Featured CNBC: The Rise And Fall Of The Toyota Prius

If you are talking about EPA fuel efficiency, yes. It would seem that the best hybrids should have progressed more than a mere 5 or 6 mpg over the last ten years. But those are rates, not potential. I know, personally, that I have improved my fuel efficiency by at least 20 mpg just by learning how to hypermile (averaged over the 3 months since I bought my new Prius). I was getting about 50, now I'm getting on the average about 70 mpg, just by learning how to use all the bells and whistles.

 

You know, the funny thing to me, is I didn't like those commercials at the time.
Do you remember the Mummenschanz giant Prius "person" commercial? I still occasionally get nightmares.

But with the passage of time, well, I guess I do think Toyota needs to return to some of what I call the core values of Prius. The main one being Hybrid gas mileage.
IMO....don't try to create a Prius to compete with a Tesla. Don't market a Prius as competing with a Tesla. I think the Prius is still a great product...as what it is, which is an amazing Hybrid.

Yeah, I remember NOT liking those commercials too much.
But...I'll take harmony between Man, Nature and Machine over trying to sell me a Prius as a sports car.

 

Yeah, it's too bad.

It's just my personal opinion. But I do think the 4th Gen Prius is a good looking vehicle, from front angle, side angle...but that rear end? I don't know what Toyota was thinking. Maybe they thought they were doing too good, and wanted something "signature" about the Prius so gave it that half squeezed accordion back end?
But really, I think it's a nice design...except for that.

 

scrappin ice off that hatch window might not be to much fun. I try not to look at it too much. Not that it offends, because I don't look.
Much like the bright headlights of on-comming traffic with hight beams on. I try not to look straight into the light. I have found myself checking in my rearview to see if the car has LED taillights. I like to keep track of how many auto dimmers are currently malfunctioning in the wild. Its almost a relief sometimes seeing bulb tails and realizing that some drivers just leave their brights on all the time.

 

The title of the piece is, "The Rise and Fall of the Toyota Prius". Not "The Rise of Fall of Toyota Hybrids" nor "The Rise of Fall of Toyota". Mentioning other hybrids by name won't change the main point of the piece.

The graph with the tumbling Prius animation was of Prius sold in total, not a percentage.

The piece was clear with that chart. It was the family figures, but labeled Prius. The percent of segment chart, with no animation gimmicks, was labeled Prius family.

In the US hybrid market, the only thing that may be growing is number models. 2013 was peak market share for hybrids, that was 242k hybrids sold. Market share has been dropping since(I posted it previously). Total hybrids sold in 2015 was 166k, and 130k in 2017
Got the total cars sold from here, • U.S. car sales by year 1951-2018 | Statista
Many sources lump hybrids, BEVs, and PHEVs together.
edit: I the total cars figures I used don't seem to be correct; perhaps just actual cars, not including light trucks. The decreasing trend will not change.

Toyota diversifying hybrid models was mentioned as part of growing competition in the video as a point as to why Prius sales have dropped, the main topic of the piece.

Just one example, but the 2.5L non-hybrid Camry improved 21% in fuel economy with the latest generation. Likely a best case example, but reality is that people trading in a 3 to 5 year car are seeing the SUV is now rated what their old ride was. With low gas prices, make that SUV attractive, and also make selling a hybrid harder.

Prius loosing market share isn't relevant to the hybrid and plug-in segment. The Model 3 has only been out for 25 months, and it is already rivaling the Prius' best years in sales. It is relevant in terms of what will become of the Prius. The v is already gone from the US market, and the c will follow as soon as the new Yaris comes out. Europe gets the Corolla hybrid in sedan, wagon, and hatchback form. Is Toyota going to kill the Prius, let it linger on, or make a FCEV and plug-in only?

The first Prius was a 36% improvement over the Echo of the time, and it has been steadily increasing by about 10% per generation. For a design that maximized fuel economy from the beginning, that is good. For most of its run, the Prius was the high efficiency outlier. As the video mentioned, the Insight was a small two seater. What it didn't mention, was that the Insight had some of the battery problems the Civic hybrid was known for. Another car won't reach the 50mpg rating until the Prius c.

Made an error in the projection. It should be 230,504.

 

rav4h is really taking off. might be the next prius. great price, good looks, great mpg's, popular american car style currently.
but it's still pretty small in this country. i hope they come up with ways to do the same thing with larger vehicles.

 

Yeah. I wasn't aware of the advances in Toyota SUVs - Particularly the RAV4 @ 41mpg city. If that can be augmented by improved driving, then I could see why some Prius owners might chose the RAV over the Prius as their next vehicle of choice. The gen 4 Prius is rated 50 mpg city, but I currently get an average of 70 mpg just with my driving habits. If you could get comparable results with the RAV, then it would be a viable contender at the very thing that the Prius does best.

