Featured SPOTTED! *UNWRAPPED* 2016 Prius spotted this morning!

Arithmetic averaging here is unfair and like manipulating the numbers.
Also remember that the 3.5 millions worldwide is Prius only, not counting c, v, +, alpha and Aqua.

 

2% of total US sales is not a niche.
Camry is about 2.5% of total sales (if I am not mistaking), is it a niche car?

Added:
Corolla sales worldwide is less than 2% of total cars sales, yet it is the best selling car worldwide.

 

Speaking of "Niche", monthly, still sells more Liftbacks than all of these subsidized plug-ins combined: http://insideevs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/2015-sales-chart-august-vfinal.png

 

That's my point. All Prius models in the US combined for 238k sales last year, out of 452k total US hybrid sales (down 9% from 2013) from 50 different models. Combine that with the 123k PHEV/BEV sales in your link and you get 3.5% of the US auto market in 2014. If you assume that Prius is going mainstream, it's competitors would presumably be mid-size and compact cars from the mass market manufacturers: Toyota (Camry and Corolla), Nissan (Altima and Sentra), Honda (Accord and Civic), Ford (Fusion and Focus), Chevy (Malibu and Cruze), Hyundai (Sonata and Elantra), Kia (Optima and Forte) and VW (Passat and Jetta). Those models combined for 3.9 million cars in 2014. Of those, 115k were hybrids (Camry, Accord, Civic, Fusion, Sonata and Optima), and sales for every one of those except the first year Accord Hybrid was down over 2013 sales. When US car buyers have the choice of buying a hybrid version of the cars they typically purchase, only a small and declining number do so.

Hybrids, PHEV's and BEV's are all (individually and combined) a niche in the US market. The niche isn't growing very rapidly, and low gas prices aren't helping. Prius sales have been declining in the US and in Japan over the last few years, the two markets that make up 3.1 million of the 3.5 million worldwide sales. You could make the case that's due to declining sales over the last years of Gen III (though peak US sales were in the next to last year of Gen II). I think it's more reasonable to conclude that the Prius competes in the hybrid/PHEV/BEV market, which it's dominated, but there are more and more competitors in that market, and the market isn't growing.

There's been a lot of talk about how the Gen IV is going to break out into the mainstream, or "the masses", as someone condescendingly puts it. Given the numbers above, I just don't see it. I think it'll be a great car, one that competes well against the increasing number of cars in its market, but I don't see the buyers of many Camry/Accord/Fusion/Altima/Civic/Corollas (each of which sold more than all Prius models combined in 2014) switching to Prius, especially as those nameplates' non-hybrid versions continue to get better mileage each year.

 

you must be a statistics major, you're doing a great job of twisting the numbers.
prius is mainstream in many parts of the country, but it is total worldwide sales that matter to the planet.
it can't replace a truck, but that's no reason not to keep trying. it competes well with most cars, and as you say, is one of a growing number of alt fuel vehicles. that's a good thing!
the biggest obstacle is price/payback. that will decline over time, and yes, gas prices won't be low forever. in the meantime, if toyota can attract some non hybrid owners, why not try?

 

When you give US car buyers choices, they buy SUVs instead!

Is this just a Prius problem or all alternative fuel vehicles?

I see that you are primarily concerned about Prius hybrids, but you are driving a Volt, and are you satisfied with these numbers?

 

I took stats twice, college and grad school. I never enjoyed it. You may not like the numbers, but how am I twisting them?

Worldwide sales trend for liftback plus all other members of the Prius family (including PiP):

Liftback / Other Prius

2010 - 509k
2011 - 368k 65k
2012 - 363k 530k
2013 - 316k 493k
2014 - 242k 419k
2015 - 202k 394k (2015 sales thru 7/31, annualized for full year, might be lower now that Gen IV's been announced)

I completely agree. I just don't think the trend will reverse. Total US hybrid sales have maxed out. If Toyota wanted to truly take the Prius mainstream, it would give it a bigger interior and a trunk...except it did that and called it a Camry Hybrid, and it sold 40k last year, less than 10% of total Camry sales and down 11% from the year before. Accord Hybrid, a great car, sold 14k last year, around 7% of Accord sales (admittedly with tight availability). Unless you eliminate the hybrid premium, buyers choose standard ICE. Even when you do, as in the case of the Lincoln MKZ where the ICE and hybrid versions had the same price, the hybrid was only 30% of total MKZ sales. I think the world would be a better place if all cars were hybrids, but I don't see evidence of it happening.

Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied. I'm not rooting for Team Volt and I'm certainly not rooting against Team Prius. I leased a Volt because it fit my commute, I was intrigued by the technology, and it was more comfortable and quieter than the Gen III PiP. I'm transferring the lease to a friend in two weeks (I love the car, but she really wanted it, and it frees me up to try something else), and I'll look at the new Prius and the new Volt to replace it, possibly an i3 REx. The advances between generations of PHEVs and BEV's seems much greater than the generational advance of the Prius (or other hybrids) for the moment.

