 11, 2012 By Robert Scoble Leave a Comment · Tweet. Google Now scree…

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Pastafarianism FTW!

Reshared post from +Atheist ®

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Some excellent advice from +John Pozadzides on what product PR people should do and practices they should avoid when dealing with media. At best making these mistakes will leave you with none of the coverage you covet. At worst, a grumpy journalist could leave you with a news disaster you didn't need. Case in point http://www.insideline.com/chevrolet/volt/2011/gm-lied-chevy-volt-is-not-a-true-ev.html

Reshared post from +John Pozadzides

What I think about the general state of PR when it comes to social media engagement:
http://geekbeat.tv/the-10-biggest-pr-mistakes-companies-routinely-make-with-social-emerging-media/

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The 10 Biggest PR Mistakes Companies Routinely Make with Social / Emerging Media
If you’re part of the PR Machine and you have to deal with the emerging media take heed! Don’t make these mistakes!

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Sometimes that bright shiny object you see is just a broken liquor bottle in the gutter reflecting the sun

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Sign the petition to demand that copyrights be restored to their original terms.  Disney has already made enough off Mickey Mouse, it's time to put him in the Public domain and let others have a crack at the rodent.

Reshared post from +Dan Gillmor

Sign this White House petition to restore original copyright term (14 years plus 14-year renewal). If enough people sign, the administration has to at least respond. We all know that the response will be, "No way," but why not get yourself on the record anyway? I am. 

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Support the Restoration of Copyrights to their Original Duration of 28 Years | We the People: Your Voice in Our Government
Your Weekly Address · Speeches & Remarks · Press Briefings · Statements & Releases · White House Schedule · Presidential Actions · Executive Orders · Presidential Memoranda · Proclamations · L…

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We will need a variety of solutions to meet the needs of different drivers. Battery electric vehicles are definitely not for everyone with their limited range although they can work for many people. One British owner of a +Nissan Leaf was clearly on the edge of the useful operating range of the plug-in only car and got himself stranded twice and nearly stuck on several other occasions. 

For this particular driver an extended range electric vehicle like the Vauxhall Ampera made more sense by providing electric-only driving range with a backup engine in case the battery couldn't make it.

For other drivers, a plug-in power-split hybrid like the new Pruis PHV, Ford C-Max Energi or Fusion Energi or even smaller more efficient gas or diesel engines could be a better option depending on where they drive and how far. Someday even hydrogen fuel cells will probably be part of the mix. It's all about the Power of Choice

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Like The Plug, Not The Range: Leaf Owner Trades In For Volt (Ampera)
When the 2011 Nissan Leaf launched at the end of 2010, many environmentally-conscious drivers took the plunge and decided to buy one, hoping to leave gasoline behind for good. For the majority of Leaf…

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