A misleading ad?!?! Oh my.... The horrors!! I actually didn't look at the ad until this thread hit 3 pages, and I have to admit it's a pretty funny bit. Since I actually like it when other car makers try to be more efficient, I'm hoping that the G2 Volt is a successful car. That will make the G4 and G5 Prius a MORE successful car.....and if not? The G2 Volt's base MSRP (already announced) is $33,170. Since the federal kickback is still $7500 that makes the G2 Volt about a $25,000-$30,000 car. That's almost certainly going to be in the G4 Priuses depth band - and once all of the early adopters pay top dollar for the first year and we get some real world reliability data for each then we'll see what happens. Since Japanese makes follow calender years for their new releases instead of fiscal years, we're just now getting to see some of the G4 Prius details....but there's still some remaining speculation for price and equipment - and Toyota's NSA inspired marketing scheme isn't helping them out. The Prius and the Volt are two very different cars, each of which has its pluses and minuses, but I don't think that you can compare the new Volt with the old Pip, especially since there is no follow-on Pip to compare it with. The reason that Chevy is able to take pot shots at Toyota is that the Prius is still considered to be the benchmark car for the ecobox buyer. If you're the King of the Mountain, you can expect people to try to knock you off the hill. Since my income isn't based on Toyota's profitability? I'm digging the competition!
The Prius HB is NOT AN ECONBOX!!! A Honda Fit is an econobox. A Toyota Yaris is an econbox. A Chevy Sonic is an econobox. A Ford Fiesta is an econobox. A Prius C is the nearest Prius version to those, not the hatchback.
I said eco-box, not econ-o-box. I concur that the others are econ-o-boxes (including the trial-sized Prius) The G3 (and G4) aren't necessarily econ-o-boxes other than to most of the driving public hatchback = econobox, which is why so many Prius drivers are so thin-skinned about the econ-o-box thing. No. It's not necessarily "fair" since the hottest segment in the automobile market is the baby crossover, which is essentially a smaller mostly front-wheel drive, unibody constructed car with a hatch in the back.....sitting on truck tires and springs. Since they look and drive somewhat like an adult SUV and they have the utility of a mini-van, you escape most of the low-rent feel of a regular hatch and the soccer-mom vibe of the mini-van in one easy to construct car that you can up-charge the public for. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) Priuses need to be a hatchback to escape the other label that thinned-skinned Prius drivers are always ranting about: They're small. The EPA, like many government agencies, get involved in things that are normally outside the scope of their initial purpose. They are the ones that get to "officially" determine whether a car is "small" or not. Passenger car classes are defined based on interior volume index or seating capacity, which is why a hatchback gets labeled as a "mid-size" and a notch-back (like the Corolla) can get labeled as a smaller car even though both are dimensionally the same car and are within a traditional Thanksgiving turkey dinner of each other in heft. That's not necessarily "fair" either, but life is like that sometimes. I personally like eco-hatches but I don't try to kid myself about what they are, and what they're for. BTW...in a like-for-like comparison the Volt is still a small-small car since it's still a hatch. That's one of the things that the Prius does better than the Volt. Drive both, and you'll get to find out what the Volt is better at than the Prius, and vice versa. Until then? There's always automobile ads!
Great mpg, cheap interior (even the leather is fake), cheap stereo, small wheels, LB......I have two of them and the Prius LB most definitely is an econobox...ecobox...whatever acronym you want to use.
You'll have to fight that one out with john1701a. I would side with him and say that a Prius Liftback getting near or well over 100,000 in sales in recent years does count as "mainstream". It's one of the better selling car models in the entire marketplace. Of course, there are a lot of car brands many of which contain only a token or no hybrid model. And gas prices are at the low end again. And still, lots of people have never driven a full hybrid and don't understand the advantages. These things will change. I didn't mention the transaxle but an EV needs a simpler one. The Prius already has a 60 kW (80 HP) motor and the Nissan LEAF motor is only modestly bigger at 80 kW. I doubt there is a huge cost difference between the two or even a motor a bit bigger than that. I think a key point here is that all consumers are not going to suddenly convert from conventional a to hybrids or from hybrids to PHEVs or BEVs. This is a transition that is going to roll out over 20-30 years. There are huge numbers of car buyers paying $30-37k for cars today who are paying a premium for quiet and/or sporty cars that can find a Model 3 or Chevy Bolt appealing at 2017 prices and those prices will continue falling. The car makers and their battery suppliers will probably be struggling to keep up with the market growth. When we eventually get 20 years down the road the 250 mile BEV version of an econo-box will be available for them and the 150 mile version even sooner. The last gas cars standing will probably be the very cheapest and the most expensive.
We plan to test drive the Prius Gen 4 and the new Volt when released early next year. Never thought I would go Domestic again, but do like the new Volt interior - ESPECIALLY when compared with the Gen4 Prius interior now...
Phht....so stretching of the truth doesn't happen ALL THE TIME in advertising? I think Prius owners are being a little too self defensive here, and missing the point. I think Toyota even agrees with the underlying message of this commercial, which is the Prius has to modernize. Which is exactly why we are getting the Prius that Toyota has created in the Gen 4. Bottom line to me? Is I think it is an effective ad. Get's a message across a lot more directly, entertainingly and comprehensively than a Toyota "Jan" ad. How many more times do we have to watch stereotypical idiotic supposed Toyota customers come into a Toyota Dealership to banter with "Jan"?
critisizing toyota commercials, while justified, doesn't make this one better.it's not going to sell (m)any volts.
