UC to street-test plug-in Prius

• Cal to Test Plug-in Prius
  Michael Taylor, Chronicle Staff Writer
  Thursday, July 26, 2007
  
  Toyota took a big step Wednesday toward marketing plug-in hybrid cars -- vehicles that run mostly on rechargeable batteries and can go 100 miles on a gallon of gas -- when it announced it would provide two specially made Priuses to the University of California for testing on U.S. roads.
  
  The Japanese company will be the first major carmaker to put the experimental electric-gas hybrid cars on American streets for daily driving when the Priuses take to the road in Berkeley and Irvine this fall.
  
  The news came less than a week after a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Electric Power Research Institute, a power-industry trade group, reported that widespread use of the gas-sipping cars would greatly reduce greenhouse gases as well as domestic oil consumption.
  
  The plug-in test program will be conducted at UC Berkeley and UC Irvine, Toyota spokesman Bill Kwong said.

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