I sell Toyotas. I bought a Prime.

seems like a small investment for a dealer interested in ev's.

 

SouthEast Toyota:

• All seeded Primes sold in weeks and no more ordered.
• Salesman was shocked when I got 99 MPG on a test drive:
  • I turned down the 2016 Prius Level 3 offer because it didn't get the MPG I required.
• In 2005, they added fees, an auction on, those waiting for a Prius.

Bob Wilson

 

My wife liked the Prime when we went to look at it at our local dealer, but we had to ask the sales person to get it charged so that we could come back the next day to see what it felt like to drive it in EV mode. Frankly, I doubt that many customers would bother making two visits to a dealership to test-drive a vehicle.

As far as the cost of a L2 charger, there are $300 plug-in versions which could be used with any of the 240-volt welder outlets which probably exist in your service department. Besides, your service department should have some way to bring a customer vehicle to full charge just for testing purposes if a customer comes in with an EV problem.

I bet your dealership spends more than $300 on coffee for the employees and customers.

 

Are you near the Poconos?

I bought our 2017 Prius Prime in Rhode Island and drove it home. I took a left at Scranton to get on I-81 and was soon in the clouds of the Poconos. Those drivers don't slow down so I was especially thankful for the radar based, dynamic cruise control. It would detect the traffic in front just as their tail lights came into view.

Bob Wilson

 

If I owned a Toyota dealership I would have an L2 charger right up front near the showroom. It would be free and I would make sure that it's listed on all of the apps that people use to find charging stations. Of course would need to make sure it goes offline when the dealership is closed so that people don't drive there when it's unavailable.

It would be like putting out honey you would attract all types of EV owners who find themselves low on a charge. Although some of them might be hesitant to pull into a Toyota dealership and risk being pounced on by a salesperson, if they need a charge they will probably pull in. And while there they may notice all of those shiny new Toyotas all around them and take a look, after all many if not most EV owners own more than one car. A Volt owner for example might notice those nice RAV4 hybrids and consider getting one.

And you would of course use the space when it's available to keep your Primes charged. People would walk right past it on their way into the dealership and they can't help but notice, they will probably ask if Toyota now makes an electric Prius, and you and your fully educated co-workers can explain to them all about the Prius Prime.

 

Hopefully the construction around AVP was completed by the time you rolled trough.

That has made I-81 in that area a real challenge.

I know when I fly in there to see my folks there is always a good discussion about the pace and scope of that construction.

Hope you didn’t have it as part of your trip.

 

It was January of 2017.

Bob Wilson

 

I'm not so sure I like the idea of keeping Primes fully charged on the lot. The manual in my PiP, anyway, recommends not leaving it charged for long periods of time.

But it would be good to plug it in to an L2 charger for 15 minutes or so before the test drive. Or, the salesman could use the charge mode function as a demonstration of one more cool feature of the car, which would then allow the customer to drive in EV mode, HV mode, and know how to use charge mode.

 

This is the most amazing car few people know about. How many times have you seen a Prime advertised on TV by Toyota? I have seen none.

 

I wonder what the actual cutoff is. We know that "full" is actually far from full, but if Toyota feels that even that much charge is not good for periods of non-use, then where should it be ideally, half charged, three quarters, 90 percent? Of course it probably depends on variables like how many days it won't be used and temperature, but if they just say "full" is not good for the battery that's not much of a guideline.

 

If it's sitting on the lot for "long periods of time" that would indicate that either there are no customers with the slightest interest in a plug-in hybrid, or -- more likely -- that the sales force isn't interested in getting customers to try a test drive.

In either case, very sad.

 

In 1964, we took a family vacation that passed through Pittsburgh and the devastated vegetation extending out 20 miles. But later I remember passing through and seeing the significant recovery.

Bob Wilson

A blessing and a curse. The deal is probably easy to strike unless the customer asks a question that they already know the answer.

Bob Wilson

 

If the customer knows exactly what they are coming in for, why do they need you? I traded in a Mazda Miata on my prime and have never owned a Prius. My local dealer didn't have one and didn't expect to get any in the near future. As Huskers said, I have never seen a Toyota advertisement for a Prime. If you feel that you will only sell to previous Prius owners, I wonder if you got that impression from Toyota?

 

I went into a dealer to get an oil change on my Prius V and there was a Prime sitting on the showroom floor that got my attention -- mainly because I'd never even heard of this model before that moment. So I was intrigued and curious.

Of course, a sales guy started grinding me right away, and we'd worked out a deal before my V's oil change was done. All I knew was that it was a newer version of the Plug-In Prius that got 25 miles or so per charge, and that was about all I drive most days going to work and back.

What was strange about it was the car's batteries were all dead. They had trouble jump-starting the thing just to get it started, and then drove it around the block a few times (what they told me) to make sure the main battery was charged before cleaning it up and giving it to me. I didn't even get to test drive it.

They gave excuses about why the battery was dead, but the bottom-line in my mind was, "this car never got test-driven". That's sort of a feature if you're looking for a car with less than 10 mi on the odometer, but they said it was only the third Prime they'd gotten and it had been sitting there for a while. I think they just wanted to move it out, and didn't have much of a clue how to sell it.

I guess with so few coming through their inventory, there's not much point to ensuring everybody has had a chance to drive it themselves and experience what it's like just on EV mode.

For the most part, the sales folks just didn't know much about the car. But the one lie they kept repeating -- and they damn well DID know was a lie -- was that I'd be able to get alt-fuel plates for it that would let me drive in the HOV lanes here in AZ. Turns out in AZ they only allocated 10,000 alt-fuel plates that were pretty much given out to Prius owners a decade ago, and they have not been issuing any more for hybrids since then. The state only issues them now for 100% alt-fuel vehicles, and since the Prime is a HYBRID, they don't qualify. That's not what I was told by at least three people at the dealership, but since when do car dealers care about the truth?

Anyway, I think they'd have a much easier time selling these if they kept the batteries charged and let people test-drive them in EV mode, and explained the economics of it for individuals based on their needs. But again, I'm not sure most of the sales people could do the math involved. I worked it out for myself and realized I'd not need to use much gas at all, which has been the case -- I've got 3100 miles on the Prime now and have used less than two full tanks of gas. The tank was full when I left the dealership, and after two months I had to stop charging it just to use up the gas. Since then, I keep the gas on the 2nd bar, and when the light comes on, I put in 2 gallons. That usually lasts me 4-6 weeks.

I don't know what people mean by warning against leaving the cars "fully charged for extended periods of time". If a car like this is on a dealer lot for more than a couple of weeks, I'd be surprised. If they give people test drives in EV mode, it would be charging and discharging regularly. And I'd hardly consider 2-3 weeks to be an "extended period of time". For some folks, that's called a "vacation".

But the truth is, it was kind of sad to see a vehicle designed to be a nearly full-time EV for people with certain driving habits sitting on a show-room floor with no juice in the batteries. That tells me the sales people did not know who to sell this car to or how to qualify them. Even if they could have given a test-drive, without being able to let them fell the EV mode, what's the point? The dealership clearly didn't understand the benefits. And they let the main battery discharge as well just by not demoing it at all.