Volkswagen is not sharing the specifics of which two vehicles they’ll be introducing but most auto industry analysts are guessing that at least one of them will be the new convertible version of the popular Beetle, which recently went on sale in its hardtop version, sporting an updated design.

For the other vehicle, rumors abound, but most car bloggers agree that it’s likely to be a new variation of an existing vehicle, though it’s possible that the much-whispered about crossover with three rows of seats might be put on the pedestal.

If you’ll be in or near Los Angeles during the month of November, you can check out the Auto Show yourself. The media preview will take place on November 16th and 17th, while the actual show runs from the 18th-27th, including Thanksgiving weekend.

In some parts of the United States, the supply of Toyota Priuses is only enough for a single day’s worth of sales, but the company is estimating that full production will be back by September.

Prius sales were down 61% last month because of Toyota’s inventory issues – the lowest sales level since September, 2004. As a result, industry analysts are calling the Prius the poster-child for inventory issues.

Last year, 140,928 Toyota Prius hybrids were sold. The highest number of sales for this car was in 2007, when 181,221 units left dealerships. Only time will tell what the ultimate sales total for 2011 will be.

Chances are also good that you’ll be hearing a lot more from ZipCar in the future, because they had their IPO – initial public offering – last week, and their opening price for investors the night before it was on the stock exchange was $18 a share, but by the next morning it was selling between $28 and $30/share.

The company still has about $150 million of debt, and representatives have said that some of the $175 million raised in the IPO will go toward reducing that debt, but the car-sharing service remains the talk of the town a week later for two reasons:

1) Stock analysts believe that $18/share for the IPO was too low, and that it should have offered stock at $23 or $24 – it’s typical to give investors a discount, after all.

2) ZipCar has plans to expand to other markets, where owning a personal automobile is much more entrenched than in condensed urban areas like those mentioned above. Vast sections of the midwest, for example, don’t have reliable public transportation, so it’s a toss-up as to whether a car-sharing scheme would really take off.

One think we can say? In those markets where people tend NOT to drive their own cars (add Washington, D.C. to that mix), ZipCar is a fabulous option. It’s inexpensive, reliable, and reduces a city’s overall carbon footprint by reducing the number of individually owned vehicles that are on the road.

With data provided by Keith Martin’s Sports Car Market, the new Classic Car Guide gives users a host of information about the exact car being purchased. All you need is the VIN and you can find out the last sale date (if it was an auction), and prive. Using the wifi capability of your iPad, you can then find the current prices of comparable cars, and how far you have to go to find one.

The app’s sponsor, Chubb Insurance, says that the Classic Car Guide can also tell you what to look for in terms of damage or detailing on your potential new purchase, and to help you, it uses a data base that compiles more than 100,000 articles from 20 year’s worth of reference materials from books and photos to Craigslist and eBay. Of course, if you provide the VIN or the make/model/year of the car you’ve fallen for, as well as your location, Chubb will kindly provide an insurance quote as well.

The Classic Car Guide iPad app is free at the iTunes store.

The company’s very first hybrid, launched in Japan in August, 1997, was the Coaster Hybrid bus. Four months later, in December, 1997, the original Prius was put on the market.

Currently, Toyota offers sixteen different hybrid models in about eighty different countries around the world, including three commercial models sold only in Japan. By the end of next year, the carmaker intends to introduce ten new hybrids, including four redesigned models and six fresh launches.

Toyota’s first million global hybrid sales took an entire decade, but the pace of hybrid deployment has accelerated since the late 1990s, and the second million only took two years – to May, 2009. Another 21 months later, and Toyota had passed the three million hybrid milestone, this during a major downturn in automotive sales across the globe.

As business progresses, gas prices creep higher, and ecology becomes more important to more people, Toyota is growing ever closer to reaching it’s goal of selling a million hybrid cars every year.

