Featured Toyota is wasting an icon as Prius falls behind other brands

Pay wall blocked. Perhaps first three paragraphs?

Bob Wilson

 

I believe this is the same article without a paywall.
Toyota is wasting an icon as Prius falls behind other brands

 

From the article;

ouch
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Thanks, nice article.

I've long wondered if Toyota ever considered replacing the ICE parts with a battery assembly. It might start with Leaf range but it would signal thinking 'continuous improvement.'

Bob Wilson

 

That would not be a prius that is their new platform - not sure if they will need to change it. We will see how the bz4x and variants do compared to their hyundai and tesla competitors. Ford didn't die when the model T did, they had the model A ;-) Toyota's bevs probably should not be prius.

The obvious move was to make a prius sedan and cuv built as a phev from the ground up. They did drastically improve driving dynamics and looks IMHO and that of car and driver.

Tested: 2023 Toyota Prius Drives Even Better Than It Now Looks

The primes specs seem quite good also, but no car mag reviews yet. It just seems that they could make it a better vehicle designed as a phev from the beginning, let the corola hybrid and camry hybrid be the hybrid sellers. It would also be nice if they offered a higher seating position and more cargo room as an option - like the prius v - in phev form. That would not cost very much on such a platform, but might draw away rav4 prime customers.

 

Looks like a re-hash of the semantics: does 'Prius' mean the very latest technology, or does it mean hybrid cars?

It's one of those things that everyone can waffle about forever without any real consequences.

 

how can you waste an icon, when the icon is only appreciated by a minuscule percentage of car buyers.
for the majority, it is an object of derision.

to me, the article is nonsense. written by another bev advocate who seems to think toyota could make a better one than anybody else for some unknown reason.
and that bev purchases would somehow be thrust into the mainstream if toyota made one. just more silly nonsense.
something easy to write while you're on Christmas vacation i suppose

 

"why doesn't toyota build the most efficient, longest range, most affordable electric vehicle in the world"?
LOL nonsense

 

In 2016, I had occasion to use a Prius V taxi ... it was brilliant. Taxi is one service where a hybrid makes a lot of sense.

Bob Wilson

 

Then they would be Aptera

 

if they had called the bz a prius instead, that would have snuffed out the icon forever

 

I entirely disagree with the article's premise:

"The Prius is to Toyota as the Model T and Mustang are to Ford, the Wrangler is to Jeep and the Beetle was to Volkswagen: Vehicles that define their makers and embody the values to which they aspire."

The real truth is this:

"Introduced in 1966, the Corolla was the best-selling car worldwide by 1974 and has been one of the best-selling cars in the world since then. In 1997, the Corolla became the best-selling nameplate in the world, surpassing the Volkswagen Beetle. Toyota reached the milestone of 50 million Corollas sold over twelve generations in 2021." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Corolla

 

Don’t forget the Camry!

 

yea, but there's only been 8 generations of Camry starting in 1979, whereas as Corolla has 12 generations that began in 1966.

 

But that’s still a 40+ year history, and the Camry has been the top selling sedan in America for many years (including 2022). I think the Camry, the Corolla, and the Prius are equally definitive of Toyota’s values, in the sense that they’re all reliable workhorses built to run and run and run.

 

Coming from a writer who has been writing anti-Prius articles for 20 years now...
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I didn't see much in the article that would actually support the basic assertion of the article, which seemed to be this line: The Prius made Toyota the world's leading automaker in many ways.

I'd like to know how that could be, since Toyota was a world leader long before the Prius first hit the market. There is, of course, a difference between a World Leader and a US leader.