There'll be no more Prius parked in the garage of City of Toronto Mayor, David Miller. The vintage 2003 Toyota import was chagrined to learn, whilst in the shop to correct an electronics problem, that it had been replaced by a almost-domestically-produced car, a new Chevrolet Malibu hybrid. Although the Chevy is assembled in Kansas, it has parts from over 30 Ontario, Canada auto parts suppliers and the Mayor felt that it would be a positive gesture to make a show of support with the purchase.

Unfortunately for the politician, he may notice that the mpg numbers from his new ride are a little disappointing. His Prius was rated at 52 city/42 hwy (yeah, it's the old EPA rating, but still), while the 2009 Malibu Hybrid is rated at a mediocre 26 city/ 34 hwy. Were it us making the buying decision, we might have done any Canada-content-number-fudging necessary to get ourselves the Ford Fusion hybrid (41 city/36 hwy). Heck, we might have gotten a phone call from Mulally out of it. Thanks to Kevin for the tip!


[Source: Globe and Mail]

The Toronto Police Services is trying to lessen its environmental impact by adjusting the way it goes about some of its daily activities. To that end, the cops have added a pair of Honda Civic Hybrids and a pair of smart fortwo diesels to the fleet. The idea behind the change is to utilize vehicles that are easier to operate and park in the the denser urban environment. The smarts are being used for parking enforcement, where the aggravation one feels at seeing Five-0 writing you a parking ticket is presumably mitigated by the sight of the cute little two-seater wearing a police car costume. ("Oh, isn't that just darling?")

Of course, when you're paying said ticket, you won't remember the car as being so cute anymore.

[Source: Torontoist]

Canada's biggest city is starting a program to evaluate the performance and benefits of plug-in hybrids. The city of Toronto will fund a pilot project through the Toronto Atmospheric Fund starting with ten current hybrid vehicles that will be provided by organizations and companies around the city such as car sharing service AutoShare, York University and Toronto Hydro.

The first ten cars will be retrofitted by HyMotion which was recently purchased by A123 Systems using lithium ion battery packs. Students from the University of Toronto will be monitoring the program over the first year, measuring fuel consumption and emissions to evaluate the performance. They are expecting net CO2 emissions reductions of forty percent, a number that may rise to sixty percent when the rest of Ontario's coal-fired power plants are retired. They will also be evaluating vehicle-to-grid technology and comparing results of the whole program to those in other cities. If things work out and they can get the funding, the program could be expanded to 200 vehicles next year.

[Source: Toronto Star]

There are almost 1,500 buses in the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) fleet. Over the next two years, almost, these buses will burn over 120 million liters (that's about 32 million U.S. gallons) of biodiesel supplied by Suncor Energy Products, Inc. 

Suncor's director of distribution operations and national sales, Don Smith, said in a press release that, "Suncor's unique 'in-line' blending process will deliver a higher quality and cleaner-burning fuel to the TTC."

Suncor is into green energy at more than the biodiesel level. The company sells ethanol-gasoline blends at it's Sunoco gas stations in Ontario (unrelated to Sunoco stations in the U.S) and plans to begin construction later this year on a wind power project in Ripley, if they get regulatory approval.

[Source: Free Market News]