Thursday, December 11, 2008

California AB 32 Scoping Plan adopted, Toyota iQ is coming to US

Today, California Air Resources Board adopted its historical AB 32 Scoping Plan. This is a huge milestone for California to shift toward low-carbon society.

Yesterday, Toyota decided to launch their new concept car "iQ" to US market. I think iQ is a next generation Prius, not in terms of functionality but in terms of concept -- to (possibly) change people's perception as to how a cool car should be. This is a big and nice surprise because small cars were traditionally thought to be the last choice by the American consumer and automakers haven't tried to sell them here. If people just choose to drive smaller cars, it's such a simple and easy way to reduce GHG emission at a considerable scale.

AB 32 Scoping Plan is highly praised for its "comprehensiveness", but it's missing one critical concept: Small.

Being smaller is less footprint, both ecological and carbon.

Yes, small is not a bad thing at all. Small is a beautiful thing.

Find more about iQ...
http://www.toyota.co.uk/cgi-bin/toyota/bv/iq-blog.jsp
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/2214/

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi eco-samurai, thanks for writing about the scoping plan. I've just tried to find out more about it but can't see much in the news yet. Has it definitely been adopted?

We write Toyota's blog about the iQ for the UK. It has low emissions and fuel consumption, but it *isn't* the next generation Prius.

iQ is already on sale in Japan, and goes on sale in the UK in January. Toyota hasn't confirmed whether it's going to be sold in the US - at least, we don't think it has.

eco-samurai said...

Thank you ThisisiQ.
Yes Scoping Plan has been adopted, I was there!

And I edited my description about iQ as a next generation Prius. I only meant from marketing perspective, not technology point of view.

I read in Japanese news that Toyota decided to start selling iQ in US market, but I couldn't find any article in English. Stay tuned.

I linked your site for more information about iQ!