OK, before we get hit with a lawsuit, Mark Miller Toyota will not offer the “Bob Marley Special” on new Toyotas. Not that it wouldn’t appeal to at least one Prius driver. Anyway, a Market Watch press release tells us that the Utah Toyota dealer is opening the first and only LEED-certified car dealership in the state. (At least he expects a Gold LEED rating when the paperwork clears “in the coming weeks.”) Designed to maximize local and recycled materials and maximize energy and water-efficiency, the new dealership boasts a number of eco-features. Sun-tracking skylights, a cool-roof system, low-flow taps and toilets, rainwater collection and high-speed service bay doors keep energy bills low, and allow Toyota customers to feel a little better about mean-smuggin’ in their Priora. The most gimmicky best feature? “Anyone familiar with Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive knows there is a screen that shows the car’s energy use over a time period. We’ll have the same sort of panel inside the dealership that shows the building’s energy use over the last half hour or so,” reveals Miller. Up next: employees obsessively turning the A/C on and off and bragging on their blogs about how many cubic feet they were able to “hypercool” on a single kilowatt/hour.
Find Reviews by Make:
Read all comments
Does his LEED certification come on actual paper?? If so, I hope it’s recycled!
You get a plaque which is, somewhat ironically, made of unrecycled bronze. Go figure. LEED is ok, but some of the buildings really aren’t that much more environmentally friendly than an average building. Mostly because the big energy savers (upgraded heating and cooling systems, better building envelope insulation) are really expensive.
But yeah, it’s a gimmick. Kind of ironic that Toyota does sell some really inefficient vehicles along side the Priuii
What? Have they not heard of the much more prestigious Guyincognito certification? It allows for 10x the smugness of the LEED certification but only costs 9x as much requires a sincere commitment to environmentalism.
“low-flow taps and toilets”
I have been in dealerships that had those. Only they were yellow or brown, not green.
Incremental steps forward I’m okay with.
Up next: employees obsessively turning the A/C on and off and bragging on their blogs about how many cubic feet they were able to “hypercool” on a single kilowatt/hour.
Almost made it, Ed. That would be: Up next: …“hypercool” on a single kilowatt-hour Aka, kWh.
Remember, there is no such thing as kilowatt/hour, unless you’re talking about the rate at which you are powering up or down.
kW – unit of power, = 1.34 hp, or 239 cal/sec, or 3415 BTU/hr, or 44,254 pound-feet/minute (whatever the hell that is).
kWh – unit of energy, = 0.034 therm, or 2,655,224 pound-feet, or 860 kcal, or 3412 BTU, etc. etc…