On the list of things that can go wrong with plug-in cars, this is one the engineers probably never thought of: rodent attack. Cars.com‘s Chevy Volt was parked at a public charging point when a ground error occurred, ending the charging session. We’ll let the firsthand account take it from there:

Monitoring the online ChargePoint portal from home, I hoped the charging station would reset, something it attempts to do a total of four times every 15 minutes. That’s when I received an e-mail from Todd Dore, the treasurer of the Fox Valley Electric Auto Association who parks and charges his converted Volkswagen Beetle right next to our Volt. He said that at 6:30 when he left work, we’d had a “furry visitor,” a brown rat who scurried under our Volt, probably seeking warmth. The temperatures had been below 10 degrees.

Rodents are known to climb into the engine compartments of conventional cars when it’s frigid outside, so it made sense. The Volt maintains a minimum battery temperature when it’s plugged in, even once fully charged, because a warm battery is a more powerful one. It also extends the battery’s longevity, according to Chevrolet.

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The most expensive Toyota ever made, the $375,000, “totally customizable” Lexus LF-A will not be available for sale to anyone, reports Automotive News [sub]. Not because nobody wants to pay that much for a Toyota though, but because the company is somehow worried about price speculation. “If someone buys it the first month and then decides to sell it, that could be damaging for the ownership experience,” says Lexus VP sales Brian Smith. “If it is not controlled and hits the speculation market, all bets are off. We want people out driving the car and not just parking it in a museum or selling it at an inflated price.” Which is why only 500 models are being produced? At the end of the mandatory two-year lease, customers will have the option of buying their LF-A outright. So how does the world’s largest automaker build such an advanced, limited production machine and not expect speculation and/or hoarding to take place? Moreover, how will they guarantee that LF-As are actually driven during the two-year lease period? One of the greatest sins of the auto industry is the reluctance to admit that a brand belongs to customers. For Toyota, it seems, not even its brand-defining supercar will truly belong to its customers… for two years anyway.