Lexus is trying to make the luxury car even more luxuriouserish by going hybrid, according to treehugger.com and Reuters news.   The managing officer of Toyota, which owns Lexus, “intends to introduce hybrid versions of its Lexus luxury vehicles as early as possible,” says the news report.   He went on to say that the firm is “considering making the Lexus lineup hybrid-only.”

This is certainly great news for the future of green cars, if Lexus follows through.   But what really caught my eye when looking into this story was this quote from treehugger:

The cause of this change of strategy is probably higher fuel costs (even if they went down a bit lately) and, especially, the fact that the global sales of Lexus fell 9% on the year to 310,000 in the January-August period.

That obviously makes sense, but did Lexus really sell only 310,000 cars in half a year?  I think I saw 310,000 Lexus ads in that timeframe.   Literally.   And I mean that in the Joe Biden sense of the word, which of course means not literally at all.

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The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

TakePart Gang:

Sudan Leader Charged with Genocide: What Are the Reactions? by Wendy Cohen

Inconvenient Truth of the Day: Al Gore Speaks on Climate Change by Joshua Tremblay

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Nicole Hughes:

“Farms in the Sky” a Solution to Global Food Crisis?

Wal-Mart Launches Eco-Bling Project

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Andy Kondrat:

NYC To Bring in 300 Hybrid Taxis Per Month

Coolio To Educate Students On Climate Change

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Jon Popham:

Pickens’ Plan for Energy Independence

On “Rent” Closing, the East Village, and Gentrification

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Gina Telaroli:

Batman Morals: Top 5 Lessons from the Capped Crusader’s Films

Emmy Nominations Kick “The Wire” to the Curb

Our very own Nicole Hughes told you a few months back that New York City has been working on greening its taxi fleet, and yesterday Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that greening will happen at an even faster clip.   In fact, the cabs that clog New York’s roadways will be replaced by hybrids at a rate of 300 a month.   Mayor Bloomberg has been working with automakers to increase the supply of hybrids to cabbies, and

Nissan Motor Co has promised the city to supply up to 200 of its Altima hybrids per month, while General Motors will provide 50 Chevrolet Malibu hybrids and Ford Motor Co promised 50 of its Escape hybrids, the mayor said.   That adds up to 90 more cars per month than the Taxi and Limousine Commission had said were needed to meet its goals, which aim to ensure that by 2012, the entire taxi fleet will be all-hybrid or a mix that includes other cars with similar high mile-per-gallon ratings.

This is all part of Bloomberg’s plan to accomplish 127 green initiatives before he becomes term-limited in 2010, as well as part of PlaNYC, which includes not only those 127 initiatives (93% of which have been at least launched), but a plan to make New York City a greener, better city by 2030.

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Earlier this week, we mentioned that Toyota would be making a solar-powered Prius starting next year. In other exciting and related news, Toyota has also announced that the first Prius plant in the United States will be operational in 2010. At the same time, the automaker has announced that production on trucks and SUVs will be suspeneded for three months in order to clear out a backlog of unsold vehicles. From the Reuters article:

The unusual and costly moves by Toyota, now the global auto sales leader, underscored the pressure across the industry as major automakers scuttle truck production and take steps to ramp up output of passenger cars to keep up with a dramatic shift in US buying patterns.

These two news items point to the increased value consumers are placing on greener cars as the price of gas climbs ever higher.

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If simply owning a Prius isn’t enough satisfaction these days because now everyone else has one (I hear it’s actually a law in Los Angeles you have to own at least one), now you can Prius to the max by replacing your hybrid’s roof with solar panels to get that extra boost of non-gasoline power.

The roof panels are made by a company called SEV, and are compatible with the 2004 through 2006 models of the Toyota car.

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Sir Paul McCartney is said to be “horrified” that his spanking new hybrid car was flown 7,000 miles from Japan to the United Kingdom. The aging British rocker received the car, the $170,000 Lexus LS600H hybrid, as a gift for promotional work he had done for Lexus, but was mystified when the automobile was loaded onto a Korean Air flight and flown to Britain rather than arriving via ship as originally planned.

Transporting the car via jet created a carbon footprint nearly 100 times bigger than if the car had been sent by sea. Carbon offsetting firm CO2Balance.com estimated thatsending the enormous car on the plane created a carbon footprint of 38,050 kg as opposed to a 397 kg footprint for the three week boat journey.

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This past Thursday, those of you that watch The Office might have seen Dwight Schrute buy Andy Helms’ Nissan Xterra in a scene some might describe as comically awkward. And then Jim said something witty and sarcastic and Michael said something terrible and we all chuckled. And then your one friend kept insisting that the British version was better, seriously, you just have to see it.

Anyhow, not the point, and don’t you dislike people who do things like that anyway? What I’m really trying to get at is that the actual owner of the Xterra has put the car up for auction on ebay, so that s/he can replace it with a hybrid. Good call, soon-to-be-former SUV owner.

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In yesterday’s Morning Edition radio program, National Public Radio shared a story concerning the business of carbon trading, and another in which a company is developing a plug-in hybrid that gets crazy good gas mileage. Of course, it’s nothing new that National Public Radio is airing stories about progressive causes, but two in one day seems impressive (or, I suppose, excessive, depending with whom you speak). My, that was a lot of “essives.” We move on.

The first story profiles “three young business school grads who are carbon entrepreneurs,” which is a fancy way of saying they are all thirty-ish and work in the carbon trading industry. The story briefly touches on the ethics of carbon trading, an issue oft-overlooked issue, especially in the age in which some countries (no one in particular, of course) claim environmental treaties are biased against countries that already developed industry, say, a hundred plus years ago. You can here by listening to the piece, and perhaps think about the long-term ethical ramifications of creating a carbon trading market in which the end result, by these peoples’ very definitions, ought to be the eradication of their own industry. Or, listen to it, and just be glad someone’s doing something.

The second piece is for those of us that would rather not risk life and limb in order to get great gas mileage. A company has modified a Prius to be a plug-in hybrid which can average 100 miles a gallon, and in one five-mile trip got 340 mpg. It remains to be seen, however, if it’s still impossible to see well out the back window of that thing. You can here and listen to the story.

by Kerry Trueman

Iconic rocker Neil Young, always on the cutting edge, is more electrifying than ever these days–he’s converting his 1959 Lincoln Continental into an ultra efficient hybrid electric car. When the transformation’s complete, he’ll drive his “Linc-Volt” from Wichita, where the operation’s taking place, to Detroit, and, he hopes, onto America’s radar.

Young’s documenting his alternative auto odyssey for a film, “Linc-Volt,” that he plans to release in 2008. By turning his two and a half ton, 19-foot-long vintage gas-guzzler into a 100-mile-a-gallon hybrid, Young hopes to demonstrate the feasibility of hybrid-powered cars. Long may he run!