The begining of the end of the Prius - Time

This is why Tesla has been able to continue to grow. That is exactly the attitude Toyota and much of the rest of the auto world was taking. They kept waiting for the "hype" to run its course and deflate...
They are still waiting.

A Model S is priced comparably with the Audi A8. The Audi has a few more bells and whistles, but the Tesla matches or surpasses it in passenger space, cargo space, performance, drive quality and fueling convenience for a very large part of the luxury car buyer market.

Untrue. We still don't have all the oil we need and keystone will do nothing to increase supply.
Currently we refine Canadian oil in the Midwest. Keystone will allow Canada to move that oil to the gulf coast and refine, or export it there.

We are getting closer, but as you say, oil is bought on the international market, so some of the money you spend at the pump ends up in hands we don't want to be giving money (very small amount, but still there).
My electricity is local, the fuel for it, the money that pays for it stays local or regional.

I always smile when I see a NG powered refuse truck
And I agree NG has some excellent uses in fleet vehicles.
In the light vehicle, personally owned cars... not so much.

 

Technology changes and we adapt.

It is very likely our 2003 Prius will be replaced by a Leaf. Meanwhile, the 2010 Prius will go through some significant rework to make it a flex-fuel, co-generator for the house. It might even get a charging option for the Leaf.

Bob Wilson

 

i see no promising emerging technologies on the horizon, and prius will dominate alt fuel vehicles for a goodly number of years to come.

 

Yes in the US, and I didn't give an exhaustive list, just popular in class, so left out things like the spark. I didn't realize the mirage did so well 37 city, 44 hwy. Other countries do get more efficient cars but they don't need to follow the US safety and emissions requirements, so they can't sell here.
Compare Side-by-Side

Sure but these small diesels really would be too expensive to sell in the US if you added the cost to meet safety and pollution here. The golf tdi is likly the cheapest diesel we will see here, we may get more efficient than the bmw 328d, but that car probably beats everything else on the highway. And yes diesel is cheaper than gasoline in germany.

A large segment of prius buyers bought it because it uses less oil not low tco. The low tco crowd often bought a corrola or a versa. priuss c (aqua) sells great in Japan but was a small adjunct to the prius in the US, people here still buy the liftback. Hybrids do poorly with younger demographics. Still the market in the US for plug-ins is growing fast, while the niche for the prius c is shrinking.

 

Agree completely.

There is the segment of about 1% of the population, long distance drivers. They will buy a good proportion of hybrids and diesels. Why not ;-) There are good choices. My brother was part of this demographic when he bought a TCH, but job changed and he no longer puts on the miles, so different car next time, maybe plug-in, maybe something else.

My guess is the use less oil crowd is about 30% of the population. It is here that we have gotten the bulk of prii sales, but there is a shift to plug-ins.

Then we get to the majority 69% that don't care. Some will buy for price, some for cup holders, or rim size. Here you need to make the alt fuel car cool to that demographic. Tesla and from the one I saw this morning the bmw i8 do this.

Agree for the next 5 years normal ices dominate. In 20 years though that may change drastically. Audi suggests 40% of luxury cars will be electrified - hybrid, plug in hybrid, or battery electric. Key will be falling battery prices (or supercapacitors) and rising government regulation for fuel efficiency. Say 15% of non luxury get electrified and we are at 20% of new vehicles sold.

Of course toyota completely disagrees with VW group (and Nissan, Tesla, bmw, gm, etc) and thinks in a couple of decades fuel cells will be taking over.

 

I ran Prius C and alternatives through Kelly BB tool, and this is what it tags these models:
5-Year Cost (all 2014, all except for "C" with MT)
Prius C - $32,655
Mazda 2 - $27,832
Mirage - No Data (likely to be the cheapest)
Spark - $27,900

of which insurance was
Prius C - $8,695
Mazda 2 - $4,700
Mirage - No Data
Spark - $5,290

The insurance gap is likely to be bigger for young gen. And Prii aren't about fun to drive either, so is it surprise it is not a hit with young gen?

And the older generations (with families, dogs, kids, etc) opting for regular hatchback, I have both and IMHO though Prius looses to "C" in some areas, it is a better car overall. When they pitched Aqua in Japan it was "lesser car with better MPG for less money", but if you look at EPA ratings it is "lesser car with the same MPG for not that much less". When Gen4 comes out it will be cheaper and have better MPG than Gen3. How would you sell "C" at that point?

