July 16,640 Prius, down from 19,150 in June

SGH-I717R ? 2

 

maybe I'm missing the whole wonders of the Leaf, but to me it just doesn't make sense. If you live in a city, you've got mass transit competing with cars. If you don't live in a city, you have to have a car that is capable of traveling distance. I would never be able to consider an electric only car unless the range was 400 miles, or we have such infrastructure as to allow a charge up in 15 minutes in every gas station. Range Anxiety strikes again. I want to be able to take my car on vacation. I guess there is a market for the Leaf, but it's a pretty small market, so I'm not surprised sales aren't as good as the Volt. I would take any of the prii family over the Leaf or Volt though. They're cheaper, more reliable, and you don't have to worry about range anxiety while still achieving awesome mpg.

 

All depends on your driving habits. Not everyone has good access to mass transit. Sure, if I lived in NYC mass transit would work great. In a suburb of Minneapolis, not so much. Normally once or twice a week I have a 75 mile or so round trip. My wife's daily commute is about 34 miles.
If the Leaf had a 120 mile EPA range I would be driving one now. Since it doesn't we have a longer range EV (235) and a Volt. Much more efficient (for us) than the two Prii we owned previously.
But it all depends on your driving patterns and priorities (efficiency, national financial health, etc).
I think there is a bigger market for the Leaf than its sales indicate. But as stated earlier, there are a number of factors working against the Leaf, sow self (Nissan) inflicted.
Their market is also being fragmented, as other BEVs are filling the same market (sub 100 BEV).

 

The current Number of GE volt fleet purchases are small compared compared to total volt sales.
GE Asterisk on Record Volt Sales Deserves Asterisk (Update 1) - TheStreet

Why did some people like hill think those were government and fleet purchase. Mike Kelly was in newspapers and tv telling us they were. BTW, toyota had 15% fleet purchases in that month, I didn't see anyone say those were fake demand. Straight distortion by a politician with an axe to grind.

He did waste the peoples money trying to distort the NHTSA investigation with his congressional hearings. He said nothing about the SUV deduction that benefits his Cadillac stealership. I guess he likes companies buying big SUVs not efficient small cars. Maybe to Kelly it is class warfare to not give companies money to buy SUVs.

Kelly voted for oil subsidies, because the government should help these companies in many peoples portfolio to be profitable. His words. Otherwise its class warfare he told people at a town hall meeting. He does have millions in oil companies, so I guess he thinks subsides are good when they help him. Those much smaller subsidies to get plug-ins, he's against, because it may make us use less oil, and that won't directly benefit Mike Kelly.

Here is his latest, foot in mouth.
Republican likens contraceptive mandate to Pearl Harbor, 9/11 - First Read

 

The contraceptive mandate does not make sense, yet neither do these crazy politicians. If I am against "contraception," for whatever reason, I should not have to provide it to people. This is an issue of religious rights and freedoms.

Case in point: It is somewhat similar to a Kosher Hot Dog stand being forced to offer pork in its hot dogs. While I am neither Catholic nor Jewish, I believe that neither is forced to abandon his/her religious beliefs to do their jobs.

That is another issue though. That is another issue completely. It is not exactly an "attack" like Pearl Harbor or 9/11. It is more an infringement of rights.

And yes, this Kelly guy sounds a little crazy. Probably one of the many politicians who should be voted out!

 

Yes, and no. I totally understand what you mean with transit. Many large cities have good transit systems that help the public. Sadly, in Phoenix, AZ, this is not the case. The only support there is within the city is from the county and certain cities. The state funding was cut out by politicians within the state. So, while Phoenix may be the 5th or 6th (or so) largest city in the US, it is definitely not the 6th best, by any means. They have had to cut back routes several times, and there have been strikes by the bus drivers. The system is not exactly reliable, either. Luckily, the light rail which services Phoenix is a good system, although that currently travels to limited parts of the Phoenix area valley.

This may be one place where the Leaf would have the potential to do well. As you suggest, the range issues and the high cost of purchase of the vehicle definitely do not help, yet in certain ways, it could theoretically help the market in Phoenix.

By all means, though, transit is probably cleaner than EVs or hybrid vehicles (at this time). This is the clean way to go. Once the power companies turn more and more to green energies, than, essentially, EVs will be even greener than they are now. According to the earlier graph, EVs are clean, although there is still CO2 production.

