Led by Prius, Toyota hybrid sales decline
7,232 units sold in FebruaryOverall, for the month of February, Toyota new vehicle sales declined dramatically, although passenger car sales increased by 6.3 percent compared to last month. In terms of hybrid cars, however, the news was even worse - particularly for the Prius.
Overall, Toyota hybrid sales dropped from 11,876 units in January to 11,814 in February. The Toyota Prius went from 8,121 units in January, to 7,232 units in February.
Ironically, the Lexus RX400h hybrid saw an uptick in sales of 36.3 percent over last February.
Labels: Hybrid Vehicles, lexus rx400h, toyota, toyota prius
posted by Dahcredyns at
10:57 AM
10 Comments:
Is it surprising since the new and improved model is coming out in a few months?
The Prius sale decline (-31%) is not as bad as the Yaris (-49%), Camry (-38%) or Avalon (-46%) but worse than the Corolla (-11%).
Other than Corolla, the non-hybrid models (Yaris and Avalon) declined more than the Prius. Camry hybrid model seems to help the sale.
http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/toyota-reports-february-sales-83970.aspx
No doubt that the launch of the third gen is on many minds. Does that explain the entire difference?
Whom knows.
Still, you probably won't find the deals on the new prius that you are starting to see on the 2nd gen Prius.
It's going to be a very interesting market for Toyota in the next several months.
The thing that really surprised me, however, was the spike in RX hybrid sales.
Yup, an indication that hybrid versions are helping with the sales of the non-hybrids.
Which is kind of the thinking behind my latest post, why doesn't the prius qualify for a tax credit?
even in this crappy environment, with much lower gas prices than 6 months ago, hybrids still have some pretty good momentum. if you renewed the old tax credit, i think sales would pick up rather significantly for all hybrids.
would that really be a bad thing?
why not push Ford to make as many Fusion hybrids as fast as possible, even if it does help Toyota and the prius in the short term?
I think the Fusion production will be limited due to the HV battery pack production.
Ford use the HV battery from Sanyo which now is owned (majority?) by Toyota.
Unless Ford comes up with their own Li-ion HV battery tech, they won't be able to easily ramp up the Fusion hybrid.
well, wouldn't rolling out conventional hybrids with lithium be easier than rolling out PHEVs or EVs with lithium since there is less demand on the battery?
how can lithium PHEV production be so near, yet lithium hybrids are so impossible?
if you're going to have such limited production, 25,000 vehicles, why not give lithium a try? don't want to be the first failure?
it's all foot-dragging, or knuckle-dragging, in my opinion.
I agree. Enerdel and Hitachi have Li-ion cells specifically designed for HEVs. No one seems to be using them. Why? Reliability is not there yet?
I don't know.
In some ways I can see why Toyota was leary. They knew demand was going to be pretty high for the new Prius, which means Toyota's lithium production, etc. had to be perfected for hundreds of thousands of hybrids, essentially, immediately.
That was a fairly risky rollout because of the production numbers involved.
The Fusion hybrid, on the other, will probably be rolling out only a couple thousand cars per month. It seems it would have been far easier to make a lithium upgrade in a vehicle with much smaller production requirements.
In my opinion, Ford could have made a pretty strong statement with a lithium-powered Fusion. Seems like the perfect time for such risk.
You are right, it would be a good opportunity for Ford. That would mean more work (research) and the Fusion hybrid might not be able to arrive for 2010 model year. I made that statement for the following reasons.
The Escape hybrid system was based around the Classic Prius (1997 in Japan) technology. It had a weaker electric motor compared to the gas engine. A/C was belt driven. There were no voltage booster. etc...
The 2010 Fusion hybrid introduced new technology we saw in the Iconic Prius (introduced in 2004). It now has electric A/C, voltage booster, more powerful electric motor, etc... However, Ford has one advantage by using the Sanyo NiMh cells. Sanyo cells have 10% higher voltage (1.33V) than the PEVE cells (1.2V) that Toyota used. Ford was able to discharge more power from the battery (may compromise battery life) and got better MPG than the Camry hybrid.
If the Fusion hybrid were to use the Li-ion cells, a new strategy to manage the lithium had to be developed. Li-ion is not as well understood as the NiMh. That would further delay it.
Totally agreed.
Still, Ford has been playing around with this technology for a very long time.
In Washington these guys can't stop talking about their electrification plans.
Really?
In 2009, you can't even make 25,000 conventional hybrids that use lithium, yet in another 3,4 or 5 years you're going to be able to make millions of much more battery intensive plug-in hybrids and EVs?
These guys are loosing money hand over foot and their future profitability is in vehicles that are a long way from making a profit?
Why not some honesty? Why not just take it one step at at a time? Why not build the automaker bailout and plug-in tax credits, etc around reality?
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