Report on Prius Briefing #1 at Sunnyvale Toyota

(There's another session May 13 evening (see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Bay_Area_Prius_fans/ for details). I'm posting a pointer at that group to Yahoo Prius-2G and PriusChat for discussions.)

Thanks to Urs Steiner (of the SF Bay Area Prius list), dealership owner Adam Simms and the entire staff of the sparkling new Sunnyvale Toyota, and Toyota for supplying "Q", one of their San Francisco Regional Technical staffers for the briefing.

About 75 people were pre-registered, and I'd estimate about that number showed up. Perhaps 1/3 had '04s, 1/6 had older Priuses, 25% had cars on order and 25% were checking it all out. It appeared that the audience was half dealer invites and half people who heard about the event at Prius online sites.

Following are my notes of items that appeared to contain new or potentially useful information:

DEALER:
* 11,100 2004 Priuses delivered to US customers in first 4 months, 1,856 to California. Northern California dealers have 3500 non-duplicated orders, are receiving 500 month, expect 500-600/month for the rest of the year. Waiting list is 4-6 months, with the package #9s tending to have the longest wait.
* Sunnyvale Toyota, far from charging a premium to take advantage of the shortage, is discounting the car a few hundred dollars to compensate people for having to wait. They expect that those at the tail end of the waiting list who end up getting 2005 models will be charged the new higher prices and then may have the prospect of getting a rebate check back from Toyota.
* Highlander will cost an estimated $4,500 premium over non-hybrid. Supply to dealers will be based on current sales of Highlanders, roughly on a 1 for 10 basis, so the 60 Northern California dealers selling 600/month are likely to get 60 hybrids or 1/dealer -- that is, not many. Sunnyvale already has 7 orders.

TECHNICAL:
* #1 question Toyota gets is about the disparity between EPA labeled mileage ("Monroney sticker") and actual experience. Toyota is not allowed to use any other real-world numbers.
* No one knows yet what the lifetime of the bladder will be, but no one seems worried about it.
* Toyota is working on some kind of a recalibration or software fix to get improved fuel tank indications, perhaps by mid-summer, but technicians haven't gotten any details.
* Similarly, we can expect that current owners of navigation systems will get an upgraded DVD database, and, as many people have hoped, a website to which we can submit corrections to the data.
* They continue to assert that we should follow the door-panel recommendaations for 35/33 tire pressure.
* I was pleased that quite a few people in the audience knew about the EV button's availability in Europe and Japan, and one or two people had enabled it themselves. Many wanted to talk about ways to extend the EV-only mode (CalCars' just-launched PRIUS+ campaign) and the technical people are apparently not highly aware of the issues or of the reasons why Toyota did not support EV-mode in the U.S.
* They don't have the time to pay much attention to the online groups, but are aware that very intense and detailed discussions are going on, and that at times we have access to more information than they do.

I think this event was a huge plus for everyone concerned:
* the audience's questions reflected how well-informed they are (thanks in large part to online discussions) and how happy they are about the Prius;
* the dealer is clearly interested in being responsive to the Bay Area Prius community;
* and Toyota has such a good product that they are happy to be open and responsive to their current and future customers.


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'04 Prius Oct-May 48.7 mpg/7910 mi
PRIUS+ Campaign
http://www.priusplus.org

Felix Kramer [email protected]
Founder California Cars Initiative
http://www.calcars.org
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