April Not Any Better For Prius Sales

I had a 76. It was white with an orange, and black stripe. Loved the turn signals, and you could hide "stuff" under the ashtray.

I've got a Honda ha ha ha

 

well, they can make tiny deathtrap get 50 mpg these days too, problem is that it wont be midsize car with 5 star safety rating and it wont be legal to sell.

same goes for your fiesta remark - prius sales in europe have apsolutly nothing to do with cars such as fiesta. Nobody in Europe ever thought to cross-shop the two as every vehicle has 2-3 diesel engines.

So you shop Prius with Passat/Mondeo/Avensis, etc. And Prius is more expensive while not being as luxurious. Add to that the fact that Toyota in Europe has 5% market share, those are main reason Prius has never sold as well as in USA.

If we go into it further, you notice that base petrol versions of these cars are significantly cheaper than Prius (20-30%) and they make quite large portion of overall sales... and the fuel consumption - yeah, for average european, Prius will get better mpg than Passat/Avensis/etc diesels but we dont care as much... once you go below certain level, people dont care... so with Prius you average 5l/100km while with Avensis you average 6l/100km, not an big deal around here.

In reality, hybrids made a lot more sense in Europe than in USA, due to way people drive here (cities) but thankfully new Prius seems to solve a lot of these issues so they expect 50% rise in European sales. It will still not be big as in USA because, again, Toyota holds only 5% of European market and it will still be more expensive than cheap Avensis/Passat/Mondeo.

 

The cars available here in the US are definitely quite different. We haven't had a Ford Fiesta in AGES and I don't believe we have anything that's related to the Fiesta. We've got no Mondeo either. We had a Ford Contour that apparently was Mondeo but it was discontinued in 2001. We've also got no Avensis, but apparently, the Scion tC is based upon the Avensis.

The Passat exists here but VW has a tiny share in the US so hence there aren't many Passats running around.

Compare the YTD sales of the top 20 selling vehicles at Top 20 Selling Vehicles in U.S Jan-April 2009 to the YTD sales of the Passat and tC at VW Newsroom: VOLKSWAGEN REPORTS APRIL 2009 SALES and Pressroom : Toyota Reports April Sales / Toyota.

 

In relation to Prius sales being down, In Australia we have frequent Toyota commercials on free to air and pay TV, but they never advertise the Prius. Toyota themselves do not seem to go out of their way to give the Prius a lot of publicity. Have I got this wrong? Is this the same in America?

 

Some local dealers sometimes advertise the Prius. One big ad campaign for awhile was the Prius Yes campaign (

) but I think it ended long ago. I got some Yes stickers in the mail from Toyota around that time.

In response, Honda did a Honda No ad when the Toyota/Lexus tax credits went to $0 and Honda still had theirs. I'm not sure if this is an official ad but it was along these lines:

. I believe sometimes a shorter (30 second?) version of this is run.

 

well it is same as in Europe - Prius sells a lot less units % wise, so it gets a lot less advertising...

 

I think the answer is blazingly simple. Declining sales is not due to gas prices, the Prius model, the upcoming 2010, phase of the moon, or how tea leaves sit on the bottom of the mug. It is due to the slumped economy and how people are holding on to their money right now. Economic indicators are starting to shift back to the left again so auto sales (and Prius sales) will likely start picking up again - provided something drastic doesn't happen to turn it down again.

 

its due to everything you listed .

just like RX sales were down by a lot until 2nd month of new model and now they are starting 3rd shift again in canadian plant to satisfy demand for them...

... or more specifically toyota in japan getting so many preorders for new prius that they are expanding production to satisfy demand, despite complete market being 40-50% down.

hint is that new models do better at any time, even in recession...

 

Just because you typed it doesn't mean that you have to hold onto an erroneous viewpoint.

As I mentioned the 80's vehicle would not be able to be sold today legally. My point remains then why not use a bicycle to compare to the 2009 Prius? The comparison is equally invalid.

Your pricing data on the 2009 Prius is completely wrong. No you are not correct.
Package #2 last year as a 2008 listed for about $24500. This year after the sticker discount and the current $1000 rebate the full MSRP is about $23500.
Package #6 last year as a 2008 listed for about $28900. This year after the sticker discount and the current $1000 rebate the full MSRP is about $26500.

 

The thing that is very obviously missing is the emissions data. The fact is that cars can run on much leaner mixes of air and fuel - i.e. much less fuel for a given mass of air. The downsides are that the car doesn't run quite as well, and it produces a lot more NOx. With no or lesser restriction on emissions - the US Federal Tier 1 emissions rules didn't come in until the 1990s - the car could be tuned for much lower fuel consumption.

