Now that the pricing has been announced, can the PHV Prius still be considered an "economy car"? I'm not too famililar with any other such cars going for 32/39K?
I do not consider a standard Prius an economy car. A Prius may be good for your personal economy, it may cost less to run then cheaper cars, but it is 22k+ now starting. The Civic, Cruze, Elantra and Versa are economy cars.
I don't really know of any other EV or EV "pluses" that qualify as economy cars. Everybody else's efforts aren't the cheapest. Of course the tax credit pushes it back under the $30K barrier. I'm still not sure what that means either.
It's a fuel-economy car =p. sorry, just had to Some would say a Nissan Leaf or a Volt is an economy car (just because they're both compact cars) yet there are plenty of smaller vehicles with "big car" features in other parts of the world that overlap in prices of larger vehicles but with basic amenities. For example in Canada, a base midsize car (Camry, Accord, Fusion, Altima etc) starts at around $22-$24k with V6s versions starting $2-3k higher. You can run a Civic, Mazda3 or even a Focus well into the mid to high 20s (I think I've priced a Mazda3 GT-E or Focus Titanium close to $27k). An Acura CSX can run into the $30,000 range (basically an Acura version of the Civic) though I think it's a tad lower now that it's at the end of its lifecycle so they're probably bundling options into a single package.