In a conference this week in Detroit, Wang Dazong, president of Beijing Automotive Holding Co. (BAIC) announced, “The government is working on a plan – and I think it will be announced very, very soon – and is basically calling for having, in 10 years, electric car parks of 10 million [spots] or above.”

The Chinese auto industry has made the choice to focus on EVs rather than hybrids or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, marking a change in direction that will likely have worldwide effect. The market in China has become the worlds largest, and while its likely to have less growth in 2011 than it did in 2010 (albeit with heavy subsidization), it will almost certainly increase in size and scope.

At the same time, the anticipated increase in a demand for electricity has China also reforming the way energy is produced. The country is cutting back on its use of coal, replacing it with hydropower, wind, has, and nuclear power.

Thanks to government-backed incentives,the price of EVs in China has been reduced by as much as $18,000 in some major cities, making them the default choice for may car shoppers. BAIC expects EVs to make up about 5 percent of its own market by 2020, an estimate considered conservative by many analysts.

The magazine explained that Toyota’s decline is directly linked to the recall of over 8 million vehicles worldwide, over the last two years, while Ford’s improved reputation as much to do with being the only major American automaker to avoid bankruptcy, and to high consumer satisfaction with its safety, quality and value.

In a statement this morning, representatives of Consumer Reports said, “Ford built on the momentum seen in last year’s study, likely the result of a model lineup with improving performance, reliability and styling. The massive recalls announced by Toyota earlier this year contributed to the tarnishing of its public image as measured by the poll.”

Safety, quality, and value remain the three most important factors to consumers.

Consumer Reports also said that Toyota maintained its lead in a category that is becoming less and less important: green tech/being environmentally friendly. In this category, the Japanese automaker has a score of 46 as compared to second-place Ford’s 18. Without Toyota’s standing in this category, Ford would have claimed the top overall score, rather than tied, the magazine said.

The magazine’s survey found that the “green” and “environmentally factors” are continuing to drop, however, with only 28% of consumers considering it important, a decrease of 4% since last year, and 12% since 2008. That drop, they say, is due to lean economic times and a general unwillingness to spend more for green tech.

Based on the perceptions of car owners, the top ten most recognizable brands, according to the Consumer Reports survey, are:

1. Toyota (147)
2. Ford (144)
3. Honda (121)
4. Chevrolet (102)
5. BMW (93)
6. Mercedes-Benz (90)
7. Volvo (84)
8. Lexus (69)
9. Cadillac (66)
10. Subaru (50)

On the Monday after Christmas, crude oil hit $91/barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, which caused an average increase of 7 cents/gallon at pumps across the country, bringing the average price to $3.05/gallon, nearly 45 cents a gallon more than we paid for gas at this time last year. Diesel prices have been affected as well, and currently sit around $3.29/gallon, or 56 cents more than last year.

Despite this, Kelley Blue Book’s lead analyst for vehicle evaluation, Alec Gutierrez, says that SUV sales have only decreased by about 1 percent since the last major upturn in gas prices, in Spring, 2008, and he says that unless gas prices move into the $3.50 – $4.00/gallon range there won’t likely be a dramatic drop, but that there won’t be the same rush to get ride of SUVs and other larger vehicles that there was almost three years ago.

“If you see a 20-to-30 cent price increase per gallon over the course of a couple weeks then of course people are going to panic,” Gutierrez explained, “but if it increases steadily over time that gives the market a chance to react rationally.”

Even though consumers are more aware, this time, about what they may face at the gas pump, buying habits may not change all that much.

According to Gutierrez, “The Ford Escape, the Nissan Rogue, the Honda CR-V and the Toyota RAV4 — the compact crossover segment — that’s where we’ll see a lot of growth in terms of production and sales overall. The American consumer still generally wants to have a vehicle that offers a lot of utility but at the same time they are conscious of the fuel economy that the vehicle offers and what they are going to pay at the end of the month.”

