Prius demand is creating jobs and overtime at Toyota suppliers, reviving auto industry

[Rybold]

Prius demand is creating jobs and overtime at Toyota suppliers, reviving auto industry. Plus, Mitsubishi to begin marketing an electric car next month. Toyota electric car arriving in 2015.



"The surge has revived companies up and down the supply chain. With its plant running 24 hours a day, Panasonic EV Energy, a joint venture between Toyota and the electronics maker Panasonic, is planning another factory that will allow it to double its battery production by next year, to a million packs a year. “If a lot of hybrids are sold, it’s possible we’ll start producing overseas,” the company chief executive, Yoshio Hayashi, said. “Batteries are very heavy, so it’s good to make them close to the cars.”
The company, which sends about 92 percent of its batteries to Toyota, also serves General Motors and plans to supply Chrysler soon. At Aisin, the supplier that makes water pumps and other Prius parts..expects a 30 percent increase from the previous year."
"executive vice president at Toyota, Masatami Takimoto, said. Eventually, all three types — hybrids, electric cars and plug-in hybrids — will co-exist"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/bu...l/13prius.html

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[Gord]

Just goes to show that there really isn't anything wrong with peoples wallets. We really want to buy a new car if its worth buying, and the new Prius is definitely worth buying! What that says though is that we're buying the Prius because all other car manufacturers out there are absolutely terrible and right now are 10 years behind in fuel efficient technology. Thats why Chrysler and GM went into bankruptcy, people didn't want to buy their cars because they're terrible and out of date.

GM won't start to get its act together until it learns one very fundamental thing: Its about the engineering stupid! Design and build a damn good car that is fuel efficent, efficiently designed and excites people and they WILL buy it! Look at the Prius! Its no surprise that Toyota and Honda are the cheapest cars to maintain because less things go wrong with them, they're better designed and built and American car companies should pay damn good attention to that! There are many many engineering graduates out there with tonnes of ideas that are just itching to replace the old designers and engineers with good ideas and I think the US car companies should start hiring them, to not do so is their own fault. That is why the Prius has become the iPod of the hybrid market, because it is the better piece of technology - better designed and better built.

With the Prius sales figures I think everyone is starting to see the future in the auto industry, and I bet it won't be long (10 years maybe?) before every car, truck and bus out there has a hybrid system, and if Toyota is smart, they'll use the HSD to rethink their entire range and i believe they're doing that with the Fit hybrid.

So the question for the other car companies is: If your lack of imagination and innovation is killing the auto industry, then why aren't you hiring people out there who can build and design these systems?