Featured Corolla Hybrid 2019 ad - any comments?

Strikes me as a fine ad. I didn't see anything worthy of a Clio award, but it shows off the product in a good light against both historical and current competition.

 

didn't toyota already do this with prius and train? maybe i'm misremembering. not a bad commercial, but idk if any toyota commercials have ever worked well.

 

I liked the maserati or whatever on the flatbed. Kind of surprised they passed a car at a recharge stop. Electric IS the future, not the past. We're just not there yet.

 

They don't sell a car that depends exclusively on a plug, so I reckon it's fair game. Besides, some car shoppers just want modern thrifty transportation, and Toyota wants to sell something today.

 

Passing the electric vehicle charging and referring to the Hybrid as a "Self Charging Hybrid" is huge.
Definitely, an anti-full electric message

 

The Tesla version of this ad would show someone getting home and taking 5 seconds to plug in while the other guy is standing at the gas pump looking at his watch. When he walks in the door the wife says you stink like gas...and the Tesla guy's wife...

Mike

 

It is also fair game when an exclusive plug in of the same size class, but costing 2 to 3 times as much, may outsell your model. This just isn't as blatant as the Lexus ads after they lost sales to another plug in exclusive model.

If Tesla ever needs to make an ad.

 

Thank you Toyota, but I'll stick with the plug.

 

I voted with my wallet ... Prius Prime.

Bob Wilson

 

It's a great ad. There's nothing to get flustered about. If you're trying to sell an EV, it's fair game to create an ad showing it charging overnight and passing someone at the pump. If you're trying to sell a hybrid, it's fair game to show it passing someone charging their EV. When EV charging times come down, that will not make sense.

For all the talk about EVs being the future, I agree. But we don't live in the future. For now, many times more people could reduce their GHG emissions by opting for a hybrid compared to an EV. EVs are still comparatively expensive (except perhaps in the luxury segment).

 

We can blame them for the public's ignorance and confusion though.

 

Some here are going to be sensitive to the EV bit after the Lexus ad. I'm actually surprised @hill hasn't posted it yet.

The charging bit can be seen as stating an advantage, but in light of the earlier Lexus one, it can also be seen as Toyota trying to cover for not having a BEV. Since many Prime owners are willing to make use of public charging, and Toyota gives out $50 to $100 to do so with the card, it could be said Toyota almost though of kicking them under the bus with the ad.

It reminds of what someone once pointed out about Pepsi vs Coke ads.
Pepsi - we're better than Coke.
Coke - we're Coke.

 

EVs may be the future (I think they are), but until a major breakthrough in batteries occurs EVs will be passed by gassers at the charging stations. That's reality. The EV market is in single digit percent and will not move far beyond that until the battery tech breakthrough that allows for comparable refueling time to gassers. And I am pretty certain said breakthrough is coming with lots of investment and talent working on it. Until then, reality is gasoline. Hybrid is great tech to reduce some of the ICE inefficiencies and that is simply awesome. So awesome that it may linger longer than we all may think (again, depending on the battery tech breakthrough allowing faster charging/discharging). As was pointed out above, many people have no idea what a hybrid is and that is exactly the beauty of hybrid. The end user does not have to do anything different to use a hybrid and still gain 50% efficiency. BEVs are very different in the PRESENT (where we happen to live). With time they will become the norm, I am certain of it, but until then hybrid is an amazing technology to get the masses to lower their carbon emissions in personal transportation.

 

That Lexus ad (if I'm remembering the right one, "three hours to kill") was brilliant. It was funny, it addressed an important aspect of the difference between EVs and ICE cars, and it was brief enough to fit on one page in super-big type. It wasn't dishonest either, though it certainly exploited a set of cherry-picked conditions for maximum effect. That's successful advertising in a nutshell.

 

Um, in the US, the hybrid market is a single digit percentage point, and never got above 5%. Plug ins might even surpass it at this time.

While the gasser will pass the EV at a charging station, the reality is that BEVs don't need charging stations for people's daily needs. Even most of the charging away from home is done while the owner is doing something else. No actual waiting at all.

The issue here is that Lexus was using the same tactics others used against hybrids. It was a spreading of FUD that Toyota fans here have been fighting against. So it was seen as a betrayal, and evidence for Toyota wanting nothing to do with plug ins. It was just a bit at the end of this ad, but including it just reinforces the impression that Toyota would rather fight change than compete in it as others start bringing more plug ins to market.

If it was successful advertising, wouldn't Lexus have stopped losing sales to Tesla?

 

camry hybrid, avalon hybrid, and lexus ES hybrid are not broken out by toyota but the rest of Toyota and Lexus non-plug-in hybrids are down 52% in january from a year ago to 4732. Plug-ins including the prime are at 14K last month to 2.2% share in the US. Plug-ins outsold non plug-in hybrids in at least december and january. This trend will likely continue as plug-in sales are growing and hybrid are shrinking in the US.

That makes it probably an ineffective ad in the US, but this looks like a european ad, where hybrid sales are growing and gasoline is more expensive.

 

From my point of view, Toyota is just looking to sell cars, and from a practical standpoint they can't sell cars they haven't got.

I don't know that I would take an advertising message as "evidence for Toyota wanting nothing to do with plug ins" but rather a simple fact that they weren't going to have any for sale within the useful lifetime of these two particular campaigns. That's what, a couple of quarters? Blink of an eye. If they rolled out a BEV car next year I'd expect their advertising message to turn on a dime to support it without any acknowledgement of ever having appeared against it. That's completely normal in advertising.

In other words, I think some viewers may be reading far too much into it.

Fair point. Sometimes a good product with a great ad campaign still isn't enough against consumer demand. I have faith that Toyota's desire to sell cars will be influenced by the public's documented desire to buy ones that require plugging in. History has shown that they adapt to build what sells and I don't expect it to be any different for this evolution.

 

Reality is that charging at home or at work does not come close to covering all potential car users. Vast majority of the population lives and works in cities where charging while doing something else is not supported. I keep hearing the argument of charging while sleeping, working, shopping, etc., but it's simply not a fact of life for the vast car owning majority at the present time.

Hybrid sales in US are down because of cheap gas. I do not think gas can continue to be cheap. This trend will reverse and all the Tahoe and Escalade crowd will look to something else. If by that time the battery tech has not made the leap necessary for BEVs to actually replace ICE, then hybrid will be the tech of the day. More than likely plug-in hybrid or range extended BEV of some kind. Something that can work for an apartment dweller in the urban setting. Not everyone has a garage where they can plug in and not everyone works at a place that provides outlets in employee parking areas. I have lived much of my life in the city of Boston and my parking patterns did not include any kind of possibility for a plug. And it is the same today.

I think most of the BEV early adapters are home owners and for them it's hard to understand that not everyone has a place to plug in a car. Not yet, anyway.

Another aspect of BEVs that's not ready for prime time is energy and power density. This is why BEVs are expensive and heavy. As this changes for the better BEVs will become the norm, but for now the best we can hope for is that more people become hip to hybrid of some sort.