I've been a car buff for 35 years and a VC for 20; I'm mostly interested in where the technology's going. I think that 20-30 years from now almost all new cars will be electric. I think we're at (or slightly past) the point of "peak hybrid", followed in 5 or 10 years by "peak PHEV". I believe both will be seen in retrospect as bridging technologies from ICE to BEV. Toyota views the world differently. We'll see what happens.

 

I took statistics in grad school from a visiting professor from China. He was a brilliant statistician, but his English was lost in translation! He was always using the "splitting strength of pricks" (bricks) in his examples! I loved going to his class, it was non-stop laughs!

Depends on the price of gasoline. Most people purchase a hybrid on the basis of lowest amortized cost. Some of us (me for example) purchase a hybrid because it is the right thing to do environmentally, regardless of cost. Yes, I AM a tree huger and proud of it.

So what you are saying is that Toyota should ignore that segment of the marketplace and kiss that profit goodbye? I presume your graduate degree was not in economics.

How long did it take the personal computer become a household necessity for MOST people? I bought my first computer in the late '80's. My wife said "what a waste of money!" Today she has her own laptop and spends more Internet time than I do (which is substantial). Sometimes it takes a good idea time to germinate before it really becomes the accepted norm.

Purchase whatever suits your needs and driving habits best. Perhaps that is a BEV for you, but for me it is a PHEV. That is the legacy of Toyota, they have opened the door for other companies to produce a vehicle that will satisify a GROWING segment of the marketplace! When somebody, anybody, can produce a BEV with a 400 mile range, 10 minute recharge time, for the cost of a Prius PIP, I will be their first customer........and it will happen and probably here in California!

A mere pup!

I think both Toyota and I agree with you! Personal transportation is in a transitional period. What we drive today will be ancient technology 20 years from now (my children pray that I will not be still driving then!). Thank you Toyotasan for being the iconic bridge to the future!

 

As am I. But as we can see from hybrid/PHEV/BEV sales (so far), we're a (sorry) niche market.

Finance, actually. I'm not saying that at all. Toyota should go for it, 40k sales is a respectable and profitable number in a very fragmented car market. I just don't think Toyota expects a hybrid to be "mainstream", which I define as a leading position in a large segment, i.e. Accord/Camry/Corolla/Civic level.

Using that analogy, I think hybrids = CP/M, an early and transitional operating system, whereas BEVs are the ultimate solution. There's no Moore's Law in place for hybrids; the technology is mature, gains are incremental, and pricing isn't declining. There's an equivalent of Moore's Law in place for PHEVs and BEVs, however, as the technology improves and battery costs steadily drop (though not quite as quickly as solar PV costs). That's where I see future growth.

I think we're two BEV generations away from that; that's why all of my near term choices are PHEVs (maybe a Prius hybrid, since the new PiP won't be out until 2017(?).

Agreed on all points (except for your driving status - that's between you and your kids..;->) Toyota believes the future is in hydrogen, I don't.

 

Perhaps, but it's humorous to see people debating the piety of their car favorites with acronyms .

 

You are certainly twisting the numbers by saying that a car model having about 1% market share and a model family with 2% market share are both niche! it is statistics at its worst.
Suppose the US car market is consisting of only 10 models, than you can say that a one model with 3% share is a niche model.
Now, if this market consists of 400 models with the best selling car holds only 3% share, than would you agree that a model with 1% share is not a niche model?
Corolla holds slightly more than 1% market share worldwide (from memory, don't catch me on a tenth of a percent), is it a niche car? no, it is the best selling car.

 

i suspect most car buyers don't even know what "amortized cost" means. there's nothing wrong with being a tree-hugger, but i think we can agree that this is not mainstream.

is it though? the point i originally made was that to me, hybrid cars are mainstream when they are purchased primarily over their ICE counterparts. The reality is that this is not the case. Camry Hybrid and Accord Hybrid both account for less than 10% of the model sales. That's not mainstream, especially when you consider that the Camry hybrid comes in three grades! and maybe test driving it would sell it, but apparently it doesn't…

Total US car sales were 16.5 million in 2014. 2.0 million of those were Toyotas. 428k were Camrys. Corolla was 340k. Prius was 122k. So Camry is over 20% of Toyota sales, Corolla is 17%, Prius is just 6%. Avalon is 3%. In terms of the total market, the Prius doesn't even register a percentage point while Camry is over 2%.

 

Toyota Hybrids worldwide:
It took 10 years to achieve the first million, 10 months to achieve the 8th.
Are hybrids on the way to become mainstream?

 

all you have to do is look at worldwide sales by model. look at the models slightly higher and lower than prius, and tell us which ones are niche? none of the car mags would say they are.

prius doesn't have to sell like camry/accord/corolla/civic to not be niche. some here are using the term to say that it is a pointless vehicle with no future.

