If you are waiting on delivery of a 2020 Prius Prime from Japan.......

Called the dealership today just to see if they can find out anything yet about our factory order for a 2020 Prius Prime XLE we placed back around the last week in January.

The salesman said he has heard nothing but would ask the new car manager if they could call the regional office to check, have not heard anything back yet.

It has been about 120 days, maybe a few days more, and from what I read in the past the VIN is generated when the car is made on the assembly line and then the dealership is notified of the VIN and from that point on it can be tracked as to an estimated time of delivery.

So if there is not yet a VIN then the factory has yet to assemble our car, and figuring about 4-6 weeks shipping time after the car is made, it could be a total of as much as 160 days or more from time of ordering to actual delivery at the dealership.

We didn't mind the 90-120 day wait as it gave us time to pay off a bill and get a much larger down payment together, but we are ready for it now and hoping it comes sooner than later

Thinking it should not be a whole lot longer we had an electrician install an outdoor ground-fault safety outlet yesterday near where the Prime will be parked on our driveway. (I added the solar lights after the electrician left)

 

Thanks, I'll definitely see about posting an update after we get our Prime XLE and have a chance to try it out some.

While it is not one of the bigger reasons for us getting the XLE, I do like the bigger 11.6 inch screen and having Amazon Alexa built in.

The bigger reasons is the overall dependability and endurance of Toyota combined with the plug-in ability and overall MPGe for a reasonable price for a plug-in hybrid.

 

Well, there are separate Toyota regions across the county and each region seems to want to be independent of the other regions and each region seems to only want to deal with dealerships within their own region.

Having said that, if you search carb states and non-carb states you'll see that Toyota doesn't have the same incentive to sell plug-in hybrids in the non-carb states so in those states it is usually rare to see any plug-in hybrids on the dealership lots.

That is why to get the Prime XLE we wanted we had to do a factory order from the factory in Japan and the normal time is said to be about 90-120 days from time of placing the order to delivery of the vehicle to your dealership.

 

Since the normal time seems to be 90-120 days did they explain why it took 6 months ?

I thought there is no way to track it until the VIN is generated, and I thought that didn't happen until the car was actually made on the assembly line.

My dealership said they have no info at all on the progress even though it's been about 120 days.

 

It would be nice if the dealerships in the carb areas would ship cars as needed to non-carb areas, but the Toyota regions don't seem to want to deal with other regions.

 

Okay, so that extra long wait was due to ordering before they were even available.

 

Thanks for sharing that ! So in that instance it seems the travel time across the ocean took about a month, then about another 3 weeks to get to the dealer.

Wow, the roughly 120 days we already waited were not unexpected, but I sure hope we are not looking at an additional 2 months before delivery

 

Thanks, that's good to know. How soon before the actual arrival of your car at the dealership was tracking available ?

Of course with the special pre-order program you were part of that included "a special tracking system for participants" it might not be an accurate representation of what the normal system provides for individual factory orders now.

It's amazing how you can order a $10 item online and be able to track progress almost immediately, yet with a roughly $30K car you have no idea of the progress for months. You would think once the order reaches Japan they could give you a rough estimate saying something like "the estimated time of assembly of your car will be in about 9-10 weeks".

Unless someone posted inaccurate info in the past it is my understanding that the dealership/regional office has no idea at all of the progress of an individual factory order until the VIN is generated, and that the VIN is not generated until the day the car is assembled on the assembly line.

If that is the case then our car has not even been assembled yet after over 120 days.