Made a quick slideshow of most of the pics I took during the event... Enjoy! To view, click below: priusconnectny0209 :: Priusconnectny slideshow by techman01 - Photobucket
This is a great job, I enjoyed seeing the things that were different and the things that were the same as Detroit. Thanks.
Yes, I went to the hospitality suite after they started packing up and it all breaks down. That room looked nothing like it did in the morning. I met a guy in the lift who was doing the lighting for the reveal, it's a big buck production. Toyota understand that to trade through tough times you need to keep selling cars. To sell cars you need to promote them. As over 90% of Prius owners say they will replace their Prius with another Prius, who better to show the new car to than Prius owners if they want to sell cars? There are about 1,000,000 Prius on the road globally, if the average replacement rate is 5 years then with 90% of 200,000 owners looking for a new Prius they have sold 180,000 already. The reality is some Prius won't be replaced, some already have been and for others the Prius may no longer suit their life style. Either way I suspect Toyota will sell about half the 2010 model year Prius to current Prius owners.
I had much fun at the show. One of the best car show ever with good food, drinks, nice people to hang around, and of course my very first look at the 2010 Prius. I uploaded some pictures to share. I cannot post an external link because I don't have 5 posts yet Copy the following link into your browser then remove the space after "." and "com". (Dennis or someone please put up the link for me. Thanks.) http://flickr.com/photos/jakuaki/sets/72157613510566406/ Edited by Tideland Prius: For whatever reason, the link will change the first number 7 to a 4 and give an error so either change the 4 back to a 7 or copy the link into the address bar directly.
Prius2010 at NYC Prius Connection - a set on Flickr Your camera is awesome at very low light. The door step blue LED is my favorite. This picture reflects the actual "metallic" for the Blue Ribbon Metallic color.
It will be entertaining to sit back and watch 2010+ Prius's rolling out dealer doors and down the road. Think there's a lot of Gen2 Prius cars on the road? That's nothing. Three years and the Gen 3's will outnumber them. I think the Gen3 prices with reasonable options will not be much more than the Gen 2's last Summer. You can get the JBL, and bluetooth without paying for MFD, 3-door smart key, rear camera (ooh, that's nice to have though).
I don't imagine the price of the gen III being any different than the gen II at the base level but I see the high spec models being more. We know there will be about a $12,000 difference between a base model and fully optioned. In Australia there is a $9,000 difference here between base and full house. It was revealed at PCD that the cost of making a Prius has come down in areas like the HSD so hopefully with other cost reductions in delete MFD etc. there is room for even lower prices.
Indeed. I'm thinking the Canadian model might top out very close to $40k (An IS250 manual starts at $31k and an ES350 starts at $39,950. The Camry XLE V6 tops out at $36k with nav ($35k without).