However, I still don't like the way the video portrays the Prius decline in sales. Sloppy titles and suggestive animations are things I usually attribute to propaganda, not professionalism. But then again, the video was never intended for a professional audience.

 

Jalopnik posted an article that the Corolla Hybrid is the killer of the Prius. Maybe the standard Prius if you think that's the only thing the Prius will be remembered for. Europe grabs 51% of Toyota sales as hybrids, according to InsideEVs. The only thing slowing down Toyota hybrids is battery availability per Toyota Europe sales exec Harrison looks to win faster with full-electric cars.

Depends on the area of country, too. Convinced my wife to switch to a hybrid, and now she's bragging to her sister and father about her latest tankful, 38.6mpg which isn't bad for a 2 ton SUV. Even her sister is highly impressed and considering a RAV4 Hybrid.

Probably a FCEV for Cali, Hawaiian and east coast Canadian buyers and battery based for the other 48 states. Will it continue to be PHEV or go to full BEV? Maybe both and see which one wins in the long run. Toyota still sees the Prius as their "toe-in-the-water" car and can easily swing it either way if they get a winner. Switching to LiIon based Prius PHEV and BEVs will also ease the NiMH battery shortage hurting the RAV4 Hybrid sales in Europe. We'll probably see definitely more enhanced autonomy in the new Prius.

 

Next gen (2020) Highlander will be out at the end of the year , hybrid shortly thereafter with big improvement in mileage, 34 mpg overall which is great for that size vehicle. Highlander hybrid sales will go up a lot if they price it right.

It is easy to beat EPA in the new Rav4. We did a 240 mile round trip today, mostly highway (but with quite a bit of congestion which helped mpg some). Displayed MPG 46.2 and display doesn't exaggerate much.

 

THAT AMG DT mercedes is slower 0-60mph than versions of the Model 3 .... which doesn't look ½ bad from the rear;



.... and it's a whole lot less $$ than the MB

That Toyota mouthpiece is talking out of pure ignorance in some instances. for instance;

In other words, "auto manufacturers shouldn't build infrastructure for (long range, all in one purpose) EV's". And that's why sales for SOME ev manufacturer's sales languish .... because in that instance, they just don't get it. They think (as the man says) "It's not solely in manufacturers' hands"
Maybe someone ought to tell the man, the main car being traded in for Teslas - is the Prius. Toyota acknowledges that. So .... does Toyota go with the "business as usual" plan?
.

 

The Corolla hybrid will only beat the Prius in the US if all hybrid buyers decide they want the base model.

Most of the improvement for the Highlander is because it has stopped being a power hybrid, and now gets a 4 cylinder instead of a V6.

 

Toyota always had the vision of making all their models optionally hybrids, amazing how long it took.
Somewhere around 2003 I first got that speech, and we waited seemed forvever for the 2006 Camry hybrid.
But Camry Hy was lackluster in 2006, so we made the Prius plunge.

Now the question is not, what % of hybrid market is Prius, the real question is what % of hybrid market is Toyota? Also Gen4 Toyota thought the smart play was to go for sedan less bulbous look when sedans were outgoing in US market. I would have rather Gen4 been more like a mini-SUV version of Gen3 or v.

 

No surprise though. I always told people it would take an entire life-cycle to even get mainstream interest stirred. That meant a minimum of a decade. More realistically, the dealer-lot to sell-for-scrape duration is 12 years. In terms of generation, that equated to waiting for two of them to pass. Since the first-gen was really just a limited mid-cycle update, the start began in 2003. Bringing us to 2015 (that 12 years later) was right on schedule. At that point, the vision was falling into place... but still not complete.

The next-gen upgrades to Prius, Camry, and RAV4 have all been well worth it. The technology has proven robust & affordable, as well as very easy to sell. It's a winning formula.

What comes next is what this "rise & fall" curiously avoided any mention of. For those paying attention, it's not much of a stretch to see Toyota striving to make the PHV option standard for the next-gen of Prius. The design focuses heavily on being cost-effective. Dealers must have a choice that brings in easy profit... a goal none of the other automakers are in a position to address yet.

It's all about high-volume sales, not breaking new ground. That's why the perception of "fall" isn't actually a problem. Toyota's goal is to transform their fleet. Narratives of a necessary to push limits are just hype from enthusiasts. What happens for ordinary consumers is what matters. Remember, automakers are for-profit businesses with salespeople who aren't well informed and work on a commission.

For those of us who watched GM pursue glory through the exploit of tax-credits understand & appreciate Toyota taking a very different approach due to having a very different vision.

 

17.2 million cars and light trucks were sold in 2018 in the US. Couldn't find market share for just hybrids for that year; 2017 is the most recent at 2.13%, which is a slight increase from 2016. Using that value, about 366k hybrids were sold. Toyota sold 160k hybrids. So they have about a 44% of that market. In 2012, peak Prius sales, they had about 72% (434k total hybrid, 314k Toyota). Hybrid sales are down 15%, while Toyota's is nearly 50%.

