Toyota Prius Rolls Out
The new Toyota Prius was rolled out today in Japan. According to an article on detnews.com, 80,000 advance orders have been placed in Japan for the new Prius. Toyota hopes to sell 400,000 vehicles globally a year. The new Prius will get an amazing combined 50 miles per gallon, which is up from the 46 mpg that the 2009 model got. That’s incredible. You would think that it would be no problem selling these cars! The interesting part is that the Prius now has some serious competition. The Honda Insight was actually ranked the top-selling vehicle in Japan for April-this was the first time that a hybrid was the top seller.
The thing is that the Insight is really a compact car, but the Prius is a bigger car and gets better mileage. Even though they are direct competitors, they really shouldn’t be totally compared. The Prius will have a base price of about $22,000, whereas the Insight costs less than $20,000. That’s not a huge difference. The Honda Insight gets 40 mpg in the city and 43 on the highway.
Toyota hopes to sell 10,000 of the new Prius a month and 2000 of the older model Prius a month as well. That seems a little ambitious to me, but I guess that’s not too far fetched for Toyota. The Japanese government, like the U.S. government, is offering incentives for buying green cars like the Prius and Insight. That will definitely boost sales.
I don’t know. I have to say that I really don’t like the looks of the Prius. I think it’s kind of ugly. So, I’d love to know…what draws the people? Does the gas mileage really bring all of these people to buy the car??? I’m sure not everyone thinks the new Prius is ugly, but I bet that the gas mileage plays a HUGE role in the sales. It must.