2007 Toyota Tacoma 2wd Access V6 At Prerunner, Bed Liner, on 2040-cars

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Toyota Prius remains best-selling vehicle in California, wireless charging tests underway

About one in every nine new cars in the US are sold in the California. If we're just looking at the four Toyota Prius hybrid variants, then the number becomes closer to one in three. Tesla Model S battery-electric vehicle sales? Try one in 2.7. For the second straight year, the Prius was the best-selling car in the Golden State. Toyota sold 69,728 Priuses there, almost a third of the more than 234,000 sold in the US in 2013. Prius sales in California alone were up almost 13 percent. And Toyota's ready to build upon that momentum with a new version of the Prius Plug-in Hybrid, saying that it's testing a wireless recharging system in Japan's Aichi Prefecture and will start similar tirals stateside later this year. We'll make the wild prediction that some of those tests, which involves magnetic resonance, will be in California. Meanwhile, Tesla's numbers were, in their own way, were more impressive. The California-based automaker sold 8,347 of its Model S units in the Golden State out of about 22,300 nationwide in 2012, Bloomberg News reports. In all, advanced-powertrain vehicles accounted for 9.3 percent of California new-vehicle sales, compared to 3.8 percent for the country, Bloomberg says, citing Hybrid Cars and Baum & Associates. Check out Toyota's press release on its California sales below. Prius Medals In The Golden State Toyota Prius is best-selling vehicle line in California Wireless charging testing for Prius Plug-in TORRANCE, Calif., Feb. 18, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The Prius took home the gold in 2013 as the most popular vehicle-line in California for the second year in a row. The Prius Family (Prius Liftback, Prius v, Prius c and Prius Plug-in) took the podium in both 2012 and 2013 as the best-selling California vehicle name plate. 69,728 drivers hit the road in 2013, according to the California Auto Outlook Report, while 61,893 Californians joined the family in 2012. In the Golden State, the Prius Family outsells all other hybrid competitors combined. California drivers lead the country in adoption of vehicles powered, either wholly or partially, by electricity. 9.3% of vehicles sold in the state run on some form of electricity, according to the report. But despite the growing number of hybrid competitors, Toyota's hybrid leadership remains unmatched. In fact, one out of every two hybrids in California carries the Prius name plate.

Honda scores big in Automobile Advertising of the Year Awards [w/videos]

This year the Detroit Auto Show didn't just celebrate the automobile, it celebrated how we find out about the automobile, too. Partnering The One Club, this year introduced the 2014 One Show Automobile Advertising of the Year Award to Cobo Hall, celebrating winners in five different categories of advertising: broadcast television, online, interactive, experiential, and print/outdoor. Winners in those categories were judged by 50 creative directors and journalists, while a Public Choice category was chosen from among nearly 20,000 online votes.
Honda walked off with three of the six awards, its Hands spot taking Broadcast honors, its Sound of Honda getting the Online category and Illusions winning Public Choice. Hyundai made the grade in Interactive with Driveway Decision Maker, Fiat captured Print/Outdoor with its "Letters" ad, and Toyota's Tundra Endeavor Campaign spot and BMW's A Window into the Near Future were co-winners for Experiential.
You can watch all of the press release and winning videos below or check out all of the finalists, announced last month, for a refresher.

Toyota recalls 370k Sienna minivans, 10.5k Lexus GS models over separate issues

The year of the recall continues, but this time it isn't from General Motors. Toyota is announcing two, separate recalls affecting a pair of its models.
First, Toyota is recalling 370,000 Sienna minivans from the 2004 to 2011 model years that are registered or originally sold in cold-weather states. The problem is that the spare tire carrier assembly cable can be splashed by water contaminated with road salt and cause corrosion. There is a splashguard in place to prevent this, but it sometimes gets lost in "normal usage," according to the company. If the cable does break, then "the spare tire may separate from the vehicle."
This is actually the second repair for this problem for some of these vehicles. In 2010, Toyota issued a recall on 600,000 Siennas from the 1998 to 2010 model years. At the time, it installed a new splashguard and sprayed the area with an anti-rust chemical. However, according to Toyota spokesperson John Hanson speaking to Autoblog, the campaign worked for the 1998 to 2003 models but wasn't sufficient for the newer ones. For the latest recall, the vehicles are getting the entire cable replaced with a stainless steel unit and a new splashguard.