 

With gas priced the way it is this summer 2019, those numbers of prius sales are not surprising to me.
I have a few numbers from my own neighbothood to offer.
There are 3 Primes in my neighborhood, one Clarity and one hundred or more US made Pickups and SUV's
with some foriegn SUV's sprinkled on top. The rest are a mixture of US and foriegn cars of various makes and models.

 

I still believe range has been down-played a bit (or in the case of the video - ignored) for the Prius. If anything, I see the Prius retaining a fairly large niche market with it's range-infrastructure advantage over the EV, and a range-MPG advantage over the rest of the hybrid world. I would even hazard to guess that most of the Prius market share loss will be to the family-car hybrid market, as that is where the greatest portion of the market resides. The EV market will succeed as an exciting "green new deal" novelty for a time, much as the Prius did ten years ago. But the EV will eventually face an "inconvenience" headwind once the reality of charging time sinks in. Your kids in the back seat, demanding "are we there yet?" will rule the day, and there is only so much the industry can do to mitigate that inconvenience.

 

I still think it may sell better (and bring in new hybrid buyers) because MPG is a priority for hybrid buyers. With beefed up electric motors (22 more horsepower than the 2019 2,5L 4 cylinder Rav4 power train) power should still be better than the current 4 cylinder Highlander (which, I think, they are discontinuing for 2020).

Then a year from now or so the second gen Lexus NX hybrid (and Gas model) should be out. Hybrid will be based on the new Rav4. Then, hopefully the next Prius in 2 years, So, we'll see whether sales of Prius and other Toyota Hybrids pick up.

I guess I'm an optimist by nature.

 

TL;DR
Gas is too cheap to drive a car that looks like a Prius, and the hard core eco-chic are rolling BEVs these days.
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The Prius is the Kodak of the automobile industry - c-2008 or so.
Yeah.
I know......Kodak is still around in 2018.
They still have over 5,000 employees, and (on paper) they still have a giga-buck in 'assets'....but...all of their real-world numbers have negative signs in front of them.
SO....if you were a 24 year old college grad with a half a megabuck in college debt would YOU want to start a career THERE?

I checked this morning and gas here is $2.07 a gallon at Murphy....and in the near term it's predicted to go lower DESPITE increased tensions between the US and the Republic of Iran - NOT that anyone in the USA is actually paying attention to that.
Why?
Because we do not have to.
I used to preach that the next big fuel price spike is juuuust around the corner, but it looks like I was wrong!

Oil prices used to fluctuate WILDLY whenever somebody accidentally discharged a Kalashnikov anywhere near the straits of Hormuz - not because of price instability, but because of SUPPLY instability.
Now?
Iran is actually seizing and bombing tankers in the geopolitical equivalent of a temper tantrum over renewed tariffs........and gas is $2 a gallon.

Venezuela is swirling around the toilet bowl...and they have more oil than the House of Saud..........and gas is $2 a gallon.

Nigeria (top 10 producer....) is in a state of political and economic collapse..............and gas is $2 a gallon.

Libya isn't even as well of as Nigeria or Venezuela.............and gas is $2 a gallon.

And al of these things are happening AT THE SAME TIME.
......SO.

It would appear that the world's oil fears have been somewhat attenuated.

Fortunately for Toyota, The Prius is a WORLD car, and they sell 10x more of them per capita in places like Australia and the EU than they do in the US because those nations still tax the bejeepers out of gas, Priuses are still somewhat....ah....."attractive".......well.....at least at the gas pump.

UNfortunately for Toyota....a combination of two things are slowly but inexorably killing their car:

1. Everybody sells Hybrids these days.....and most of these knockoffs are just about as reliable, and one heck of a lot less polarizing than the Prius is, so Big T's marketplace dominance is being eroded through competition.
You do not HAVE to drive a Prius to get pretty decent mileage, and their street cred for reliability is being trashed by (partially unjustified) claims of mechanical unreliability and the fact that most of their dealers went to the DJT school of customer service.
Word on the street OUTSIDE of PC is that they're oil burners and they have more cracked heads than a Hong Kong street protest.....
YMMV.

BUT....what's going to finally and fatally kill off Priuses (and maybe even Toyota) is:

2. Failure to innovate.
Toyota is still huffing hydrogen and producing compliance PHEVs.

If they were the Toyota that they were 20 years ago, they's be going toe-to-toe with Tesla in the BEV market....and working fuel cells as a side hustle.


...besides.
Any idea what the profit margin is on a Tundra versus a Prius is??????

 

And up to the 2018 model I'd agree.

Have you seen the rear of the 2019's? I can live with it - enough so that I just bought one last week. Looks normal enough to me.