By the way, how much CO2 do EVs produce by just being made?

 

I didn't really want to bring up the issue, only the shrill partisanship of it all. He insulted all of the victims of 9/11 and pearl harbor, as well as called those that support the law terrorist.

No its not that way at all. Religious institutions are exempted. Those companies that provide there employees insurance have to cover this added cost. Estimates are it may add about $25/year per person on insurance costs for certain plans. A better analogy is saying if a Jewish boss is buying employees lunch when they go out to eat, he has to let them choose pork and pay the extra cost. He can't choose kosher meals for everyone. It definitely is debatable whether that is a good or idea or not, but the government makes us pay for a great deal we don't want or agree with. There is a lot to not like with the affordable care act. This mandate might have been much butter done as part of a public option.

exactly

My point, you can't trust that he tells the truth about plug-ins or oil subsidies.

 

You are absolutely right. The Volt was the only car up this July!

July 2012 Plug-in Electric Car Sales Numbers!

July 2012 Dashboard | Hybrid Cars

 

...well you successfully convinced me I might not vote for the guy, but I am only saying his lack of support for EV/Plug-in subsidies seemed to make sense. Again he is too late as the program is already in progress.

 

July is typically a 'down' month in auto sales. Except for the 4th of July specials there just isn't that much traffic in July. It's REALLY hot, lots of families are spending time and money away on vacations and the vehicle makers know this so they keep their 'specials' under wraps until......

August....

August is almost always the No 1 sales month in the year. It's the clear-out, blow-out month in anticipation of the new models arriving in the Fall ( by tradition ). As a result this is the 'target month' in terms of advertising, special deals and flexibility on the dealers' part. It works. Watch. August sales will be HUGE this year.

 

That must be why Ford has Employee Pricing in July/August. In Canada, anyway. Last year it was so successful they extended it through September.

 

Totally disagree. I know far more people who couldn't be bothered to track their FE (including those I've requested they track it) than those that do.

Heck, I've even gotten lazy and have a whole bunch of receipts that I haven't entered in to my Excel spreadsheet.

I'm going to put up a poll at tivocommunity.com to see what the % is like of users there.

 

Given the rest of the paragraph he wrote, I automatically read the missed "not".

 

Can't blame me, I'm one of those 16640! With that said, Prius numbers have been dropping month to month for the last 4 months now I believe. I used this information when I was negotiating my price at the dealer. I don't think the idiots at the dealer even knew, but whatever.

 

I like to argue as much as the next guy, but could we please not insert politics in this thread? this about sales numbers for various green vehicles.

 

Probably about as much as a hybrid or other car. The bulk of energy use is during the car's lifetime, and EVs have more options when it comes to carbon free fuel. So, any increase in CO2 emissions from production can be balanced out during the car's usage.

Oops, a not is supposed to be there

 

That is a really interesting question. If I had to guess, I would say less than a similar ICE.
However, transport of parts to their assembly location probably adds up to a lot of CO2. So the more local the mining and parts to the assembly, the better.

With the EV you have lots of batteries and, usually, a battery management system not found in ICE vehicles, so more CO2.
On the flip side, the electric motor is much smaller, and has one moving part as opposed to hundreds, so much less CO2.
You also eliminate the exhaust system, fuel intake system (or at least simplify it) and many other systems.

I really would love to see manufactures of cars put this on the window stickers.

 

wow! those camry sales are fabulous!

 

While I'm happy to see the volt doing well, gotta keep the hype in check.
There were multiple hybrids models up in July, e.g. the Ford Fusion Hybrid and Lincon MKZ were way up (compared to june 2012) or compared to july 2011. Lexus CT200h was up a bit, each was smaller in total sales than the Volt, the percentage increase was larger. (And some smaller sellers like Porche Cyane, BMW Hybrid 7 were up much larger percentages.. BMW doubled their sales to 14 cars! When looking at hybrid sales, cannot really just look at percentages of change.

Prius family is still, by far, the dominate the market in July it was 48% of all hybrids/EVs, so a few percentages there make a much bigger impact. Overall hybrids/ev were down in july (though as others have said it is usually a slow month).