Featured Toyota to stop selling Traditional Gasoline Vehicles by 2050

You've hit my delima. We have a perfectly fine, 2010 Prius with 65,000 miles and excellent fuel efficiency. This morning, I drove our 2003 Prius with 170,000 miles and excellent fuel efficiency. They ain't broke so why replace either?

My thinking is let the 2016 Prius mature, say 2 years, and then revisit an upgrade. By then the 2003 Prius will be in the 200,000 mile range and really won't depreciate further. Meanwhile, my experiments might make it more capable than the 2016 in terms of support functions (aka., co-generation, optimized warm-up and battery management, vehicle situational awareness.) The race being between what I can retro-fit versus what Toyota decides to offer in North America (*).

Bob Wilson

* - Sometimes I see the 'stupified' North American Prius versus what Toyota offers in Japan and Europe and wonder if someone over there is holding back for some unexplained reason. Perhaps our litigious and often Byzantine courts? Perhaps our too often lazy and chauvinistic auto press? Perhaps lazy USA car makers who are proving 'Americans will eventually do the right thing after exhausting all other approaches.' Perhaps some other past harm . . .

 

The thought occurred to me over the lack of EV button on the gen1 and early gen2s we got. Honda does it too with entire cars. The Fit is a successful small car here. The hybrid Jazz with their new system bested the Prius c on the JC08 when it first came to market there. Yet we don't get a hybrid Fit, but maybe a sedan and/or a SUV based on it.

 

(1) You can't compare Japan and EU tests to our tests. In fact many Europeans say they never achieve the numbers from overoptimistic EU tests. (2) Gallons in Europe are 25% larger than our gallons, which also inflates numbers. (3) Toyota brought their successful IQ to the states and it flopped. That's why many models never hit our continent: They won't sell. The IQ proved it,

 

Yeah but I believe trollbait was comparing two cars on the same Japan test, how they compared. No harm in that.

 

It isn't the models, it is the limited options. As Trollbait pointed out, the "EV" button in the 2004-09 models. Or the split back seat in the 2001-03 models. These are silly, petty things that in the big picture have no real economic effect but it shows we're often given a 'back handed' version of the Prius.

Bob Wilson

 

I've seen a 3-year-old Leaf for $7000, a 1-year-old 500e for $10000, and a two-year-old Volt for 13,000. Dealer resale....

.....which means the owners got 1-2000 less in trade value (around $6000, 9000, and 12000 tradein). Whether you use MSRP or the Tax credit price, there is little difference. That is a HUGE drop in value for the original owner.