2010 Toyota Tundra Base Crew Cab Pickup 4-door 4.6l on 2040-cars

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Toyota discontinuing FJ Cruiser after 2014 model year

The Toyota FJ Cruiser is not long for this world. According to the manufacturer's own fleet website, the rugged FJ will be discontinued after the 2014 model year, with the companies final orders due in June of next year.
Toyota first launched the FJ Cruiser in 2006 as a 2007 model, and aside from minor year-over-year changes, it has not been substantially updated. The FJ is the modern successor to the original FJ40 Land Cruiser that Toyota produced from the 1960s all the way up through 1984, when the automaker decided to better focus on its larger, four-door Land Cruiser line. Currently, it uses a 4.0-liter V6 engine with either rear- or four-wheel drive, and is available with either a five-speed automatic or six-speed manual transmission. Interestingly, word of the FJ's demise comes not long after Toyota's US boss, Bill Fay, reaffirmed his company's commitment to body-on-frame trucks in late July.
Also of interest, Toyota's fleet website states that the 2014 model year Prius range will have "minor updates," though it's unclear what those are as of this writing. When Autoblog reached out to confirm these developments with Toyota, spokesman Curt McCallister reminded us, "As is our corporate policy, we don't discuss future products beyond the present or upcoming model year."

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.

Toyota Mirai might be the name of new fuel cell car; it means 'future'

Anybody remember the Ford Futura? It wasn't exactly a world-beater of a car, so we don't think the name Toyota's has apparently chosen for its first production fuel-cell vehicle is a tribute of sorts. Though one never knows. Maybe Toyota just likes 18-inch-tall EVs. The Japanese automaker has apparently settled on a nameplate for its fuel-cell model, and the name will be "Mirai," which means "future" in Japanese, Bloomberg News says, citing a person familiar with the process that it didn't identify. Bloomberg couldn't get anyone with Toyota to comment on record about the name – and neither could AutoblogGreen – but we do remember that Toyota has bandied this name about before, so we're not setting anything down in stone quite yet. Last month, Toyota said the new fuel cell car would debut in Japan next April and would be priced at about $69,000 before any sort of government incentives kicked in. The company hasn't revealed details about a US release date or pricing here, but indicated that US sales would start where there's already some semblance of a hydrogen-refueling infrastructure. That pretty much means California and nowhere else in the states. The fuel-cell model is said to have a full-tank range of about 435 miles and that the tank can be filled up in about three minutes, similar to a gas-powered vehicle. In other words, the future.