Hybrid Vehicle Sales Up 46.5% in March 2011

what a surprise. news flash: air conditioners sold out across the country when temperatures hit record highs. sigh, what a shortsighted world we live in.

 

Definitely a Top 10 month, with 18,605.

The highest month ever(for Prius) was May 2007 with 24,009.

Prius has only broken 20,000 in a single month three times(May 07, Mar 08, Apr 08).
I bet there are a couple of 20,000 months ahead, with gas cranking over $4.00, and assuming the tsunami aftereffects don't restrict supply.

 

Didn't know the Tribute had a hybrid version. I am surprise that car, which seems to exist more or less in our imagination (sales figures have to be super low) is still in production. Eminently forgettable.

Purely anecdotal, but last couple of days I've looked on autotrader and cars.com locally and there are quite a few 2010 Prius IIs going for exactly--used, mind you, what I paid for mine new in March of 2010. And the 20k/year we do in this vs the minivan we were using before has already saved us $2000 in the past year in fuel.

Now, 2008 was excessively speculative, but with us now at $119 again for Brent it's pretty obvious that, bubble or not, this oil market wants to ramp up high, and often. It's time to stop living in fantasy land. SUV owners must be reeling right now.

We do 20k/year on our Prius and 10k/year on a minivan and gas still is costing us almost $300/month with it where it is now.

 

Hmm, expect a bad article this time next month, when prii dry up in a weeks time, and don't become widely available again until week 4 of April. Sales will be down on March, and the story will be that Toyota aren't competitive, hybrids don't make sense, and Volt is clearly the future since it sold double in April compared to March (so, maybe 2,000 units. maybe).

 

heh, whenever someone posts how "Toyota should better wake up because competition is catching up", i think of chart as below:

Toyota: 24.7k
Honda: 4.9K
Ford: 3.3k
Nissan 545
GM: 398
Porsche: 114
BMW: 43
MB: 25

All those GM PR's about dual mode hybrids and they get outsold by... Nissan.
How hilarious is that?

Add the world wide sales, and everyone has a long long long way to catch up to Toyota... Before they all have to prove their reliability. I am very wary of these new manufacturers making 100 hybrids per month when it comes to long term reliability.

 

It's just a rebadged FEH.

The funnier part is that the only hybrid Nissan has right now is the NAH and it's only officially available in 9 states. It looks like all 545 were NAHs per March 2011 Dashboard: Hybrid Car Sales Triple Increase of Auto Market | Hybrid Cars.

 

The CT is beyond a grand slam. Luxury small hatches mostly fail here and only the A3 carried on with sales around 300-500 a month. People laughed when Lexus said they could sell 1,000 CTs a month.

They sold 2200!!! Amazing! It was 3rd best selling despite the price. Also of note the pricey RX 450h is a big seller.

 

Prius--18605
Insight--2782
Fusion--1466

Prius dominates. Insight selling 2X Ford Fusion. Civic hybrid way behind at 441.
Ford has many more dealerships than Toyota, and still can't get close. Honda is doing well
with the Insight considering it has only a fraction of the dealerships of Ford and Toyota.

 

I wonder why the GM hybrid sales numbers don't include their Volt? Everyone knows that it is a hybrid, albeit a plug-in version.

 

And in Japan:

Prius posted 19702 units (second top seller), according to JADA
Top seller was Honda Fit (regular + hybrid) with 22284 units.
Other hybrids: Lexus CT200h posted 2460 units, Honda Insight did not make it to the top 30 reported.

Year-To-Date top seller - Prius with 283332 units

(The above site is in Japanease, reasonably translated by Google).

Giora.

 

Perhaps GM did not include the Volt's sales .... because they were so small, and after all the hype and advertising .... they did not want to call attention to the report.

 

CT200h sold more in Japan than in the US. I couldn't find the sales figure for Europe. I thought it went on sale already no?

 

For those that want a fuller accounting

March 2011 Dashboard: Hybrid Car Sales Triple Increase of Auto Market | Hybrid Cars

Its the reporters not gm. GM has a fiduciary responsability to report these things to its stock holders good or bad, and the US government is still a big stock holder.

 

I couldn't find it either... launch in Europe was beginning of March.

Giora.