Went to a big city, big volume dealer. Quoted me $41K for an SE that I would likely wait for months to get. They said no prevailing Toyota incentives were applicable. Shopped around online, found one unclaimed within a week, shipping to a small dealer for $37K to drive it off the lot, then they honored the $4500 lease incentive. I’ll pay off the lease as soon as the new plates come in. So, I got it for $33K. That was two days ago. It’s sitting in my garage right now. I'm hearing stories of big markups and 12+ month waits.
Thanks for being an exception to all the hassles everyone else is going through. Where did you find it online?
The Toyota website lists cars near you, based on the model you want and your location. Nearly every vehicle listed was already claimed via an active deposit. Then, I called one dealer and they said they had an SE that was not claimed and in the port of NY. I put down a deposit. I had read the woes of wait times and didn’t expect it to go so smoothly. I think it may have helped that I distinctly wanted an SE and didn’t care about color. I got the white… I mean “Wind Chill Pearl” which I’m warming up to quickly. Such a beautiful car!
According to dealer $35,009, including extra charge for paint, floor mats, parking assist package and a few other goodies.
I imagine demand (and supply) varies by region. I was able to get my Prime XSE for less than MSRP last month; not by as big a margin as you did, I think, but a little. We signed the papers on a Sunday and I had the car Monday evening. I don't think I got the best deal but I'm OK with that because I also don't think I got a bad deal. For what it's worth, I'm in the Metro Boston area (so I was looking at dealers from Southern NH to Rhode Island, Boston to Worcester). Here's what I think helped me: I knew exactly what I wanted and what I was willing to give up (e.g. I didn't get my first choice color, but that was less important to me than the sunroof. I can't see the exterior color while I'm driving.) This meant I could talk to dealers with a "do you have this in stock, or when will it be there" attitude, and I could cut off negotiation by saying, "Well, this isn't really the car I want anyway." I got an initial email quote for a car I didn't really want (color I wanted to avoid, inconvenient dealer location), so I didn't intend to follow up. That gave me both a metric for what dealers were accepting, and also let me say to other dealers, "I have a quote for $X from another dealer, can you do better?" (I got a second, even better, quote before I went to the dealer where I eventually purchased. Each lower quote becomes the new high-water mark.) The day I went in to the dealer where I finally purchased was the last weekend day of the month, and it's been a truism for decades now that most dealers will accept a price at the end of the month which they wouldn't accept at the beginning of the month, as they try to reach sales quotas. It may have helped that I wanted a Prime. I've heard that PHEVs have not been as popular as manufacturers expected, so the Prime may not have the same kind of inventory issues that regular HEVs or pure EVs do. Like I said, I don't think I got the best deal, but I don't think I got a bad deal, and at least in our area I think the inventory is high enough that we don't have significant wait times and dealers are willing to negotiate. By way of contrast, I also investigated the Kia Niro PHEV (which is a nice car BTW, and the Kia dealer asserted that Hyundai and Kia were leapfrogging the Japanese on EV and driver assist technology, a claim I couldn't begin to evaluate). I would've been happy to drive the Niro, but there were far fewer Kia dealers in our area, inventory for the PHEV was pretty limited at all of them, and I would've needed to buy the top trim level to get a lot of the nice-to-haves that the Prime XSE has at the middle trim level (XSE).