To achieve current standards, the car must run at the stoichometric ratio of 14.7 air to 1 of fuel (by mass). That reduces the inherent emissions of both NOx and CO/HC to low levels, the three-way catalytic converter (of which the 2010 Prius now has two) then converts NOx to N2 + O2, adds the oxygen to CO and burns off the HC. Achieving current standards means that more fuel is burned per cycle.

Exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) permits the car to 'block off' some of the intake air from the fuel, permitting a leaner fuel mix without generating high cylinder temperatures and NOx.

 

There are a few things which hamper the sale of Prius in Australia, on of those is that Toyota Australia have little faith in the car and don't put it out there before Joe Public. There are adds on TV for the Prius but compared to the "bugga" champaign saturation advertising for the Hilux the Prius got a drop in the bucket of an advertising budget.
A second issue is the price of Prius here. I did some calculations using a base Corolla or equivalent compared to a base or lowest spec Prius in a few markets and Australia had a vastly more expensive Prius in "Corolla costs" than the USA. That's another reason Australia has 12,000 Prius while USA has 500,000+.
Also the mind set of Australians seems to be more stuck on big family cars than even the USA. Funny thing there is some people don't even know they do it. I got asked by someone, "Why do people buy bigger cars?" I answered, "I don't know, you tell me. You sold a small car and bought a bigger one, I still have the same size car I owned 15 years ago." This person had a Holden Gemini, a 1,6 litre small car and replaced it with a Magna, a big car with a 3.5 litre V6 engine. He should have been able to tell me why he got a bigger car but got all defencive instead. The person I'm talking about considers himself pretty green. I should add, he ran the Gemini and he runs the Magna on LPG (propane).

There is another reason the Prius doesn't sell well in Australia, LPG. People would rather buy a big car then fill half the luggage space with a gas tank than buy a slightly smaller car that uses petrol in a conservative manner. LP gas conversions are very popular here, more popular than Prius.

Yesterday I had someone tell me they had never heard of a Prius and another ask me if it was slow. Toyota doesn't seem to do anything to counter these beliefs, maybe because they still make good money on their big cars like Camry and Aurion.

 

If a car company does not advertise a particular car model, how is joe public suppose to know about. Only so much can be learnt by word of mouth. Is part of the problem also the petrol giants not wanting too much publicity for a car run on batteries?

 

I'm not too concerned. Same thing happened in 2003 when the 2004 model was coming out. The last couple months of the 2003 MY sales trailed off to almost nothing, and then of course the waiting list for the next gen was in effect, which lasted for 2.5 years before you could just walk onto a typical dealership and buy a Prius.

The change isn't as marked this time, because the differences aren't so great, but still the drop in production at this time is not a concern.

Gas prices are up, marginally ($2.15 at my last monthly fill-up), I bet we'll see $2.40 before the summer is over, I wouldn't rule out $2.70 if conditions change.

 

The Civic CRX HF was a special spin of the Civic designed for fuel economy. It was a two-seater with 58 HP and is not typical of cars in the 80's. I remember when a friend of my Dad's got a diesel VW Rabbit that got 50 mpg, we were all stunned. We bought a Mazda GLC for its fuel economy, which was about 35 mpg on the highway, and considerably more luxurious than the Civics of the time, but still an econobox.

Here's an interesting discussion on some of the differences:
CRX HF, compared to today's Civics

I had a 1987 Sentra E (base model) that got up to 40 mpg on the highway, but the only options it had was A/C and cruise control. All the improvements in engine technology in the last 20 years have gone into powering creature comforts, speed, safety, and emission controls (which reduce fuel efficiency somewhat).

For instance, my '87 Sentra had no passenger-side rear view mirror, no power steering, no power brakes (it was less than 2000 pounds), no power windows, power seats, ABS, ESC or air bags. No DVD players, GPS, bluetooth, remote lock, etc. It had a 5-speed stick shift, 2 (probably small) speakers and AM/FM/cassette. I don't think it had any cupholders, very little sound baffling, and had two speed wipers. But great fuel economy (I generally got above the EPA, it was rated 35 on the highway, 28 in the city at the time). It had a 1.6 liter engine which I think produced 79 HP.

 

There's not much Prius advertisement here either. For years I never saw a commercial on TV for the Prius, but it got plenty of coverage in the press, and there was usually a waiting list for it, so they didn't need to advertise it. Last year about this time (March-May, 2008) they had a few commercials, which were the first I'd seen. Now they include the Prius in some of their general commercials showing several Toyota models, and occasionally there is a Prius-only commercial. There have been several for the new Honda Insight. (The hybrid for the rest of us, is kind of the angle they're playing).

 

LOL. Just wait.

Can you get too much of a good thing?

Doug Coleman
Prius Product Manager
Toyota Motor Sales, USA