Toyota Prius outsells entire list of KBB top 10 Green Cars for 2015

Oh <SNAP>

The US is now in its fifth year of modern EV sales. As time goes on, and the EVs continue to win media awards, it is worth stopping once in a while to do a quick numbers check to see which green cars US customers are actually buying. The ones rolling down the road save a lot more gasoline and CO2 than the ones in the glossy press photos that don’t sell.​

Bob Wilson

 

Oh Torque News, I guess you take news lightly, writing click bait misleading headlines. It makes you think the prius didn't make the list, so I had to click the list, and there is the whole prius family.

What the writer seems to be chapped about is two plug-ins the e-golf and i3 (bev and rex) are at the top of the list.I don't really think of kbb as the expert on "green", but you can't really deny that the 124 mpge i3, made mainly with aluminum and carbon fiber that is made or recycled with renewable electricity coming from a factory powered by wind, is pretty green.

 

there are no experts on 'green' in the media. just a bunch of peole who will write anything to make a living. they weren't even around before prius.

point is, prius is still the man, and probably will be for a long time to come. regardless of all the hand wringing here.

 

Is there a deleted post I missed? In any case, Bisco has it right....

 

yup, these things don't happen overnight. without outside influences, ev's will probably take a little longer to catch on than hybrids. more money, more aggravation, less like what peeps are used to than even the hybrid was. it should happen though, all things being equal.

 

agreed. whereas hybrids were pretty much the same as gassers right out of the shute, (except for price, which was partially made up for in mpg's) ev's will need to make advances to overcome all those barriers. but they could still have the same impact in 15 years as hybrids have, but it will probably come in bunches as tech improves, not as linearly as hybrids.

 

Yes because in the 4th full year of sales the prius sold 29,500 units and I have no idea what the civic hybrid and inight sold in 2001 but surely the total sales were less than 50,000

2014 forth full year of production plug-ins sold 320,000, with the leaf selling 61.500 with the leaf outselling all 2001 hybrids combined in every country. In 2014 the tesla model S also outsold the 2001 prius world wide and in the US, but not in Japan. There were 20 plug-ins in 2014 while only 3 hybrids in 2001.

The plug-in market is growing much faster than the hybrid market did. More government money partially explains this, but adopters seem much more interested in plug-ins than they did in hybrids at a similar time of development.

 

. . . and a couple of hundred crushed EV1s.

Bob Wilson

 

those numbers are excellent, but it will be difficult to compare. for one thing, percentages may be more important the quantities, and for another, hybrids in a way, prepared society for plug ins. and i'm sure there are a whole host of factors that we cannot even begin to think of.

 

Hybrids did absolutely nothing to prepare the public for plugins.
If anything did, it was cell phones which got people into the habit of plugging in daily.

Hybrids had a huge advantage compared to plugins in that they required no change in behavior.
Hybrids still fueled up with the same volatile liquids as non-hybrids.
Hybrids still fuel up at the same locations and even the same pumps.
Hybrids didn't require people to pay attention to how far they drive each day.

All else being the same, I would expect plugins to catch on much more slowly.
Yet they are catching on faster.

Incentives? Possibly.
I believe it is simply because plugins are simply better vehicles for at least 40% of the market. Where hybrids seem to have maxed out around 3-4%.

 

Deleted duplicate

 

My experience has been:

• New model boost - lasting 3-4 months as pent-up demand is met, the following months show where that model will fit relative to the market.
• Old model run-out - starting after the next model is announced, often a 5-7 month interval, the existing models don't sell well even though they have every incremental fix known installed at the factory. The best buy of that model

We see this effect in Leaf sales the most recent data:


We are well past the kick-off boost of plug-ins sales with perhaps the exception of recent EU entries (aka. i3.) So I am not persuaded that these early, rapid sales boosts should be included as justification for 'plug-in rapid growth.' Even the manufacture of a new model has some production variability as inventories can back-pressure production.

We have a perfectly fine 2003 Prius with over 165,000 miles and still going strong. The dogs are starting to work on the interior so it may be replaced. We also have 1993 Coachman RV that I need to drive to the recyclers. We may have a place for a Leaf V1.0 ... we'll see.

Bob Wilson

 

some ev buyers switched from hybrids.

some tesla buyers are just well heeled look at what i got.

 

fwiw if you want to know what any PHEV or BEV sold in the US between 2011 and now you can just check Monthly Plug-In Sales Scorecard

No insights or HCHs there but you'll see a lot of the usual suspects including the PiP (that they continue to call "Toyota Prius PHV").

 

And some hybrid buyers switched back to ICEVs.

Because that is its name. PiP seems to only be a Priuschat thing.

 

pip, battery pip and gas pip.

 

I prefer chocolate pips.