Featured August 2016 Dashboard Summary

thank you bob! wait until prime arrives, it's going to be sick.

 

Sick as in "anemic", or, sick as in "awesome, dude!"?

 

Apparently car sales are way down especially sedans.

GM's vociferous former CEO Bob Lutz was saying CUV's (liftbacks) provide so much better utility on a car frame than a sedan does. Took him 10-years to figure that out. Meanwhile Toyota has a lot of hybrid sedans and made the Gen4 more sedan-like. Long live the Prius v, I hope!

I am looking to see if PHEV sales drop due to the loss of green HOV stickers in CA. I am thinking part of the PHEV sales were in anticipation of more HOV stickers. Prime to me will not look good on sales without the CA HOV stickers, but I just don't know if CA green HOV stickers are totally dead yet.

 

371 Mirais? Mistake, probably...

 

have all my bases covered.

 

371 FCV is correct as far as original source (Jeff Cobb @ Hybrid Cars.com).

Keep in mind we never have any knowledge about why these cars are being sold (fleets, etc). We talk about the sales as if individual consumers are running out to buy these vehicles, but not so sure when it comes to plug-ins and FCV. Leasing companies, state/fed governments are buying. According to Bob Lutz, fleet sales were very high in August, except for GM which has gotten out of the fleet sales game. I still wonder if Volt however is part of the remaining GM fleet sales.

 

no mistake, seeing more and more on the road

 

how many Mirai have sold since introduction?

 

Slow introduction does not mean failure....

 

No, I just wanted to know how many of the planned 3000 over 3 years were sold.

 

it was a lot more exciting to see the monthly numbers when they were increasing.

 

Looking ahead, we are looking like 100,000 to 105,000 Prius Liftback sales in 2016, and maybe 140,000 to 145,000 all Prius models (+c+v) by year end. That would be down maybe 90,000 units from the 2012/2013 peak, however the successful RAV4 Hybrid should hit at least 45,000 units in 2016, explaining part of the reduced Prius sales.

(Sales below are all Prii: LB+c+v+Plug-in)


The "bump" at 2012 is the start of Prius c + Prius v + PiP sales

Wow...if I double first half sales, I calc 450,000 Prius sales in Japan (Gen4 + c) in 2016.

 

I see RAV4 hybrid pushing v really hard. It's easy to see how incredibly practical they are as taxis. So, that aspect of them could provide business-sustaining justification. That may mean less frequent upgrades though. As service vehicles, that's just fine.

RAV4 hybrid as a mainstream contender is an entirely different story. We all knew the return of cheap gas meant high demand for small SUV offerings. Toyota has taken advantage of that by providing a hybrid model for a very competitive price. That move is paying off too. Last month's sales bump it up to just under the mainstream minimum (5,000 per month).

In other words, seeing RAV4 hybrid grow to the point of becoming so popular it puts heavy pressure on other automakers to compete directly is quite realistic... which is the unfulfilled dream Ford had a decade ago with Escape hybrid. So, expecting them to re-enter the competition is almost a given. Toyota is proving market potential.

Prius Prime demand won't be measurable for awhile. With the limited availability of Prius PHV, the overall supply will get used up nationally. That will make gauging CA interest a challenge.

 

Back in 2013, we had two sources of data:
(1) Consumer Reports survey, which gave us each model year batt replacements
(2) Toyota quoting that <1% of the Prius batteries had failed so far.

So this spreadsheet was attempting to check to see if Toyota's <1% quote was consistent with the Consumer Reports survey, which it was.

A lot of water has "spilled over the dam" since 2013, lots more Gen2 batts have failed, and CR stopped reporting the Prius batt failure rates surveys, and Toyota stopped quoting the <1% batts failed.

 

Problem is, there is no clear definition of "failed" batteries. How many miles? How many years? How much capacity?