First Gen 5 2023 Toyota Prius cars show up at the dealers!

I think everyone was expecting a slow start. My dealer said they weren't expecting any until at least March. The pace should pick up eventually

 

chips, covid, labor shortage, nothing new under the sun. but toyota will set a new record for land yacht production this year...

 

as well as new hybrid models

 

those willing to overpay will get them

if there's a chip shortage, why are they making so many high end models, don't they take more chips?

 

Higher margins on high specced models.

 

agreed, but that eliminates a lot more cars that could be built

 

Well, most of the electronics in a car are standard features. Lack of chips meant GM shipped trucks with auto stop/start. The bulk of chips in a car are for the computers running them. While the higher trim could use more chips for add on features, the amount is far less than what the car needs to operate. Not making a Premium want allow Toyota to make 2 LEs, but more like 1.1 or 1.3 LEs.

The few more lower trim units made by not making higher trim probably means less profit over all.

 

We've shipped 2 cars from over 1,000 away. It is NOT cheap. We found EXTREAMLY great deals in order to offset the high cost of shipping. This was years ago before sky high gas prices (& walmart greaters getting $17/hr) made shipping costs even more outrageous. Now? Who'd wana pay shipping AND high markups. LOL. What kind of poor slob has such a hard-on for any new car - that comes with an additional multiple $1,000's above MSRP as WELL as high shipping to get it to you. NO soup for you? The demise of the soup NAZI came from disgruntled Elain, who found & gave away his soup recipes - vindictive as she was/is. Perhaps Toyota could learn what it means to have customers vindictively go elsewhere .... for ever. Maybe ... thinking Toyota ought to come up w/ a better plan to keep customers loyal (as ford is trying to do), as many prospective customers would (like fictional elain) rather never buy from a particular manufacturer again ... if no measures to stop over charging happens. Just wondering .... poor controls of markups may actually drive buyers who weren't really ready to go all electric - to a manufacturer that does NOT have markups. Wouldn't that be an irony.

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Strange choices: silver rims and mat-black plastic wheel covers over.

 

Yeah you're right. Rim colour still TBD.

 

Ooh. Sooo ugly

 

All this waiting is like watching paint dry. New Prius gets "pumped" four months ago but might not be on dealer lots until March/April, 2023. Auto industry is really out of sync now. First 'no chips" then supply chain issues and now "bogus dealer delivery dates". Oh I miss the days of walking on a dealer lot and seeing X amount of cars I might want to buy. And then start the horse trading knowing those cars are going to sit for a while. Maybe a long while.

 

I'm wondering, do you have a source on this, or are you just guessing?

 

This is largely true. I'll add: There is not a substantial shortage on high performance chips, like the kind that you find in consumer electronics. There was until bitcoin crashed and demand for mining equipment dissipated. The shortage that is affecting the auto industry is for lower end chips that basically do one or two things, are very robust to high volume use and are relatively cheap to make. Manufacturers shut down production on these when demand dipped, and were slow to restart because profit margins were low and they could make more on mid-range consumer electronics chips.

 

A guess on the first trickle delivery. At the release, Toyota said over 30k.