That makes me feel much better, considering I only paid a net price of $18,000 for my Prius.

I don't think Howard surfs Priuschat. But when what he says jives with what I read here, I know he's giving me the straight scoop. And he's never steered me wrong.

I must say I feel *really* good about my decision to buy when I did. Today I overheard my Dad bragging about my Prius. Tee hee.

I got an email from a local dealer here in Seattle on Saturday letting me know that they have the following used Prius' available for sale:

1.) Silver 2008 Package #2 with 7,878 miles. Listed at $31,995.
2.) Driftwood Pearl 2007 base model with 27,366 miles. Listed at $29,995.
3.) Tideland Pearl 2005 with nav and no leather. 42,234 miles. Listed at $27,995.

I guess some people are so desperate to get a Prius that they'll pay anything. :-0

What is a HOV sticker?

It lets you legally drive in the HOV lane with only one person in the car.

The HOV lane originally referred to the carpool lane (High Ocupancy Vehicle). In CA, the legislative history behind the HOV lane was multi-fold:
1) Get cars off the road to reduce congestion
2) Get cars off the road to reduce pollution
3) Get cars off the road to save fuel

Hybrids met 2 of the 3 original purposes, so the legislators decided, "oh, that's close enough for government work"

So the HOV sticker let's you in the lane, if you're driving the appropriate car, and you have the stickers. They also make stickers for CNG & pure EV cars in CA, which unlike the yellow hybrid stickers, the white ones are not schedueled to expire.

If people are buying with such a mark up it only proves that a suckers is born every minute .... I'm a big Prius fan but I fail to pay Toyota a premium for a car our tax rebates helped to develop.

Only thing I don't think the salesman had right was who would be first with an EV. I'm pretty sure Nissan or Mitsubishi (maybe even Subaru) will beat Toyota to that. And of course there's the Th!nk, and maybe an electric version of the Smart car (which I saw yesterday, well, the gas version, but the first Smart on the road I've seen other than in a parade last year).

By 2011 there will finally be real options, I'm looking forward to it.

I posted my 2008 Package 2 with 4900 miles on Craigslist for $35,000. Within an hour or so i had a guy call and offer $32,000. Sooooooo tempting

What this news means for current Prius owners with HOV stickers:

If you have HOV stickers, are they worth $4000 to you? Do you really need the stickers? Would you miss them? For those of you that barely ever use the HOV lane, you could trade your Prius for an equal pre-owned Prius without the stickers and try and make a $3000 profit.

Yeeesh. Has anyone considered, that since the Prius is now such a hot car to own, that it could also become the next most stolen vehicle in the U.S. ? I've been thinking about that lately and am a bit concerned..thoughts?



Dave

I never want to live in an area which requires an HOV sticker. I can get on I-95 anywhere in my county at any time of the day and cruise at 80 MPG (Not that I would ever go that fast).

Wow that's great our cars have gone up so much in value. Maybe I'll sell mine when gas hits $7.00.

They are hard to steal. Also, most stolen cars are parted out. Since the Prius has a good reliability record, the demand for parts is low. Perhaps as thieves become more clever this may be more of a problem, but it isn't an issue now.

Tom

You do what they do in NYC. Drag it onto a flatbed with the alarm blasting and drive off.

That will work. If you look stupid and shrug your shoulders, no one will question the alarm.

Car alarms are one of my pet peeves. We live in a small village where people don't lock their houses or take their keys from their cars. Tourists come in and manage to set off car alarms at all hours. My proposed solution involves a Travel Lift. This is a marina town, so in case you don't know about Travel Lifts, they are odd Dr. Seuss looking contraptions that are used to lift, transport, and launch large boats. I'm pushing for an ordinance that will work like this: say a car alarm has been blasting away for over five minutes. One of the DPW workers will drive to the offending car with a Travel Lift, pick up the car and take it to the marina, at which point the car will be submerged until the alarm is silenced, after that the car will be returned to its original parking place.

That seems like a reasonable solution, don't you think?

Tom

The advantage with the Prius over other cars is that if you hook the battery up to the door handles and program the alarm to electrically charge the door handles when the alarm goes off, you will be able to deliver a greater electric shock. It will work great on those prankster tow truck drivers in small villages in Northern Michigan.

I just bought my 2008 package 6 in May for 25,500. That was pretty much the going rate at all the San Francisco Bay Area dealers I spoke to at the time. After reading an article on CNN last week about the recent Prius shortage, I e-mailed the sales guy I bought my car from and he said that the same car now goes for $32K. I guess I should have bought a few more to flip them. Could be a new cable series - "Flip that car."

Which tax rebate are you referring to? Toyota is passing on a golden opportunity. They should be raising MSRP $3000-$5000 to align it with the market.

Toyota makes a profit when the dealer pays for the car, a few percentage points UNDER invoice. The dealer makes a profit when a consumer buys a car from them. If they can sell at over MSRP then they make a lot of money. It makes up for the trucks that they are probably selling closer to invoice than to MSRP.