Toyota to cut domestic output as Prius loses North American mojo

anyone know what japan gas prices are doing?

 

The fear is a weakened fuel market, the perception of oil abundance, might lead to stagnation of hybrid and battery powered car development by a world-class leader. So the perfection of race cars and fuel cells is expensive entertainment if it means delay of the next generation. I don't go to a dealership to admire a non-road worthy, race car, or read their technical papers.

Bob Wilson

 

Kinda sad that Prius is tied to a gas price ball and chain. Not too surprising as it's awfully expensive for what you get. My mistake was buying a Prius instead of a Camry hybrid although word is older HyCams are pretty boring drive. The '15 Camrys are certainly looking better, so Toyota is 'coming around' with better hybrids.

 

But you bought into the marketing of those cars so you sort of made his point. Fortunately for you, you were financially able to ditch those cars and get into a Prius. Most people can't afford to switch cars so often.

 

They dropped to $4.24/gallon when you do the currency conversion, they were over $6 not long ago.

The growth market in Japan this year has been kei cars which are much less expensive than the prius, and would not pass safety in the US. Prius liftback has also lost sales in Japan to the aqua (prius c in the US) and honda fit (also has a hybrid in Japan). Both of these designs are much newer than the prius liftback.

I really want to know why toyota planted this article as if the problems were mainly US, when the big loss of volume is in Japan. A couple years ago toyota was talking about building gen IV prius in the US, but that has stopped. I think it may have something to do with that, they need an excuse to not build this car in the US where costs would be lower, but moving production would hurt Japanese employment.

I doubt the race cars have slowed hybrid development, but it is a sure thing that a lot of toyota engineering and lobbying resources have been in fuel cells.

 

I read US shale oil drilling and increased production has contributed to higher supply, lower prices. OPEC is holding prices low to drive US drillers out of bushiness (?).

I'll bet oil companies lobby auto manufacturers to hold alternative vehicle development at a leisurely pace....

Then we get newpaper articles like global warming is still happening and not much has been done to stem it, or CA's drought has been the worst in 1,200 years ...

Very confusing and conflicting (sp?) events and news.

 

Well, we'll see what's going on with hybrid (Gen 4) development next year. Toyota is due to deliver.

 

Saudi wants to A) Hurt Iran, B) Hurt Russia, C) slow the North American Boom. Exxxon can make a lot of money at $40 oil, and the Saudi move may actually help US majors like Exxon and Chevron as minor oil companies may sell finds for less money. Majors know that eventually the price will go back up and have plenty of cash to wait it out.

We know from the past things to punnish big oil like nixxon's price controls and carter windfall profits tax only seemed to hurt consumers, helped OPEC, and didn't do much for or against the big oil companies.

Perfect opportunity for the congress to raise oil taxes and lower payroll taxes. Doh that might actually be good for the country.

 

We should see a bad year for the prius in 2015, probably worse in Japan (bigger drop in sales) than the US.

The car is not scheduled until the end of the year. Then I hope we see a big uptick in 2016. US prices would probably be lower if toyota builds a prius line in the US, but the noises in this article seem to suggest Toyota will again back out of this effort to localize production in favor of japanese jobs.

 

I am thinking Japan has economy slowdown. US has cheaper gaso.
But why can't we get more PiP's to USA if all the production is down?

 

Simple toyota management ;-)

IMHO roll out the phv to 5 more states. Hire 5 good internet marketing folks, and use them 25% of time on prius phv education/sales internet content, including dealer training, and you get 18,000 prius phv in 2015, add 20 more cities in 2016 and you can probably sell 24,000 in 2016. Of course then the 200 fcv leases in 2015, and 1000 in 2016 don't really look like the future ;-), so it would hurt the mirai public relations, then again the gen II volt, leaf, outlander phev, tesla s and x, fusion energi, bmw i3 already to that.

 

Ok, we're still talking about 40 mpg highway and 25-30 mpg city cars, sure I get it, Advertisings work! So show a list of cars with 40 mpg in mixed driving.
In the meantime, check out my mpg of 31.2 mile daily total commute of the prius and the car next to it; 2011 Prius L | PriusChat

 

Have you watched the news in the past day or so? Now the federal government wants to raise the gasoline tax. I live in Illinois (the bankrupt state). You can sure bet on Illinois raising the state gasoline tax. What will they all do with the increased taxes? Just blow it. Do you think they will remove the tax increases when gasoline prices go up and we know they will go up. No way will they remove any taxes. Never have, never will. Be prepared to get screwed.

