Why do they bother, these Japanese companies? Don't they know lip service is all that's needed? "Spin", and press releases? Bit of greenwash here and there? The next quarterly profit report is the only thing to think about, don't they know that?
"People don't want those, and there is no money in them" Right. Just like there is no market in Canada and US for small diesel cars and 4 cylinder turbodiesel 4x4 crew cabs. Detroit, I used to stare across the St. Clair River at you and marvel at Motown from my vantage point a mile away in Canada. I saw the legacy of early automotive pioneers, but was not so close I could not see the forest for the trees - a bit of detached perspective. I saw your riots in 68, Black Day in July, as Lightfoot put it, as well. I saw your workers come and fish in our larger drainage ditches on weekends to get away from the factory memories of the week before - they did not look like "associates". I saw the managers and suppliers cruising in their big cabin cruiser power boats, throwing a gigantic erosion-causing wake, swamping canoes, getting a gallon to the mile as they blasted upriver, forcing the fishermen to pull in their lines to nearer the shore. I saw your "RenCen" gleaming in the sun once, when I was up in a glider silently circling with the hawks, at the Windsor Gliding Club in Rutherford - it was 50 miles away from you, and I could see it clear as anything, a symbol of what Detroit was going to be - that was 15 years ago - we're still waiting for the true Renaissance and Renaissance People to emerge, in too many ways. ...I turned and could not see anything, to the north, above Sarnia, home of the "Chemical Valley" and the refineries and the big coal burning power plants, Lambton GS and nearby Edison - a mere 20 miles away, they were obscured by their own smog. I have seen, very well, the good, the bad and the ugly of that region. I lived in the middle of it, but apart from it, at a small family farm, for the majority of my years, before the smog put my wife in the hospital a couple of times - on oxygen the second time, and I said "we are leaving this place behind", and moved to BC, where, so far, the air is still cleaner, despite more and more of your cars coming with us people as we try to "run". But we can only run so long, in fact most of us have run our out places to run to (how are you doing today, Seattle? How's traffic? How's the smog? Nice place to run off to a few year ago, wasn't it? How is it now? Vancouver, BC...how are you doing today - same story there.) Where are you now Detroit???? Get with it, eh? If it was wartime, we'd have this stuff built in a week. It's getting embarrassing. Well, we are in a competitive war for market share, and war against ourselves for sustainability - maybe it is time to declare a "War on Stupidity"! (I mean no offense to the good people of the USA by this remark - so many of our supporters have been from the USA - thanks to them so much! But, we who care must all band together and push our own industries in our own regions to do better, across the board, on energy-efficiency, competitive "green" products, pollution prevention, clean production, social and environmental accounting and reporting - the list is still rather long. They must lead in these things, not follow, or we'll all suffer in many ways and our kids and grandkids, nieces, nephews will suffer more. A little more lost with each generation, unless we really start turning things around. Action, not rhetoric. (PS: I am working on a new "glider", of sorts, of my own, both figuratively and literally) Edward Beggs, BES, MSc Neoteric Biofuels Inc. Located in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, Canada 1-250-768-3169 Fax: 1-250-768-3118 Toll-Free (Canada/USA): 1-866-768-3169 http://www.biofuels.ca [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 7/29/02 6:39 AM, Keith Addison at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17050/story.htm > Planet Ark : > Toyota to double hybrid vehicle lineup by 03 - paper > > JAPAN: July 29, 2002 > > NEW YORK - Toyota Motor Corp plans to double the number of its > eco-friendly hybrid models to six by the end of 2003 to cement its > lead in the growing field of low emission vehicles, the Nihon Keizai > Shimbun's online Saturday edition said. > > Toyota, Japan's largest automaker, will release in the fall a hybrid > gas-electric version of its 2-liter Crown sedan and will later add > hybrid models of the Harrier sport-utility vehicle, along with its > recently debuted Alphard minivan, the paper said. > > The hybrid version of the Harrier, a popular model known as Lexus > RX300 in the United States, will be exported to U.S. dealers, the > report said. > > A spokesman at Toyota America said nothing has been decided yet. > > Unlike pure electric cars, hybrids do not need to be plugged in to be > recharged. But they are more expensive than gasoline cars, with the > Estima hybrid costing some 500,000 yen ($4,209) more than a > gasoline-powered Estima. > > Toyota, which last August debuted a 3-liter hybrid Crown, or Camry in > the United States, will market the 2-liter hybrid Crown mainly to > government and municipal offices that are increasingly replacing > their cars with low-emission vehicles, the paper said. > > Without citing sources, the report said Toyota will likely keep the > price of the new hybrid Crown only 150,000 yen higher than the > gasoline-powered model. > > Since the automaker pioneered the way with the world's first hybrid > car Prius in 1997, Toyota has sold 30 percent of a total 100,000 > hybrid cars in overseas markets, the paper said. > > Honda Motor Co is the only other automaker so far to mass-market > hybrid vehicles - the two-seater Insight and a recently launched > hybrid version of the Civic compact. > > Toyota enjoys a 90-percent share of the global market for > eco-friendly vehicles and hopes to triple annual production of hybrid > cars to 300,000 units in 2005, the report said. > > REUTERS NEWS SERVICE > > > > Biofuel at Journey to Forever: > http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html > > Biofuels list archives: > http://archive.nnytech.net/ > > Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. > To unsubscribe, send an email to: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ > > ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/NsdPZD/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/9bTolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuels at Journey to Forever http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel at WebConX http://www.webconx.dns2go.com/2000/biofuel/biofuel.htm List messages are archived at the Info-Archive at NNYTech: http://archive.nnytech.net/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
