october car sales up, prius down

Yeah, I think low fuel prices are affecting things across the board. I'm seeing a lot of new truck plates down here.

 

I was just reading that Honda sold 289 CRZs vs 1,965 october 2010.

Ouch.

 

Data in tabular form: October 2011: Pillowcases of Candy Edition

Yep, American Honda Reports October Sales - Honda.com. I wonder how much of their hybrid sales are due to supply constraints vs. people not buying them, esp. given that Honda's sales for October were up 3.3% vs. the same period last year. I wonder what's up w/the Insight sales. It used to be that they were cannibalizing HCH sales but now they're almost as low as HCH sales.

Toyota's sales chart is available via Toyota USA Newsroom | Toyota Reports October 2011 Sales.

 

People at my work have gone back to buying trucks and all since gas prices have "fallen" in their view.. To me the drop is not impressive, but for them it means they can go back to driving their trucks. The one guy in my shop was talking about how his best in his new GMC Sierra was 13mpg... I don't think it is due to lack of supply of hybrids. People just simply are not buying them. The incentives on new trucks and such are pretty good at the moment where on most of the cars you don't get any. I know when we got the Volt it was the only car on the entire lot that qualified for nothing. Could of gotten about $15,000 off a new Tahoe though. :cheer2: Think once gas starts heading back up again hybrid sales will follow. Unofortunately now people have been "normalized" to the $3 gallon gas, so the effects it used to have on purchase/driving habits is diminished.

 

Sad to say but I see a lot of new trucks and SUV's in the work parking lot lately.

Also, the local Toyota dealer has over 10 new 2011 Prii on the lot, and about 15 more in the pipeline for arrival in the next two weeks, which has been unheard of before now. So the supply is not a problem.

 

And prices are coming down. In my area, (southern ME), dealers are advertising left-over 2011 Prius' for $21,000. (probally Model II's) I don't know if that reflects depreciation, but none of the dealers are advertising the 2012's yet.

 

Yes, I forgot to add that all of the dealer's Prii were Two and Three's, no Four or Five's.

 

Prius was #24 in the top 30 list of all cars and trucks sold in US in Oct. 2011. Prius is still the #4 seller for Toyota just behind Rav4 for the year.

Each top brand like Honda, Toyota, GM, Ford have about 4 or 5 models in the top 30 list.

Top selling vehicle of all for 2011 - Ford F series , nearly 1/2 million so far.

Will be very interesting to see how much the Prius v helps out.

 

For those who don't follow auto sales stats much, this has been the case for almost every single month for MANY years.

 

Do you see them piling up on dealer lots?
If they are sitting on dealer lots, then consumers are not buying them. Here in Southern California, they are sold practically the day the dealer receives them. All three. I know because I've had my eyes on the HCH as my option #2 behind a Prius. I've been in contact with the local dealer (Irvine) and I drive by it about once a week (out of curiosity - same reason we're reading this thread). When a new hybrid appears on the lot, it's gone within 2-3 days. For the HCH, the sales manager told me they've been getting about one per month and the only way to reserve is to offer over sticker price plus markup.

Have you seen the price of crude oil over the past week? Gasoline prices should be back up very soon.
People buying gas guzzlers right now are very unwise.

.

 

Beats me. Almost none of my driving ever takes me by any car dealers. If I happen to be near one, I don't go out of my way to stop by a Honda dealer to take a look.

That's interesting about the what seems to be the low Honda supply/allocation. The latter scenario of having to pay a markup to reserve could be yet another factor that drives people away from Honda hybrids. Seems one needs to be really dead set on the Honda hybrid in question and/or have some serious anti-Prius/anti-Toyota attitude (I've seen plenty of that on other boards, including some from Honda hybrid owners).

 

Perhaps the reason Prius sales are down is because of the flood of used Prius on dealer lots as current Prius owners trade in for EVs, such as the Volt.

Prius owners are trading into electric vehicles - latimes.com

I am not one of those people.

 

Insight II has sold at 13,600 so far this year, HCH, 3,100. However, the HCH is all new this year and the earthquake messed things up. Insight is #3 selling hybrid so far in 2011. Just passed up by Sonata hybrid.

Prius looks to be still outselling all other hybrids combined.

Hybrid electric vehicles in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

I'm not an anti-Toyota person, but the new Civic hybrid is far better to sit in to me in the cockpit. Everything just falls into place really well. I guess a good reference would be to sit in BMWs then compare Prius to Civic. I've seen a few too many bombs from Toyota on interior design. The Matrix S is a joke. Doesn't even hold a candle to Mazda 3 GT interior.

Prius v is quite nice inside. Mind boggling how they pushed that floating bridge console design through on Prius. Funny if that's the only car ever to have that design, and they take that risk on such an important car.

 

492 Insights sold in October, eeek. They ought to do a short run on that model. There is a 2nd Insight model in Japan with the 1.5L gas engine. I think it's called Insight Exclusive. They ought to dump the 1.3L, but I guess that would ruin their plans to offer the 'hybrid for everyone'.

 

Right now, after the Japanese tsunami and the Thailand floods, both Honda and Toyota are offering the "hybrid for no one"

 

What do you mean? There's a lot of 3rd gen's on lots. Toyota Sunnyvale is dishing 2011 Pri's for almost $2k under sticker, lots of stock.

 

The Thailand flooding just occurred a few days ago. You mean they pumped all the water out, dried everything up, and restored production already?

http://priuschat.com/forums/prius-h...nd-flooding-hits-toyota-in-north-america.html