What's the deal with Prius incentives?
Prius is now mainstreamThis morning CNBC's Phil Lebeau interviewed Jim Press, head of Toyota's North American division, about plans to build a new plant in Mississippi. During the course of that conversation, Lebeau also questioned Press about the reasons Toyota started offering incentives on the Toyota Prius hybrid. Essentially, Mr. Lebeau wondered, did Prius incentives demonstrate that hybrids were becoming a harder sell.
Mr. Press exclaimed that was not the case. Now that production was pushed to 150,000 Prius hybrid vehicles, the Prius was now a mainstream vehicle. As a result, the Prius became eligible to receive the same kinds of sale incentives as other conventional vehicles. Also, many of the extra fees that were attributed to limited supplies were also being removed, resulting in cheaper Prius vehicles.
Labels: toyota prius
posted by Dahcredyns at
9:34 AM
4 Comments:
I'm sure it's just a complete coincidence that the incentives happen to mostly cancel out the reduced gov't tax breaks.
Mike
Inevitably, Mr. Press is a car salesman and a master marketer, so you have to expect spin. Still, it's a pretty good answer because hybrids have often not qualified for deals that one could obtain on conventional comparatives. Thus, Mr. Press might be able to argue that if Toyota can sell 150,000 Prius hybrids, the incentives pay for themselves.
Of course, had the full tax credit not expired, I'm sure that Toyota wouldn't have been so eager to offer these incentives.
I'll grant you the spin-mister's working hard, but I have to say that I do not buy his argument since Toyota just raised the Prius' price for the 2007 model.
I do get annoyed when the price is raised and then "incentives" are offered to compensate, though I understand that the landscape has changed dramatically since they upped the price: tax breaks are reduced, cars are no longer backlogged, production has increased. It's a complicated system that he's over-simplifying.
Mike
Mike,
2007 Prius comes with side & curtain airbag as a standard feature therefore the $450 increase.
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