What might we expect in the coming years price-wise

[DeadPhish]

There's a couple of interesting and conflicting facts spinning around us now as we come to the end of this Gen's lifecycle. I think that Toyota will bring out the next Gen in about 18 months, i.e. Oct 2009.

But here are some things that the marketers will have to balance, and we may have to accept or not accept.
The NA market is by far the largest market for the Prius.
The US$ is in freefall due to multiple issues. It has lost about 20% to the yen in two years. That normally would mean a 20% price increase. It's a business not a charity.
The CA$ is gaining strength every year vs the US$.
The Volt is now rumored to be in the $35000 range which is ~50% over the range of a normal Prius.
From Toyota's Open Road Blog on the diesel vs HSD issue this tidbit....

List in Britain for the Prius is ₤20,677..

Converted directly that puts a Prius at about $41000!!!! I don't know how much of that is tax but it can't be $20000 worth. Yes the Europeans are willing to pay a lot more for their vehicles but sending the bulk of the Prius' to NA seems like a huge waste of potential profit.
The Highlander Hybrid pricing for the new model jumped about $4000 when the new Gen came out.
Fuel is going nowhere but upward which increases the demand for the most fuel efficient models. In two years if fuel is averaging $4.00 a gal with a peak near $5.00 just finding a Prius may be the hard part...again.

My expectation if nothing changes......our prices for the next Gen go up from about $25000 to about $29000 for a 'typical model' topping out above $35000 for the top trim.

Comments?

[Tideland Prius]

• The CAD is dropping a bit and forecast to drop below 90 cents by this time next year
• The Prius is expensive everywhere except the US. In Australia, it's AUD40k. In Canada, it's $31-$38k (just dropped to the price to $29.5kto $35k).
• The £20,000 Prius is the fully loaded one with sat nav, IPA and so forth. It starts at £17k
• Our HiHy has a lower price and the HiHy Limited now has almost identical pricing to the last gen despite the extra size and features (again because we've gained against the USD)
• Toyota can't raise the price too much else there'll be much complains (and they want people to buy the vehicle). People are already complaining about the price increase of the 2009 Corolla. It's well into Prius territory for the XRS models. The XLE model is more expensive than the tC yet comes with less features (and I don't think even deserves an XLE emblem cause it comes with wheel covers!!!)
• Toyota might play it safe and use NiMH initially to keep the price down (compared to Li-Ion). I don't know whether they'll decontent (since it already has the safety features as standard except VSC) to keep the price down
• There'll also be an influx of diesels which will put pressure on the Prius (Accord diesel, VW's new BlueMotion on the Jetta. We don't know if Subaru will bring the boxer diesel Legacy over. BMW will bring its diesels over and people will see that comparison where they can get Prius mileage on a 120d or Corolla mileage on a 325d).

[daniel]

As the dollar falls, the price in dollars pretty much has to rise. Unless, as Tideland points out, they make standard features optional, but that's just shifting packages. The price for an equivalent car has to go up. Market forces play a major role, but the prices of competing cars will go up also, for the same reason.

But this is a short-term issue, because as oil runs out we are nearing the end of the age of the automobile. It was 1908 when the Ford Model T came out, making the automobile widely available to ordinary folks for the first time. A hundred years ago exactly. The end of oil is probably between 5 and 20 years away. That means that in 105 to 120 years total, the human race will have squandered the entire world's supply of fossil fuel which took many billions of years for organic and geologic processes to produce during the carboniferous age. Homo sapiens has been on Earth for a couple of hundred thousand years, and civilization is somewhere around five or six thousand years. But it's only taken us a bit over a century to squander billions of years of fossil fuel.

Enjoy your cars while you can, because if we don't start building alternative energy capacity pretty soon, the house of cards is coming down. The sad and disgusting and pathetic thing is that we have the ability to do this, and it's only corrupt politicians and greedy corporate management that are preventing us.

Maybe our race should be called Home stupidus. (Sorry, I never learned Latin, so I don't know what the Latin word should be.)

[tripp]

The asian countries will probably try to find a way to devalue their currencies to keep exports healthy. Prius costs should come down with increasing production volumes. They ought to start making them over here. That would solve a lot of the currency issues.

[DeadPhish]

Originally Posted by tripp

The asian countries will probably try to find a way to devalue their currencies to keep exports healthy. Prius costs should come down with increasing production volumes. They ought to start making them over here. That would solve a lot of the currency issues.

