Some insider notes on the 2017 Prius Prime

agreed. i do 99% of my daily driving in ev. once a week, i go to see my father, 120 miles round trip. a 50 mile battery would be a waste for me 6 days a week, and not that helpful the seventh day.

every potential purchaser will weigh these things before purchasing if they're savvy enough, but some will make the mistake of thinking bigger is better, without giving their driving habits much thought.

 

But, for the people not interested in doing their whole commute in EV, why would they buy a plug-in at all, and "have" to plug it in?

 

Yes, yes, we know - everyone but John fails to see the big picture. This has all been done to death. A new player has resurrected the argument, and while I don't agree that the Prime is a crime against all EV-dom, I do think it's a Toyota misfire, assembling features in a combination that seems to target some tiny niche of status-seeking Toyota/Prius fans that want to do a bit of all-electric driving in an "upmarket" package. John's theory that the situation is just the opposite, that the Prime is in fact a finally-tuned missile aimed at the heart of the car market that will bring in folks who never before considered driving green, strikes me as bizarre, but hey, I'm no psychic, so who knows?

At the risk of repeating myself (and many others, come to think of it), the proof will be in the pudding. Specifically:

First will be the announcement of final configurations and pricing, which I expect will disappoint many, as I think it must to avoid cannibalizing more profitable Prius LB sales - but since I don't really know, I guess we'll have to see.

Second will be market acceptance. Who will buy this and how many? As I've guessed above, I'm thinking it will be a pretty specific class of EV enthusiasts, not the general market, and there won't be a lot of them. But hey, since I'm not a "Prius Guru" of John's stature, I'll happily admit that's speculation based on what I think is common sense. Again, I guess we'll have to see.

But John, I really, really want to hear from you here 60 days after the Prime goes on sale. You can hold forth on just how right you were, or if I'm right, you can give us the benefit of your tremendous industry insights to explain what Toyota's best minds missed.

[UPDATE: Whoops, I realize I missed another possibility - you could explain how poor sales are not a marketing failure, but rather a supply constraint problem or some other corporate-speak excuse, so hey, who should we believe - Toyota or our lying eyes?]

 

i'm not following you. not interested in doing their whole commute, or any of their commute?

you don't have to plug in a phev, but outside of incentives, why else would you buy one?

who is saying that people who don't want to drive ev, or see no other benefit will buy one?

 

Yet, you don't acknowledge it.

That past has proven otherwise.

Only 2 months to distribute to the entire country and educate mainstream consumers! Talking about unrealistic.

It's quite hypocritical too. The precedent has been well established to wait a full year. Think about how challenging sales are during the dead of winter...

Our observation will begin with the collection of real-world data.

 

john has been here a lot longer than most of us, and likely after we're gone. you will hear from him.

 

I'll admit I don't quite know what you are talking about, though it does seem that you're already preemptively trotting out excuses.

I thought the heart of your argument was that the Prime is designed to appeal to a broad market, which is the part all us hybrid-lovers are missing, right?

If that's the case, why do mainstream consumers have to be educated about something that's already appealing to them? Put another way, saying that consumers need to be educated about something implies that the benefits aren't obvious, so that doesn't sound like it's intrinsically appealing after all. I won't accuse you of hypocrisy(?) for that, but it does seem like trying to have it both ways.

Speaking of which, I won't debate whether or not the "precedent has been well established to wait a full year" to judge the Prime's appeal, just note that I've never personally endorsed or accepted that "precedent" for other cars I like better. Given that, while you can call me misinformed or mistaken or even unfair, calling me "hypocritical" (quite hypocritical, no less!) is just an abuse of language. Perhaps the word doesn't mean what you think it means.

It will indeed. Two months or twelve, I expect the outcome to be the same, in that I expect unit sales of the Prime to be a smaller percentage of overall Prius unit sales than were unit sales of the PiP in states where the PiP was offered. If you expect a lower threshold than that would still constitute success, please share what you think success means so we're all on the same page. Maybe we don't disagree as much as I think.

 

Here are the markets that I see existing for efficient vehicles:

1. People who want to spend less money on transportation
2. People who want to use less fuel for environmental or geopolitical reasons
3. People who want the vehicle for other qualities than its efficiency
   1. People who want to take advantage of non-financial government incentives offered to the vehicle
4. People who see the technology as cool, regardless of the efficiency

The Prius Prime will not appeal to the first group - it'll be an expensive product, and payoff period may be never relative to a compact ICE hatchback, even with incentives.

The Prius Prime will appeal to the second group, but only if their commute (potentially round trip) works with its AER, and their demands of the vehicle work with its capabilities. If it doesn't work, the Prime's competitors will be more interesting.

The Prime isn't going to be desired (without incentives) for anything other than its efficiency, despite Toyota's trying to push it as the luxury Prius. (That third line is really for Tesla's products.) California HOV access incentives, however, may make it desirable in that state. (Will those even get plugged in? There's plenty of PIPs that don't, as I understand...)