I'm hoping the new volt drops prices on the 1st gens. The old range works for me for 98% of my driving and on a 24hr test drive I was able to get 44mpg on gas only. CPO 2013 with under 20k miles for $17,800... Fone ?
they're already pretty reasonable, so you should see a decent drop once the new ones are on the lots.
You'd betterr hurry. G1 Volts are going pretty fast. I've seen sub-30 prices before the kickback for the base model. I'm thinking that's a hard floor.
Right on in our case. We hit that $50-55K range pretty closely, and we can't take advantage of the tax breaks. That alone pretty much rules out the Volt for us, along with a couple of other things (spare tire and cargo space). Our price range for a new car is right in the $25K range or less. Any car that pushes up into the $28-29K range is really stretching it for us, and $30K or over is completely out of the question. By the way I thought the ad was pretty effective for a segment of the population, a very small segment though. There are many comments about not having to stop at a gas station in a PIP or Volt. Actually I don't mind stopping about once a week. it's just not a big deal. It doesn't take very long to add 7 to 9 gallons of gas to our G2. The thought of plugging in, and unplugging, perhaps more than once a day is a little bit of a turn off for me. Just taking our son to school and picking him up is 52 miles per day. I would hope for a cordless charging system as is being advertised (3rd party) for the Leaf lately. Actually I took a hard look at a PIP but the cord was a negative, not a positive. For overall Total Cost of Ownership if we had solar on the roof I would put up with the cord and go the PIP route - but I doubt it will have a spare tire as it didn't in the current model. No spare = no sale here. Solar would make sense for us. Redding is the second sunniest city in the states.
In Caly you also get a $1500 rebate check for the Volt, IIRC but you're right....If you're not paying $7500 a year in federal taxes then you probably don't need to be buying any new car at all. Volts also do not come with a spare tire. The industry is working on inductive (wireless) charging for vehicles, but that's still a little over the horizon for the eco-chic. Interestingly enough, I believe that GM tinkered with wireless charging with the EV1 so it's probably doable, although I'm a little curious about the efficiency ding. Since people like the Wireless Power Consortium are already passionately advocating that wireless charging "can be" as efficient as wired charging, I'm getting that "diesels can be as clean as gas" vibe again. Keep looking into electric. No.... I'm not one of "those" EVangelists, but if you're putting gas into a G2 once a week and you live on the left coast then you're sending a lot of your disposable income out of a tail-pipe. A G2 Prius is one helluva great car to manage your transportation needs with, but the clock is ticking on high gas prices again. I was once very skeptical of EVs, - and they're still mostly a plaything for the eco-nerds and city dwellers who don't get out much, but PHEV's are fairly mainstream now, and you can live in both worlds until BEVs mature into viable transportation for the 90-percenters.
I think they correctly identified that new tech is important to an initial adopter car like the volt. Of course lithium versus nimh is very little of this difference. The really are talking about a different drive then a bmw 3 or corola or civic. Unforturnately they sell these old tech cars (cruze, sonic, malibu) so they can't really highlight the advantages in such a way that it doesn't look bad for anouther gm car. Ah Ha pick the prius, which is really really dumb. The prius might have provided a lot of converstion sales at the beginning of the volt (something like 30%), if the volt is going to sell well they need to grab other drivers. I am interested to see what models toyota puts lithium in versus nimh in the gen IV. That unveiling was as clumsy and stupid as this volt internet ad.
2 Prii, a Camry and a Sienna in this all-Toyota-since-1993 family. Prior to then, I suffered repeated burns from GM vehicles. Although I think they've done very well building the Volt, it's unlikely I'll ever own one. But I think that commercial is funny as hell. Credit where due...
I feel the same way about Chrysler products. I got severely burned several times before I learned my lesson. There will never be a Chrysler product in our garage again. I do feel all manufacturers have improved on their reliability but I look at Honda and Toyota at the top of the heap for reliability. If I were going to buy American I'd look at Ford but to tell you the truth I would cringe and feel very uncomfortable buying American again. For a few decades I only bought American but got burned over and over. After my experiences with American cars over the years I switched to Honda and Toyota in 1997 and have been blown away by the quality and reliability ever since. With three Honda/Toyota products representing a total of 464,000 miles driven, and 40 years cumulative, we've only had three repair issues. Amazing! I feel the same way about the Volt. I have read many complements about how reliable the Volt is, but for me the jury is still out. The Volt hasn't been in production very long and the volume sold is quite low. If they go 5 more years with higher sales volume, and still show good reliability, I might change my mind. For me one thing was an immediate turn off with the Volt. The asking price from the start was just way too high. That limited the appeal and all but guaranteed low sales volume which has proved true. I believe if the government hadn't supplied such high tax relief the Volt may have been discontinued already. If GM was trying to compete with Prius they missed the mark. They overbuilt and designed in too much cost. Sooner or later the tax incentives will go away. It will be interesting to see what happens then. As I understand it Chevy has lost money on every Volt sold so far. They hope to have profit with the 2016 model out of which they trimmed a reported $10,000 from the cost. I wonder if those massive cuts will be reflected in build quality or reliability? Apparently a lot of the cost cutting came from projections of higher sales volume, not of the Volt but because the Volt now shares parts with several other high volume sales cars. It looks like the new Volt will be a couple of thousand dollars lower in price which should help. Unfortunately due to a small cargo volume and no spare tire we won't be buying one at any price.
If I went by the Toyotas my dad owned down through the years, I would have never bought a Prius. He got so pissed at them back then, he got rid of them and bought a VW!