Yes if they make them here it will solve a lot of problems. The RAV is going to be made in Canada beginning next MY. The HIghlander will be made in Tupelo probably in 18 mo's. The 4Runner/FJ are disappearing slowly. That only leaves the Prius, the Yaris and the Scions as high volume imports.

Disregarding currency issues I don't see the 'hybrid premium' coming down more than $1000 or about 4-5% of the MSRP. Remember they already dropped the price about $1200 last May.

[nerfer]

Originally Posted by daniel

The price for an equivalent car has to go up. Market forces play a major role, but the prices of competing cars will go up also, for the same reason.

Right. If the price of the Prius is forced up, so is the price of the other cars, which means declining sales will continue. Also, prices in Britain seemed to be 2x the U.S. prices for pretty much everything when I was over there. It's better to look at the trend of the Yen/USD conversion over the last couple years than to look at car prices elsewhere. (Could compare to Singapore for instance, then dealers would be in deep trouble here if forced to sell at those prices!)

That means that in 105 to 120 years total, the human race will have squandered the entire world's supply of fossil fuel which took many billions of years for organic and geologic processes to produce during the carboniferous age.

I'm thinking you misspoke here, because I'm pretty sure you understand peak oil happens when approximately half of the available oil has been pumped out. (Which is pretty much all of the easy stuff). It's not the end of oil by any means, just the end of cheap oil. Crude, deep-sea, shale oil, tar sands, etc. will still exist. Perhaps the frozen methane/hydrates can be harvested, although that just adds to our global warming problem.

[daniel]

Originally Posted by nerfer

... I'm thinking you misspoke here, because I'm pretty sure you understand peak oil happens when approximately half of the available oil has been pumped out. ...

I'm figuring that within the next 20 years we'll burn the second half: i.e. as much as we burned in the past 100 years. Granted that there will always be some left, that we cannot get out because the energy cost of extraction will be greater than the energy contained in the fuel extracted. But I figure that's essentially immaterial.

[C.RICKEY HIROSE]

Hmmm,

I read it in somewhere, that we are OK to extintion till 40 years.
( Oil supply ) new wells to be drilled but, China is going to use
50% of available Oil for their expansion...
After that we are going to need fusion energy for our existence.
Climate will change, Earth will become hotter or colder depending
in region of the world.

[dallas27]

Originally Posted by daniel

As the dollar falls, the price in dollars pretty much has to rise. Unless, as Tideland points out, they make standard features optional, but that's just shifting packages. The price for an equivalent car has to go up. Market forces play a major role, but the prices of competing cars will go up also, for the same reason.

But this is a short-term issue, because as oil runs out we are nearing the end of the age of the automobile. It was 1908 when the Ford Model T came out, making the automobile widely available to ordinary folks for the first time. A hundred years ago exactly. The end of oil is probably between 5 and 20 years away. That means that in 105 to 120 years total, the human race will have squandered the entire world's supply of fossil fuel which took many billions of years for organic and geologic processes to produce during the carboniferous age. Homo sapiens has been on Earth for a couple of hundred thousand years, and civilization is somewhere around five or six thousand years. But it's only taken us a bit over a century to squander billions of years of fossil fuel.

Enjoy your cars while you can, because if we don't start building alternative energy capacity pretty soon, the house of cards is coming down. The sad and disgusting and pathetic thing is that we have the ability to do this, and it's only corrupt politicians and greedy corporate management that are preventing us.

Maybe our race should be called Home stupidus. (Sorry, I never learned Latin, so I don't know what the Latin word should be.)

possibly the most misinformed post I have ever read.

[DaveinOlyWA]

people pay more for cars in different areas based on their perception of "entitlement".

in europe, its considered a luxury in many areas to own a car (not unlike manhattan) and they are priced accordingly.

in the US, we for the most part, most consider a car a requirement. suburban sprawl, lack of mass transit and the 40% factor (most people are simply too FAT to walk)

although plausible EXCUSES are listed above, the biggest reason is that we take the most convenient option available to us and there is probably 2 or 3 out of several hundred or even thousand that would accept or elect an option that is not the ultimate solution...iow, sacrifice (in most cases even very small ones) is simply not an option...

that is simply too bad... like daniel, i agree, our house of entitlement is a big multi-story one... which only means more coming down on our heads when it all collapses... and i am willing to bet that will happen in the next 3 years...(actually betting on fall 2009...just like every other car manufacturer)