I just came back from a trip to China and I noticed how many Toyota's there are on the roads there (Landcruisers, Camry's) but no Prius, I saw only one in almost three weeks, a Prius II. Now I visited the Chinese Toyota website and I noticed one thing, you can buy a Prius in China but it is still a generation II! Does this mean the second generation Prius is still in production? I thought the prius was only manufactured in Japan, so they are now building both the second and third generation there? I did hear about Prius production in China for a while but I thought that stopped, or are they still building the second generation in China for the Chinese market? This does mean that the number of Prius II in the world is still growing.
I do not know about the Prius in China, but from what I understand it is not uncommon for old models of cars here in the US or Europe to carry on in the developing world. VW has done this for years in South America. Back when Saab was still owned by GM I know that they sold off the rights and all of the tooling and machinery to produce the old generation of the 93 to a Chinese firm. When you think of it, it does make a whole lot of sense - developing a model and then tooling up for production costs billions - if after you have amortized all of those costs you can still use it all you can sell the cars for much less and still be very profitable.
To avoid confusion, it's best to refer to the car as the 2nd gen or Gen 2. Prius II is confusing as that can refer to the 2010 Prius (model) II. See Toyota Vehicles : Toyota Announces Prices for 2010 Prius / Toyota. Toyota then switched to spelling out the model numbers (e.g. Two). AFAIK, Toyota still had plans to make the Gen 2 as a lower cost model for the Japan market only. Not sure if that's still going on. I don't have the thread handy about that.
they dont have any new prius gen2, they will be getting CT200H before the year end, not sure about the gen3 edit: forgot to mention that all those gen2 sold in china are made in japan, the gen 2 cost 47500USD in china, a vw golf 2011 cost half of that
Someone is BSing you. I was there a while ago for 3 weeks and didn't see one of them. That just doesn't make sense in a country with modern production facilities and US$10/gallon gasoline. You can buy Turkish built Fords in the US. The Transit Van.
From what I"m hearing, the Prius isn't selling well at all in China. Probably not status enough. BYD was gong to come out with a line of "green" cars, EV etc, but apparently they're about to go belly up. Chinese either like low end entry level or high end luxury. It's all about status there for those that can afford a car as pricey as a Prius.
