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Toyota's HaMo urban mobility carsharing program comes to France

We're guessing no one's nuts enough to try to take one of Toyota's three-wheeled leaning electric i-Road vehicles up into the French Alps. Still, the town of Grenoble, France, which sits at the foot of the mountains, has received 35 of those vehicles as part of a carsharing pilot program. Toyota's thrown in 35 four-wheel Auto Body COMS vehicles into the program as well. Grenoble, which is about 200 miles north of Marseille, was presumably chosen because of existing carsharing programs run by Cite-lib. This program, dubbed "Cite lib by Ha:mo," goes a little more futuristic, though, as it's part of what Toyota calls its "Ha:mo" plan (Ha:mo is short for "harmonious mobility"). The program will run for three years and includes 27 charging stations near bus lines and train stations. The public will be charged anywhere from three to 19 euros ($3.80 to $24.50 US) to use the vehicles for between 15 minutes and four hours. The good news is that drivers can pick up the vehicles in one location and drop them off in another. Toyota started testing the i-Road vehicles in Toyota City, Japan, this past March. The trike is about three feet wide and has a top speed of 28 miles per hour. Check out Toyota's press release below and read AutoblogGreen's "First Drive" impressions of the i-Road here. "Cite lib by Ha:mo", a New Type of Urban Mobility Based on Ultra-Compact Electric Vehicles Connected to Public Transport, Launches in Grenoble, France This innovative car-sharing service aims to prepare the City and agglomeration of Grenoble for electric mobility within a comprehensive multi-modal mobility plan. The three-year trial project brings together the competencies and services of five partners: the City of Grenoble, the Metro Area, French electricity company EDF and its affiliate Sodetrel, Toyota, and Cite lib, the local car-sharing operator. 35 three-wheel Toyota i-ROAD and 35 four-wheel Toyota Auto Body COMS will be available for short city trips in 27 charging stations installed and operated by Sodetrel - including for one-way trips from one station to another. A total of 120 charging points for the project and 41 for other plug-in vehicles will be added to the city's transport infrastructure. A simple pricing plan dubbed "3, 2, 1 euros" for respectively the first, second and third 15-minute increments will be proposed to Grenoble citizens.

Toyota increasing Yaris Hybrid production to 222,000 this year in France

More fuel economy means more factory workers and more production for Toyota's most popular model in Europe. That simple equation explains why the Japanese automaker is boosting annual production of its gas- and hybrid-powered Yaris compact vehicles at its French factory. The new number will be about 222,000, a 15 percent increase. To do that, Toyota will need to add about 500 workers to bring its total there to more than 4,000, UK's The Green Car Website says. Vive le Toyota! Toyota updated the European Yaris in the middle of 2011 and added a hybrid version later that year, the model has many fans across the pond. It helps that they hybrid is rated (using the friendlier European standards) at a whopping 81 miles per gallon, a tremendous number for a car that costs approximately $26,000. Toyota could soon have a bit more room in the small hybrid segment, since it was reported recently that Honda would discontinue European sales of its Insight and CR-Z hybrids soon. That decision was made easier because of increasing competition from Toyota, which boosted hybrid sales in Europe last year by 43 percent. In contrast, both the CR-Z and Insight experienced more than a 60-percent plunge in European sales in 2013.

Junkyard Gem: 2010 Pontiac Vibe

Just over a month before filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2009, General Motors announced that the 83-year-old Pontiac Division would be "phased out" by the end of 2010. Only three Pontiac vehicles were sold as 2010 models in the United States: the Solstice, Vibe and G6 (new G3s were sold here during 2010 but they were all 2009 models, while the G5 was available as a 2010 model only in Canada and Mexico). Today's bit of junkyard automotive history is one of the very last Vibes ever built, found in a yard near Denver, Colorado. This car is significant not just as one of the final vehicles to bear Pontiac badges but also as one of the last cars built by the New United Motor Manufacturing Incorporated GM-Toyota joint venture in California, better known as NUMMI. The NUMMI factory began life as GM's Fremont Assembly, which built its first vehicle (a C-Series pickup) in 1963 and closed in 1982 after building its final vehicle (an Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera). Rebooted as NUMMI, the first 1985 Chevrolet Nova (an Americanized AE82 Toyota Corolla Sprinter) rolled off the line in December of 1984. A quarter-century and better than eight million vehicles hence, NUMMI shut down production after its last Corolla was finished on April 1, 2010. While there was some noise about the Oakland Athletics building a new stadium on the site at the time, Tesla ended up buying most of the site soon after that. Tesla now builds more vehicles per year there than NUMMI ever did. The Vibe was co-developed with Toyota and based on the same platform as the ninth-generation Corolla. The Toyota Matrix was mechanically identical and was built in Canada, while the Japanese-market version (known as the Toyota Voltz) was built on the same NUMMI line as the Vibe and shipped across the Pacific. The Vibe/Matrix/Voltz got a redesign for the 2009 model year, but few noticed due to all the turmoil in the GM world at the time. The final Vibe was built in August 2009. This car was built in July of 2009, just before the end. It was living in West Texas just prior to coming to Colorado. El Paso is about a ten-hour drive from this car's current location. Once in the Centennial State, it got parked somewhere it shouldn't have been and ended up being auctioned to Pick Your Part. An occupant of this Vibe had time to sample some of the local agricultural products before that happened.