In Danville, California, a construction company is building a tract of green luxury homes - so green, in fact, that there’s a Prius waiting for you in the garage if you buy one of these properties.  Clarum Homes is building 10 homes all valued around $2 million, and are being certified by LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), a set of standards from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The Contra Costa Times tells us that, “The homes use solar power, with solar hot water heaters, special heating and cooling systems, Web-based irrigation controllers and a host of other features.”  And, did we mention, they’re just throwing in a Prius?  This kind of reminds me of how these days Ticketmaster gives you a free iTunes download if you buy a ticket.  Sure, we’ve tacked on 168% in convenience fees, but here’s a 99 cent download.

Regardless, the fact that there’s enough of a demand for these homes in the top one percent is a good thing.  And, somehow, I doubt there’s actually a lot of similarities in paying $32 for a $13 concert ticket, and $2 million for a 3,600 square foot home.  Anyhow, you can takepart here to learn some various ways you can green your home, just in case you don’t have the money to drop on a luxury home/Prius combo.

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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A 100 Mile Per Gallon automobile is being tested by scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado. The car is basically an after market assembly of Toyota Prius in which scientists added extra Lithium Ion batteries capable of being plugged into the power grid for recharging along with solar panels on the roof of the car for some extra juice. These two add ons will serve to power the Prius along with its already existing batteries and gasoline tank in its hybrid motor power system.

The result yields a car that barely consumes any gas whatsoever for its first sixty miles on the road, yielding gasoline mileage of approximately 100 mpg per tank. Plus with the average commuter spending only 30 miles on the road per day, the experimental model would hardly ever need to be filled up at all as long as it was plugged into the wall each night for recharging.

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