Prius C is in hot demand

No. They are stopping production in Japan completely for Highlander.

As to the Chinese, will you get it into your head that Toyota has not ever exported a single model from China to anywhere else? You keep mentioning Chinese, Chinese, Chinese... do you know how many Prii will they build in China? You dont... do you know that it wont be real production, but rather parts will come from Japan and just be put together in China? You didnt.

It is not the same. In China due to customs, imported cars cant sell... so they have to work around those rules.

They are building hybrids in Japan because they are most productive there and have factories that can adapt to the demand better. To make profit with Hybrids, production has to be crazy lean, so thats why they do it there. It is not like they dont like making money.

They just sold 50k hybrids in Japan in January alone.

 

spwolf, I was responding to you because you seemed to be trying to crush cyclopathic's idea. If you notice from my link, toyota has in the past planned to build prii in mississipi, and even got financial incentives to do it. They located hylander manufacturing in indiana so that the mississippi could be used for the prius.

Toyota Shifts Highlander Output to U.S. From Japan to Blunt Yen - Businessweek
Alright, they say they plan to stop production late next year. Toyota has backed away from these statements before. But this may be true, but only because

Wow, take a breath, and think why don't you. I mentioned china because that is where toyota has built new prii and hylander capacity. Did you also miss this
Toyota kicks off Prius production in Thailand
And toyota saying that they reduced prii production in october because of the thai plant.

Sure, but they are building production there, which means they can build production here. China does import hundreds of thousands of cars. How many prii did the Chinese and Thai buy from those factories?

Why again can't they make money making hybrids in the United States? Do you think they are building the camry hybrid here at a loss? Do you think the chinese or thai prius production is will have a much greater profit margin than the one they canceled in mississippi. Do you think this "lean" model of building stuff in thailand and japan helped or hurt production costs last year? I'll give you a clue, it was spelled out in their quarterly financial summary.

I have no idea how that changes this idea. Some of us actually follow the auto industry.

 

Toyota is on the forefront of development concerning automotive production (robots, facilities, etc.), so I would not rule out the possibility of adding another assembly line for the Prius-c somewhere. Toyota will surely realise the loss of not being able to fill American inventory should it become popular over there - which it surely will, should gas prices again rise to $4.5+

 

dup

 

well his point as always was that they should build it in america... well if it made them more money, they would... it doesnt, so they wont.

building some kit assembly operation in China and Thailand for 5000 cars per year at double the prices in USA, is not the same as building profitable 300k/year factory in the USA.

Prius c will never be built in NA because small cars dont sell well there. In Japan, small is all that sells, so they build it in factory that can produce 6 other small cars, and thus always utilize full capacity of the factory.

austin has always been biased to american business, thats why he cant take the news of all of the Highlander production shifting to USA as good news, but he tries to bring it down as bad news .

p.s. Austin, Toyota doesnt export Prii from Thailaind, they build parts there for a lot of their cars, thats why the production was lost. Not that building cars in Thailand or China is bad, best american company does 99% of their manufacturing in China, but Toyota doesnt do it because they dont want to transfer the technology.

 

they make kit cars... it is not full factory, local market only.
I guess they could make such factory in US, and then sell Prius at $2k more, and then Austin will start threads how Prius sales are on decline.

 

Well you got that half right. IMHO they should have stuck to the plan to build some prii in NA, because it would have reduce costs. I would like that to passed along to the customers, so higer volumes at lower prices, which would mean more NA jobs and profits. Do you have anything to say that that would not be the case?

They have limited investment dollars, and decided to shift production of corolla to mississippi, and close their higher cost UAW NUMMI plant. They may have been more profitable, but doing one does not mean not doing the other. They have announced that they are ramping up corolla production in this plant. That is good news. If Toyota had 20/20 hindsight that the yen/dollar exchange would be so strong and that the NA auto market would recover, there is no doubt they would have stuck with the plan to build prii in the US.

Toyota, Honda say Thai floods may impact Prius production, U.S. vehicles

Toyota shifts some Prius production to plant in Thailand

That sounds an awful lot like they could afford to build a plant for a much smaller market, but some how you think they could not do this in NA. Since they already had plans to do this, but cancelled them, I would say this argument is clearly false.

Never is a long time.

Definitely a bias that NA delivered cars should be built at lower production cost plants in NA. I'm sure many americans think that. Today toyota/honda/nissan all think that too.

I find toyota shifting export highlanders to the us as a big 'who cares'. They are adding 400 jobs to a 4800 job factory to mainly export SUVs to russia and australia. I don't think these jobs are permanent, nor will they make hybrid sales go up. Why are you so excited about this? Why should I care. The corrola story is a good one, the highlander story only matters to toyota stock holders.

I think you are delibertly being ignorant of my point. Ideas of why not to build the prius in NA are the market is too small - but yet Thailand has a bigger market. Or the other one floated by toyota was protection of IP, but China is a much more dangerous place for this than NA. Since they built the prius capacity in thailand, and I expect a shift in asian demand from the prius to the prius c, they are not likely to need new capacity in NA. The prius c on the other hand sounds like it has insufficient capacity ww, and the Mississippi, may be a great place for them to add it.