But consumers aren’t the only segment with budgetary concerns, Gutierrez said. Dealers may not want to buy back SUVs if they can’t make money on them at auto auctions. “The days where a dealer could just go to auction and stock up on a bunch of SUVs and hold them for 40 or 60 days are over.”

Dealers, then, are being extremely cautious about their inventories this year.

Jason Stewart, general manager of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, FL, explained to reporters, “Our small SUVs are doing OK but the large SUVs and large trucks have definitely cooled off since the pickup in gas prices.”

Stewart added that at the same time, Toyota Prius sales have tripled, which is the reverse of the sales picture from the gas price crash late in 2008.

Stewart explains that two years ago, “…when gas was in the low-to-mid twos, we did a 180 the other way where Prius sales fell off the mark and we were selling more of the Sequoias and Tundras. My gut is it ties right into people’s pocketbooks.”

Stewart also said that the trade-in values of SUVs completely tanked the last time gasoline prices reached this high, though he added that these vehicles have never been terribly popular in his part of Florida. Nevertheless, the dealer said, he plans to cut back on the number he has for sale.

Another dealer, Dennis Egglefield, who owns Egglefield Ford in Elizabethtown, NY, said that sales of SUVs dropped by fifty percent during 2008′s gas price peak, but have leveled out since then. Egglefield’s dealership is in the Adirondack Mountains roughly 100 miles south of Montreal, Canada, and four-wheel-drives are the vehicles to have there. Nevertheless, Egglefield said that he’s noticed more customers leaning toward the smaller Ford Escape rather than the Explorer or Expedition

He explained that, “SUVs are still important in this area, but people are downsizing to more fuel efficient SUVs instead.”

He also said that as gas prices continue to go up, “…we are still stocking with the idea that it may go either way. Hoping for the best, but prepared for anything.”

Based on figures through November, 2010, the Ford F-150 pickup truck is now the most-searched-for vehicle, moving up from the number two position it held last year.

Every vehicle on this year’s list of the top ten most-searched-for used vehicles was also in the top ten last year, though there has been a lot of jockeying for position, and the Toyota Camry has had a significant drop.

So what are the top ten? Here’s the list, with last year’s ranking in parentheses.

1. Ford F-150 (2)
2. Chevrolet Tahoe (3)
3. Ford Mustang (4)
4. Honda Accord (1)
5. Jeep Wrangler (7)
6. Nissan Altima (9)
7. Honda Civic (6)
8. Chevrolet Silverado 1500 (10)
9. Toyota Tacoma (8)
10. Toyota Camry (5)

Just this past Monday the price of oil increased by 19 cents, finishing the day the highest close for crude oil since October, 2008: $89.38 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

A cold snap in the northeastern United States has led to a higher-than-usual demand for heating oil, and investors have also been reacting to rumors that the Federal Reserve may soon go live with a new attempt at jump-starting the economy, which move would increase the upward pressure on oil.

Prices at the pump have been creeping steadily upward over the last month, as well. Even though the consumer demand for gasoline has remained consistently low prices across the country have gone up by more than 30 cents as compared to a year ago, and parts of the Northeast have seen a price increase of over 40 cents a gallon.

Analysts say that if the price of crude oil remains in the $90/barrel range, the average cost of a gallon of gas could hit $3.00 by year’s end, although some consumers have been paying that much for most of this year anyway.

The Hybrid Car blog refers us to analysts from Cameron Hanover who stated in an article distributed via the AP wire service, that for every one-cent increase in the price of gasoline, Americans spend an additional $4 million on oil.

As well, more expensive gas could strain the potential economic recovery. Witness the words of Lisa Margonelli from The Atlantic:

“This is a big hemorrhage of money that could be put to other uses that would boost our economy… A jump in the price of gas will fall disproportionately on the shoulders of the middle class. Families making $50,000 a year already spend an average of $7,900 annually on their cars, maintenance and fuel, according to the GAO. That’s more than they spend on taxes or health care—two costs the Republicans and Democrats have made their respective signature issues.”