October 2008 Dashboard: Hybrid Sales Up, Despite Economy

Excellent article/report ! Thank you for sharing.

In the past week, I've seen about three brand-new Prius cars that still had the dealer plates on them. I definitely believe people are still buying Prius. I haven't seen ANY new Civic Hybrids in the past Month, but I have seen a lot of new regular Civics.

Interestingly, over the past week, I've seen about ten Smart Cars. Yes, Ten. And, I've seen the new Corollas everywhere - I've probably seen about twenty new Corollas in the past week.
The economy and new car sales may be down, but what I typed above is observed fact.

This is discontenting: "cutting investment in vehicle programs and R&D efforts. While they insist this cost-cutting will not impact high-profile products such as the Chevrolet Volt, we are already seeing hybrid casualties. Last month, Chrysler announced it would remove its large SUVs, the Chrysler Aspen and Dodge Durango, from its product lineup. Gone too are the hybrid versions, which just began production in August and have yet to reach dealers’ lots."

Looks like Chrysler made out good with the "$2.99 per gallon" price cap, despite the fact that the overall company is headed towards bankruptcy. Perhaps they should pull that last card out of their pocket and give it a try, the hybrid card, they have nothing to lose anymore.

 

Its worth pointing out that the Prius is down 5% year to date, which includes the effects of the summer shortage. Its up 8.6% over last month, and up 10.3% over last Oct. Kind of surprising given gas was already falling and the economy was already melting down. The Civic is up 10.7% year to date, which is probably also a product of the Prius shortage. Other hybrids did quite well this summer when gas was high and Priuses were scarce. It would seem that as soon as the Prius supply was corrected, the Civic dropped back off. The are down 19.8% vs. Sept, and 29% vs. Oct last year.

Nice page, thanks for the post!

Rob