Now to plug-ins growing and hybrid shrinking, I wouldn't count on it. With oil prices where they are at, we'll probably see some reasonable numbers for both for 1st quarter due to heavy discounts, but it will be downhill from there on.

 

saw a nice looking yaris 4 door hatch the other day.

 

I think the widespread use of NG for vehicles and power plants might be a mistake, long term.

It is so perfectly suited for heating and some industrial processes that I worry about the supply running low some day
and having to return to oil or coal for residential heat. Hopefully that will be far enough out that there will be other alternatives.

It kind of reminds me of the decline of the railroads and the take-over by semi-trucks after the Interstates were built.
BAD decision, long term.
It has only taken about 30 years for the roads to be clogged with big trucks ......that pound the concrete into dust.
So now we are mostly stuck going down a bad path and it's too expensive to go back........or is it ??

 

I don't think you need worry about widespread adoption of NG as a transportation fuel.
You will see it expand in the areas it has already appeared in. Garbage trucks and a few other set routes, large vehicle fleets.
I certainly don't see it for long-haulers or cars.

As for running out, I have a feeling we will run out of both oil and coal before we need worry about running out of natural gas.

 

i wish the delivery trucks around here would convert from diesel to ng, the air would breathe a lot easier.

 

The country has about 130 years of domestic natural gas. If we double its use (possible if we phase out coal and gasoline) then we have 65 years. Methane and methanol can also be made renewably at a higher price, so there is no time the country needs to run out. Oil on the other hand is estimated to run out for the world in 50 years and although it can be made renewably from renewable methane, the process is much more expensive. I don't see how swapping a more abundant renewable resource (methane (natural gas, biogas) for a more scare resource would be a mistake unless oil gets cheaper and more abundant. The odds are poor that will be the case 20 years from now.

cng cars don't make much sense, as you add the cost of a tank, introduce more ghg than gasoline, and the lower price of natural gas never pays the premium unless the state subsidizes it. Plug-ins make much more sense for using the natural gas in a power plant, or M85, converting the natural gas to methanol to use in a car.

CNG does make sense for busses and delievery trucks. Here we don't have the cost of stations as they can be refueled centrally. The lower pollution copared to diesel makes sense in many cities, and perhaps the entire state of california.

Long haul trucks made sense on liquified natural gas before oil dropped so much. It would save enough on fuel cost to pay for the change in equipment, but... I'm not sure it makes sense with lower diesel prices.
+1

We have more years of coal than natural gas, but it is easy to make methane from coal, which is the biggest component of natural gas, and you can make everything else from methane.

 

do you care to share where the numbers come from?

Marcellus Shale is barely tapped in and there hasn't been much East Coast shelf drilling done.
There is LNG terminal being build in Lusby, MD, an equivalent of Keystone XL by capacity.
Dominion Cove Point LNG - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Toyota did not get the memo!

 

that's good, because it's gonna be a tough slog thru these gas prices. weaker companies would have thrown the towel in.

 

actually - the sea-saw travels both down AND up ... and it'll do it again. But not everybody takes the typical path of the Lemmings. And gas isn't necessarily the great benchmark for auto efficiency sales. Tesla broke all its prior sales records last year during cheep gas (over 50,000 deliveries)
.

 

tesla

 

Mmmmmmmm !!

.

 

I would say looking at the sales stats the S curve for the prius ended in 2007 (sales volume) or 2008 (market share) in the US.
For sales volume
181K in 2007 versus 114K units in 2015. Now when the gen III was released there was a spike up, and really we could talk about prius liftback + v + phv. I would leave out the prius c as that is a totally different platform.

Here we have for the prius platform a peak at 2012 of 201K in 2012 with the prius v and phv added, but that has now dropped to 146K in 2015.

Maybe 2017 we hit a new peak with a new phv and the gen IV prius, but there is no more S curve growth. Competition including competition from toyota's own ct200h, prius c, camry hybrid and rav4 hybrid. The prius is no longer the lowest oil vehicle with people moving to plug-ins. The hybrid and plug-in market will probably be much bigger in 2025, but I doubt the prius will dominate then. There is too much competition.

In Japan the prius liftback and aqua (prius c) carry major market share. I don't think the liftback can ever reach the levels of 2013 again when japanese incentives really favored it. Still there is a huge market in japan and US still which means plenty of r&d money can flow to the prius.

 

I find there's still plenty of room to grow - such as a hybrid pickup. After all they can do it for the SUV. As in the Highlander Hybrid and the Lexus RX models .... (& for bisco i left out the model x ... stupid teslas )

 

if the model E (for Everyone) were out, we could really have a discussion.