 

Actually Thai Plant is supposed to build only 12k Prius vehicles for Thailaind only:
Toyota kicks off Prius production in Thailand

Fun Fact - Toyota has 45% of the market in Thailand. I would guess that Thai production for Prius has a lot more to do with customs in Thailand than anything else.

 

Really? I dont think so. If Toyota started Prius production there, it would have lost millions because US market for Prius shrinks when gas is cheaper. And thats what happened. On the other hand, their Japanese demand was steady. So correct decision.

It is much better financially for Toyota to invest in cars that predominately sell here, such as those Highlanders and Camry's that will be now exported from US, instead of Australia.

If you look at subcompact market share in US, it is very low. I doubt Toyota will make subcompact factory in US anytime soon.

 

lol. Toyota decided to build the prius in blue water, then decided to cancel it. One of those decisions had to be correct.

Your analysis of which one seems like a lot of hand waving in the wrong direction. The original decision to build was not to kill Japanese production, but to build some of the cars for the American market here. They have been saying that they need to shift more production to America, and this would have done it, so you are saying their current business plan is wrong. This plan makes sense because of the exchange rate which favors American manufacturing costs. With pure hindsight though, they would have had more prius capacity outside of japan and Thailand, and could have produced more during the disasters. A line of 8K cars/shift/month could have been fairly conservative, with 3 shifts added temporarily when parts were available to recover from the disasters.

I don't know why shipping highlanders to russia and Oz is better than building prii for american consumption in america. If the first is good, the second should be better. They built the extra prius capacity in japan though, and would have to shift those workers.

Its not as if the prius c is very different in size from the corolla. They have produced corolla for a long time in the united states. I expect the prius c to sell well here, especially if they keep the price down. Putting a line that produces 4K/month/shift seems like a good move to me. That is higher volume than many profitable cars. It looks like they need more capacity somewhere, it might as well be the united states.

 

Prius c is based on different platform than Corolla and so I doubt it can simply share production line with Corolla.

maybe if they priced it 20% more, they could do it... then you would complain about the price, people wouldnt buy it, Toyota shares would go down and maybe market would finally start buying Ford hybrids.

 

The plant makes Belta, Blade, ist, Ractis and Aqua.
The plant has two production lines, and they started to make Aqua on the 1st line on December 19th, then they are now making it on the 2nd line too.
It means they have multi-platform capable production lines.
It is very common a production line has multi-platform capability these days.

Ken@Japan

 

It is much better financially for Toyota to invest in cars that predominately sell here, such as those Highlanders and Camry's that will be now exported from US, instead of Australia.

Well, Yaris sold 3,000 last month. If they can sell 4,000 Prius c on top it'll be outselling the Highlander, which is manufactured here. Of course, I'm sure the profit margin is much lower.

I'm sure they have spare capacity in Mississippi if they really wanted to build here.

 

+1

I don't know for sure, but it is quite likely the line in Mississipi was designed t be able to handle a car like the prius c. Toyota has explicitly said it can be switched to the prius liftback. The paint shop uses the new three-wet process, so it is compatible. Stamp and Weld was mainly brought over from NUMMI, so some equipment may need to be replaced or upgraded.

The point of moving manufactuing to america is to respond better to demand (TMS) and reduce cost. The prius c looks like it would fufill these goals, especially if it shared assembly and paint with anouther model. I would love higher not lower sales of the prius c, which would reduce oil use. Spwolf, I would like all the efficient hybrids to do well and displace plane ice cars, your supposition based on my liking some ford technology is completely off base. Many here want toyota and nothing else. I want efficient well designed cars like the prius c, no matter who makes them. Its even better if they provide american jobs and are less expensive

 

Some thoughts about the sales since I live in Japan.

The Prius is, if I recall correct, one of the biggest selling cars in Japan. They are so ubiquitous here it's not funny. As cars here are, on average, much smaller (tax depends on engine size), the ideal car for many is one about the size of the Honda Fit/Jazz or the Yaris -- basically anything with an engine from about 1-2L. The other popular type of car here is family wagons. So the Prius range being expanded into the Alpha (V) and Aqua (C) makes absolute sense here, as with the cost of petrol (gas) having exploded in the last few years, they are addressing exactly what the market wants here. There is a one-year waiting list for the Alpha.

 

sure, it is just not reasonable to expect them to do that... otherwise they already would.
I bet next gen Corolla Hybrid might get production in US, just like HH is announced and Camry already is. Apparently they want to bring Camry Hybrid production to the level of 50k a year.

 

sure, it is just not reasonable to expect them to do that... otherwise they already would.

I bet next gen Corolla Hybrid might get production in US, just like HH is announced and Camry already is. Apparently they want to bring Camry Hybrid production to the level of 50k a year.