Featured For Toyota, hybrids become a tougher sell

To be sure, the Toyota HSD avoids some of those liabilities. But the real issue is granularity. $300 to replace a starter in a 12 year old car isn't so bad, even if you just spent $300 on a new alternator last month.

$3000 to replace a hybrid traction battery or brake booster in year 12? Only the most dedicated are doing it.

The overall lifetime costs may not be much different, but the relative cost of individual repairs is very much a factor. Plenty of 10-15 year old cars have been sticker-shocked into the crusher.

 

There's an interesting twist to that. Yes, they do indeed care. But when it plays out, they don't actually keep the vehicle that long. It is statically extremely low (at least here in a northern state) for vehicles to survive that long. The seasonal changes age the vehicle to the point where upkeep to keep a guzzler going simply isn't worth the expense.

There's also the reality of human nature. Desire for something newer compels many to replace, even if there are a few years left on the vehicle. Those end up in the used market, skewing the ownership trail. Dealers will sometimes dump those vehicles on buyers who purchase in bulk for resale elsewhere.

 

Hybrid sales are not dead yet: May sales:

• Hybrid sales up 44.7 percent for Toyota and 40.1 percent for Lexus
• Rav4 Hybrid at 25% of Rav4 sales
• New Corolla and UX Hybrids also selling well

Here is a link to the full sales press release and chart:
Toyota Motor North America Reports May 2019 Sales | Toyota USA Newsroom

 

Dead-cat bounce? Follow the number back a decade or so, hasn't it slowed appreciably.

 

I was feeling pretty good about their sales, until you said that.

.

 

Very, very, very different market back then makes direct comparisons impossible.

The measure of success is based on the progress of traditional vehicle phaseout.

RAV4 hybrI'd is reaching a new audience. That impacts the status quo. Real change is happening.

 

I don't think so, The Rav4 Hybrid is bringing in a lot of new hybrid buyers who are very happy with acceleration, smoothness, quietness in addition to MPG. Same with Lexus UX. The word is getting out that the hybrids of these vehicles are superior to the gas versions.

Also, if you add Corolla hybrid sales to Prius, sales are about the same and that's with 2019 Prius just hitting dealers recently. So, Toyota's strategy of expanding hybrids to more models may be working while reducing the appeal of the Prius brand.

 

I write some of it off to the relative newness of the phenomenon. People didn't used to keep cars this long. Now more people are pushing older cars longer. Nobody knows how it will work out but that won't stop a lot of us from making educated guesses.

The used car market became very distorted after the big credit crunch 2007ish. Cash for clunkers also had a huge effect shortly after. Personally, I noticed a split in the used car market: Cars that would (or already did) need new timing belts installed became relatively worthless once people learned about it; cars that didn't depend on timing belts suddenly gained extra value relative to their age & depreciation.

All because it's one less big bill to pay.

I don't have the data to prove it, but my gut says that now that we (as a car-using culture) have had time to see the full lifecycle of a hybrid and the various costs along the way, they aren't going to be as warmly received as they once were. The only factor pushing the other direction is pain at the gas pump and lately everyone has gotten comfortable.

This doesn't make the hybrid car any less wonderful to drive or own, at least within the scope of the old normal duration of ownership.

 

Prius sales have been steadily declining with the fall gas prices. The introduction of the Rav4h and other hybrids so far have only covered the loses of the Prius. The portion that the hybrid segment makes of new car sales wasn't changed much in years. Perhaps it will with more SUV models.

 

There is an article on jalopnik dot com.
Go check it out.
The link is not working here.

 

It may not be as much an issue of them not "pushing" them as the public not "pulling" them. Sedan sales are down, consumers are buying crossovers more frequently. Look at Prius sales over the last 10 years, Ford is out of the sedan market, etc.

Data from carsalesbase.com, I'll compare 2012 and 2018 sales, units in K

 

Same thing happened to me when I tried to put in this link to the website on this forum. Something goofy here. Perhaps one of the moderators can resolve it:

 

It seems to be something on Jalopnik's; I've never seen it happen with other sources.

Those familiar with html code can manually edit it down to just the actual link, but the junk doesn't show up until after it gets posted.

 

Use the kosher link function in full priuschat editor:

Copy link
Open editor
Type something
Select it
Click the link icon
Paste link in pop up

Now the selected text will behave as a (compact) link.

 

Did all the steps, and the link looked good until I hit "Post", then it exploded to the same huge URL as seen above.

 

yep. I did those steps too. Must be something with Jalopnik. Should I delete it?

 

Thanks!

 

Definitely not dead but much lower than they were 6 short years ago. I don't believe you can get an accurate picture from a single month, but if you look at the ytd column toyota hybrids are down 9.9%. Pull the phev and fcv from it and toyota sold 61K non-plugin hybrids in the us during the first 5 months covering 6 vehicles, while Tesla sold 58K bevs in 3 models during the same period. Lexus hybrids are way up, increases by led by the new ux hybrid (a luxed up small crossover) and the redesigned lexus es hybrid. Together they are down a little, but less than toyota/lexus in general so take rate is up slightly from the first 5 months of last year.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-03/prius-preeminence-fades-as-hybrid-bets-shift-to-suvs-from-sedans
If you add phevs and mild hybrids to the mix the hybrid is selling as well as they have in the past. Remove them though and in the US and Japan hybrid sales are way down from their peak, europe is up, and the ROW really doesn't buy many. Last year bevs were 1.4% of the market, phevs 0.7%, and non-plug-in full and mild hybrids 2%. Plug-ins for the first time slightly edged out hybrids by 2.1% to 2%. Data comes from combined inside evs and lmc with it being unknown how to count the i3 and other vehicles that don't spell out bev versus phev in sales data.

 

I think a lot of it has to do with gas prices. There is still the perceived notion that 'gas is cheap'..even though gas prices have been creeping up.

As soon as the 'cheap gas' perception fades, I think we will see an inevitable shift towards hybrids, etc... Of course, BEVs certainly will add another wrinkle to the story.