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GM reinvention commercial

Discussion in 'Other Cars' started by cwerdna, Jun 9, 2009.

  1. JSH

    JSH Senior Member

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    There is another reason that the Prius has outsold all other hybrids combined. Toyota makes a lot of them! Toyota is the only manufacturer that has aggressively increase production of hybrids.

    I would have a Honda Civic today if I could have purchased one when I bought my car in 2006. However, Honda only makes ~30K Civic hybrids a year so the supply is limited. My local Honda dealership only got 4 Civic hybrids per year! They were booked out for a year and there wasn't a Civic hybrid available for 500 miles. On the other hand the local Toyota dealership had 4 new Prius on the lot and 2 used ones. I bought my Prius used from a independent dealer down the road.

    Honda and Ford sell hybrids to keep abreast of the technology and to improve their image. They build a set number per year and sell them at MSRP.

    The Insight is a change for Honda. For the first time they have committed to sell a hybrid in volume. It will be interesting so see how many they sell.
     
  2. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    which is a major telling point about how different car manufacturer manipulate the exact same market.

    product development is pretty much a fixed cost. so after car is polished, refined and placed on the market. its selling point is where that development cost is recovered. so you can make it back fast, slowly or not at all.

    there was a huge belief that the Prius was originally sold at a loss (i dont believe that for a second). then as it "became popular) the price was slowly raised.

    well, if cars by Honda and Ford (since they are the only other real players here...cmon Nissan, you have a decent product, broaden your line!!) are being sold at a loss or for minimal profit, then limited availability would make sense. i dont believe that either is doing that. and selling at MSRP is not a manufacturers thing, its a dealer thing and dealers dont control the supply.

    Ford, i believe (and this is a lot of 2nd hand info provided by a few people i know at Ford) has multiple issues with the hybrid thing.

    for one, its GENERALLY believed that the FEH could sell at least 50% more product if the distribution was smarter. in WA state, most dealers sell what they have (with exception of the 4 wheel drive version) as soon as they get them. but in other places, they languish on the lots in an oversaturated market. now, granted, around here, the biggest customer for the FEH seems to be DNR. i drive by the state office which has a small lot for vehicles (all hybrids with exception of one large gm sedan) and they have a half dozen of them along with about 10 Pris and 3 HCH's.

    another thing with Ford is that with the very tight money market (remember Ford anticipated the problems with cash flow THREE YEARS AGO and took action to prepare for it) i think its hampered their ability to beef up the supply lines and part of the availability might have to do with factory capacity. remember hybrids have parts that cant easily be converted from legacy factories, like batteries etc... remember the rumours that went around that Toyota was hogging the battery market that prevented american car companies from getting into the market? i heard a LOT of bitching back in 2006 when it was believed that the FEH had battery issues because of existing contracts with Toyota.

    prime example....Lakewood Ford. (should i say their name??) did first ever battery replacement for FEH. remember battery cost for Toyota who has much bigger supplier is around $2200... battery cost for FEH $8800!!! ( that is DEALER COST. replacement out of warantee would be more)

    but back to Toyota; granted the biggest advantage they have besides just having something better, is the money to act on it. besides their development costs for the Pri which adds directly to the bottom line, they also built whole new factories for hybrid components. that is something that american car companies probably want to do but cannot on the same scale. now Toyota is in the business to make money and im sure they want to sell us trucks, SUV's and sports cars but at least they also fill the need of a much larger variety of consumer.

    that is something gm does not do.

    one parting shot;

    my sister wants to get a fusion hybrid. now they told her she can either pay retail, get the car in 3-4 months, or get it on the employee purchase program and time frame at this point is indefinite. most at Ford (since she works in warantee and service she is in contact with people at the regional level daily so she has more info than what salesmen at the dealer level have) thinks it could be as much as 2 years. i think this is a good indication of Ford's supply issues. either way, it pretty much looks like she will miss the WA state sales tax exemption
     
  3. randyb359

    randyb359 Member

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    I don't know but I was just looking at an HHR and it had 50% US/Canada content
     
  4. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    Almost 1/2 year later, we can answer the above question (chicken or the egg) relating to Insight production. It's quite revealing how wrong your assumption was. Now that the existing Insight sales show a disappointing low percentage (compared to the Prius) one can see why the CIVIC production was so low. Namely, people didn't want a Honda ... people didn't want the Ford mini SUV ... people didn't want the VW TDI ... certainly not in the HUGE volume that the Prius comparatively moves at. It's not that they were under produced ... rather that's the amount of buyers the product would only support. Speaking of almost 1/2 year later ... and sales that never appeared, it seems Malorn has disappeared, too. I hope GM's bko didn't cause his dealership to shut down.