 

The numbers are what they are. I think the disagreement is over the meaning of "niche" vs "mainstream". I agree with Lensovet's definition of mainstream, i.e. a default choice to seriously consider when consumers pick their cars. Hybrids aren't considered by the average car buyer in the US; if they are, they're quickly discarded in favor of ICE. There are posters here who hold GM in contempt because it didn't design the Volt for "the masses", and its sales have fallen short of expectations. The same posters consider Toyota a genius in its unrelenting march to dominate the auto market with hybrids. That's what I consider mainstream, and the numbers don't show any sign of that happening, except in Japan and California (and California's mercurial affections have now shifted to BEVs). Europe prefers diesels, the rest of the US prefers ICE. There's nothing wrong with a niche, the auto market is full of them. The Jeep Wrangler, a very distinctive vehicle with a strong personality and a lot of fans who would never be without one, sold 175k very profitable units in the US last year, up from 155k the year before - i.e. right around 1% of the US vehicle market. Chrysler is thrilled with those numbers, but nobody would disagree that it's a niche, rather than a mainstream vehicle - the average car buyer (or even SUV buyer) doesn't compare the Wrangler's features against mainstream competitors. Wrangler buyers are shopping for a Wrangler. Prius is the same.

The most interesting point on your graph is the most recent one - it falls noticeably below the curve. I would bet the next one will fall even further below, and if you fit a new curve to those points you'll see visual demonstration of declining growth, that's what the current sales trends say. Total Toyota Prius family sales worldwide spiked in 2012 after introduction of the c and v and their global equivalents, but since then not only has the sales growth rate declined, absolute numbers of sales have trended downward. Technology adoption is typically described as an S-Curve, or sigmoid function:

Sigmoid function - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Your graph shows the S curve quite nicely. The first 10 years that you mention were the initial flat part of the curve (the early adopter phase). The years from 2007 to maybe 2012 were the high growth portion, and now the curve is flattening out into its own low growth period of widespread acceptance - but at a level that's not a major factor in the overall car market. There's nothing wrong with that, it's a perfectly valid and profitable part of the market, but it indicates that, as I said above, we're at or past "peak hybrid" as a transportation technology choice. The technology is mature, and its found a solid base of fans in the market. Hybrids will continue to be part of the market, making a small niche (sorry, couldn't resist) set of buyers very happy, but it's extremely unlikely, imho, that hybrids will make serious penetration gains in the US car market over the next 20 years, whereas I think that PHEV's and ultimately BEV's (still in the very early stages of their own S Curves) will.

 

wow, now your not just twisting, you're twisting in the wind!

 

Nicely done on the rapid edit. I'll bring this to an end with this post and go back into lurk mode. Basically, you and a few others seem to be seriously offended because you think I've said your baby's ugly, which wasn't my intent. "Mainstream" is a loaded word around here. There are posters, as you know, who think hybrids are a superior technology with which Toyota's going to take over the market, and that "M" word's been used in re. Gen IV to say that it's the next step in that takeover. My assertion is that hybrids are a fine solution for a small subset of the market. True believers often feel that a perfect solution for them should be a great solution for everyone else. That's obviously not the case with hybrid sales. It's a nice bridge technology, it's mature, and it'll go into slow (or no) growth mode while PHEVs and BEVs go into their own rapid growth period. There are a number of people who will buy hybrids, and they mostly already own hybrids. I doubt that the Gen IV liftback, which is what we're discussing, will match Gen III sales, through no fault of the car itself. It's an assessment of a developing market (which could be wrong), not a comment on the Prius, which I quite like. Go in peace, and enjoy your hybrid. I may enjoy one, too - or a PHEV - which I'll buy not because of trends, but because it fits my commute and I like the technology.

 

Nice forecast, no lack of motivation, it's not like anybody has been wrong before! I notice you registered in 2012 with 27 recent posts.

I get it now, from rank # 20 down are "NICHE", the Ford Mustang #19 barely made mainstream .

94587_Prius_22.pdf

 

PLEASE LOOK AT THE BIG PICTURE, ALL OF TOYOTA'S PRODUCTION & MARKETS, NOT JUST THE UNITED STATES.

Sorry for shouting everyone, but someone finally needed to say it.

Prius has been the #1 and #3 seller (briefly slipping to #2 for a bit) of all automakers in Japan for many years now. The C and regular models are mainstream, outselling both Camry & Corolla there. Prius very much is mainstream.

Just because we haven't seen that here yet, doesn't mean there is no expectation.

 

Thinking traditional vehicles will continue on for many years to come, despite hybrids showing on-going improvement, is what?

It seems as absurd as thinking other new technologies of the past wouldn't ever become a standard. We have countless examples and there is a pressing need to improve emissions & efficiency.