Finally, regarding the Prime technology... if you just want the tech, it's in the Liftback, too.

 

It's the only truly effective way of getting your attention to point out that you have already fallen into the same trap as those in the past. Whether you accept it or not doesn't matter. The market won't change without recognizing the way it currently is.

Designing something to appeal to a group has nothing to do with them becoming aware of it being available.

Their education is learning what it has to offer.

 

sounds like we went from prius kool-aid to something more toxic.

 

1. Umm . . . huh? This level of word salad makes me wonder if I've made the mistake of over-interpreting your comments and over-reacting accordingly. If so, I'm sorry for disturbing you - I'm likely to stop pestering you going forward. But for now . . .
   
   
2. What did any of that have to do with calling me hypocritical? Or are you saying you just tossed out a random meaningless insult to get my attention? I mean, if so, okay, mission accomplished today, but that obviously leads to future assessments of "Oh, John's making his 'Like so many before, you have failed to grasp the great truths I espouse' noises again, I'll just move on." Speaking of which . . .
   
   
3. What "trap"? What on God's green earth is that even supposed to mean? (But again, see, this could be the mistake of assuming it meant anything, like calling me hypocritical).

Sticking to the basics, I don't expect the Prime to be a big success. You do, and you believe that I think otherwise because I've fallen victim to some sort of logical fallacy or market ignorance or whatever voodoo priesthood magical vision you have that I lack.

Let's see.

 

do you expect it to sell as well as the volt?

 

I don't. The way it looks to me, if you confront a group of green car enthusiasts with the choice of a Volt or a Prime and nothing else, you'll get a certain split, and I couldn't guess how that would play out - but let's call them Prime people and Volt people. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying they are loyal to those choices or that those would be their first choices, just that if that's all that's available, they'd pick one or the other.

I think what happens with those two groups when more choices are made available helps answer your question. I think most Prime people are going to get a Prius LB if that's an option, and another good-sized chunk will go for other hybrids like the RAV4, because they cared so little about AER that they didn't choose the Volt. The Volt people aren't going to choose a Prius, of course, but I think most of them won't opt for pure BEVs either, because there are still lots of practical drawbacks to BEVs (mainly flexibility and cost). Will some go for a LEAF or a Tesla or a Bolt? Absolutely - but I don't think most would.

To put it another way, for people that would prefer a Volt over a Prime, most would prefer the Volt over other options as well. For those that would prefer a Prime over a Volt, I think most would prefer a Prius LB or some other hybrid even more. I'm not saying that the Prime doesn't have some competitive advantages over the Volt - I'm just saying that everything it does better is done better still by something else. I don't think the same is true in reverse.

And as we've said many times, the real filter/sorter for a lot of this is going to be about price. Until we see final pricing and configurations, we're shooting in the dark. The Prime would definitely have broad appeal for a low enough price - I just don't think that price can be very far above that of a comparably equipped LB (maybe $2k tops?), and I don't see how a price that low is achievable.

 

And, I'm in your "Prime people" group, and went Prius LB over Prime, so...

 

but you didn't wait long enough to make a true comparison.

 

Everything?

Depleted efficiency...

Rear headroom...

Production cost...

 

You are largely missing a component that only Tesla seems to be marketing effectively -- EV driving is fun. It is just provides a nicer and more pleasant quality of driving. Part of that can be smooth quiet acceleration but it's also the better pedal responsiveness and lower vibration. Many people pay a lot to get improvements on those qualities in conventional powertrains. EVs inherently provide that quality of driving. But other than Tesla, the marketing message has largely failed to mention that from the big auto companies -- it's all been stressing 'green' and that sells to some but leaves a lot of other potential customers ignorant of some key Volt, Prime, or Bolt's advantages.

Right idea but bad example -- almost nobody buys the I-MiEV. We need a mix of plugins at different price, range, utility, and performance levels in order to grow the total market share.

 

Good list.
Of those items, one of the biggest is Item 3 with CA green sticker HOV. We should hear in a few weeks how Prime is doing on that count. Item 2 is Prime too, except some want 100% EV. Item 2 comes in shades Hybrid/PHEV/BEV.

 

Well, yeah. To be clear, I wasn't limiting the comparisons to PHEVs, so, e.g., the LB does #1 and #3 better than the Prime, #2 is likely a wash with respect to the LB (though I haven't seen those numbers), but there are plenty of hybrids that best the Prime on that (the v, for example). My broader conjecture was that if you prefer the Volt to the Prime, it's likely you'll prefer it to a lot of other choices too. But in comparison, if you prefer the Prime to the Volt, there's a higher chance you'll prefer something else to the Prime. That's just an explanation for why I expect the Volt to outsell the Prime unless there's a big low-side surprise on Prime pricing (which I've acknowledged to be the wild card in all this). I know you don't agree.

I'm sure you already knew all that, so you must have just misunderstood the statement. My midnight writing can get too convoluted, so my bad.