 

Wonder if Volt sales have tanked

DBCasssidy

 

how 'bout it we call it;
"The Bakken"

. . . . that blue shape can be the new Land Barge logo;



The company phrase, in stead of, "Going Places" ... will now be, 'Till be Burn Thru It'.

The good news (if you want to call it that) is, it's not too far out until we're back to status quo.

The End of Fracking Is Closer Than You Think | VICE News

It took folks over a half century to believe Dr. Hubbert's peak (conventional) oil charts. The learning curve won't take 1/10 that time to get up to speed with fracked fuel. Yet there are still tons of folks preaching that we 'export' oil. Oh well.

+1
The above dynamic, although true, gives evidence of additional going's on. Even with cheep fuel, our economy barely limps along @ 4% growth. That growth for the most part ends up being banking/loan industry people and the burger flipper types. Once loans stop ... all the paper money generation in the world can't keep the hyper inflated bubble inflated. IMO, therein lies the rub, because even with cheep fuel, our inflated/paper debt requires a huge economic tax basis to even think of beginning to pay it down. We're not. And since hydrogen cars (relying on cheep natural gas for ever) aren't even being made here ... the manufacturing of those batch of albatrosses isn't going to generate any tax revenue. In short ... Prius manufacturing (in Japan) drops isn't the critical problem.
.

 

They never get any smarter James, just dumber.

 

Hummm, I wonder where they might find some internet skilled folks? Perhaps older, soon to be retired, who might have already bought their own Prius and volunteer their own time advocating Prius. You know 'loose cannons' who do strange things with their Prius:
















Although direct sales experience is important, these folks should be aimed at training the sales staff at area dealerships. Sales experience can be gotten by having them do a week as a sales trainee, free labor at the dealership. But it does no good to have these ambassadors visit without leaving behind the skills and resources to support new sales. So on the second week they do one-on-one training with the dealership staff so the schedule is flexible and walk-ins are addressed. Then repeat at area dealerships . . . learning about local Prius and Toyota hybrid owners and future owners.

Bob Wilson

p.s. Make sure these candidates are Prius and Toyota hybrid advocates with no other agenda.

 

If we adjusted for the inflation and fuel economy against the federal fuel tax ($0.185) it would be $0.384. How have the federal highways been maintained with this money that is so short of where it was in 1993? Simple they do poor maintenance and charge the general fund $0.12 and this goes up every year. How do we pay for it now? Deficit spending. Now me, I would raise taxes to $40/bbl (about $1/gallon) and fully pay for the federal roads, and use the rest to reduce payroll taxes. Lower payroll taxes should lead to a growing economy, higher gas use which will result in lower prices, should cause a bigger bust when oil prices rise.

As for Illinois, I do not know, they seem to be one of the worst run states, and I would not doubt that a higher gas would be wasted. The Best and Worst Run States in America: A Survey of All 50 - 24/7 Wall St. In other states, maybe even Illinois the money will be spent on road improvements. My own state instead of raising taxes, is selling our construction to foreign corporations that extract many times the tax money in the form of tolls. Illinois with all those toll roads must be doing something wrong.

 

The Saudis & everyone else in the industry are caught between a rock & a hard place. Oil is the Saudi economy. They can't cut production because they need the dollars and cutting production isn't going to raise the price by the same percentage.

The first in line to lose are the drillers as additional wells and projects get delayed or cancelled. The Boom Towns out west won't be booming much longer. Drilling for oil isn't like tapping a keg. It takes years for a well to become productive. The oil that isn't found and isn't pumped won't be available when production declines from the current wells.

This isn't an American situation or a regional situation. Projects around the world are affected. Some countries can't get bids for exploration & production on some of their tracts.

Prius sales have always inversely tracked with gas prices so there's no surprise they are sitting on the lot. Most of them sell below the average selling price of a new car. Everyone has their opinion of what is "too expensive" so I won't argue the point.

People don't learn. In a couple of years we'll have to bring the "Save the Hummer" campaign back updating it to an Escalade.

 

For the situation in MICHIGAN my choice and a popular one is add a one cent sales tax on items already taxed