Who sells Prius Prime

Hi Bob,

Here is a picture of the inventory across regions. Going by the numbers, seems like NO sales in Suotheast, minimal sales in 5 other regions, decent sales in Central atlantic and Pacific Northwest and good sales in Greater NY, SoCal, NorCal, New England:

 

My hope is there's a midcycle update for Prime to coincide with the one for Prius... which I believe will be revealed at the LA show late this month. Then again, we may need to wait until early January at the Detroit show.

Not stocking dealers with old inventory is both a wise financial/relationship move as well as good for understanding the tech itself. We have all had to deal with people referring to outdated specs & reviews. There's no need to make that situation worse when you know there's an update on the way. Remember those issues related to the previous upgrade?

Speaking of upgrades, how many of you remember the "generation" Prius that came before the first that was rolled out here? What we got was actually a midcycle update. Toyota upgraded the battery-pack, switching from "D" cell packaging to prismatic. For that matter, Prime itself was a midcycle update too. Knowing all that history and seeing the inventory situation now, it is quite reasonable to expect something like a change to Prime's battery packaging at some point in the near future.

 

There is a difference between selling and inventorying

 

I would hope your speculation will come true. I think Prime is under appreciated car in public just as Prius Plug-in was.


Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

me too. we live in hope, because toyota has disappointed in the past. a few tweaks to the prime, and they could be selling 5,000 a month in the u.s.

 

It is more like observation, rather than speculation. We witnessed a very similar inventory approach back with the Classic model. Toyota doesn't play their hand until the time is right. They wait for the market and study in limited areas in the meantime... even when it makes some supporters crazy with bewilderment.

In this case, it is to avoid the GM disaster. Getting caught up in their fallout wake would be bad for everyone. GM squandered tax-credits by obsessing with conquest sales. Focus on speed & power blinded them from the importance of actually bringing about change for their own customers. When things got so bad for GM with their "range anxiety" solution, they ended up making an abrupt strategy change. They abandoned Volt to create & promote Bolt.

Now as April 2019 approaches, that $7,500 federal assistance they have depended upon heavily, will then drop to $3,750 for the following 6 months. Following that, it will drop to $1,875 for 6 months, then phaseout will be complete. That's really bad news for an automaker struggling just to retain attention. Sales have been far below expectations. The purpose of those tax-credits was to establish a high-volume profitable vehicle *PRIOR* to triggering the phaseout stage.

Remember, phaseout begins when an automaker exceeds 200,000 sales. At that point, there is no quantity limit. The automaker can exploit the opportunity by producing as many vehicles as possible... exactly what we are witnessing right this very moment with Tesla. It's an opportunity GM will miss, despite knowing years ahead of time that this very situation would happen.

Toyota will be ramping up as GM struggles to remain relevant, not having to deal with confusing comparisons to Volt from having waited. It simply didn't make any sense to make a major move any sooner, especially with the success of Tesla doing such a remarkable job of promoting plug-in vehicles. In the meantime, Toyota continued to refine their design to make it cost-competitive with traditional vehicles.