Break out your recyclable paper party hats! Toyota's just sold it's one millionth sorta cute, kinda ugly sensible hatchback with Hybrid Synergy Drive. While the Prius is not quite the Model T (Henry Ford the Senior sold 501,462 Tin Lizzies in 1915 alone), a million vehicles sold in ten (or eleven) years is nothing to scoff at– at least these days (cough Lutz cough Ghosn). Right now, sales are jumping. In April, Priora sales rose 66.6 percent vs. last April. Year-to-date, they're up 22.6 percent. Happily (for Toyota), Priora are also selling like hot, gas/battery-powered hotcakes in Europe, where sales ascended by nearly 33 percent. Japanese Priora sales are up 24.5 percent. ToMoCo's press release calculates that the 1m hybrids silently cruising all over blind pedestrians the world have cut 4.5m tons of CO2 emissions compared to regular vehicles (et tu, Sequoia?). The Moving Forward folk claim that they'll be selling 1m hybrid vehicles per year. Chevy's Volt? Not so much.
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If Ford and GM do not wake up, I may be driving a Prius in the next few years, so how can I argue with them?
As per the Detroit News, Toyota has dropped incentives, raised prices, and there are (once again) waiting lists. High gas prices are the Prius’ friend.
http://tinyurl.com/4zaq95
At some point, 15 mpg cars will be so cheap that you can drive one and still spend less than buying a Prius.
Using the “If I knew then what I know now” theory, buying a GTO/Vette/Camaro/GT500/G8 in 2010 would be like buying a SS396 1969 Camaro in 1974.
Is that already a million batteries that have to be disposed of?
What a “fad”.
Are we closing in on an existence where ICE cars will be like manuals, i.e., just for enthusiasts and for those who enjoy driving?
let your mind go to the SS396, slide onto the bench seat, depress the clutch, give her some gas, and turn that key. ahhhhh what a sound, your spine tingles. now do the same in a prius. kinda like waking up next to rosie o’donald.
Speaking of batteries. I admit I was a big skeptic of the battery life in Hybrids. Obviously I was wrong, they work well and last a long time. Are any of the early ones having battery problems or having to replace? Are they going to last forever? I have not heard anything factual about it. Does anyone know?
Keep buying Priuses people! The more fuel you save, the more fuel I can use! This is great (for me)!
I am not arguing with Toyota. I made a promise to myself that I will buy a Prius as soon as I can afford it.
“At some point, 15 mpg cars will be so cheap that you can drive one and still spend less than buying a Prius.”
Funny you mention that!
I’m in the process of breaking even on my new, economy subcompact so I can go out and buy a used small truck or minivan, and save over 300 dollars a month (including gas).
During the process, I ran across a Nissan P/U with over 200K miles for 4400. Great shape, drive was awesome, insanely smooth for such high mileage. Right next to it? A 2002 Suburban for a little over 7K. The Corolla across the lot costs the same, yet has over 140K miles and isn’t in the best of shape. The used market is so insane right now that relatively young full-sizers are running for =/
quasimondo :
May 15th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Keep buying Priuses people! The more fuel you save, the more fuel I can use! This is great (for me)!
I doubt that’ll be the case (unless we relax environment regulations and start drilling anywhere we suspect the existence of petroleum deposits and other countries are allowed to do the same).
It will take years for the vehicle fleet to change over significantly to a hybrid drivetrain, thus years before we can see any breaks in the price of fuel.
Petrol companies can and will make up for a lack of demand in the western world due to the needs of the new emerging Asian markets.
I doubt we’ll see a return to $1.00/L 87 octane here in Canada. Not in the next few months, quarters or even years. Ever. Period!
Wish I’m wrong, but the US consumes 25% of the world’s energy and we all know this is not sustainable. The only way this can go on is if the rest of the world consumes less than they are right now (forget that they’re actually growing economies and the standard of living of their people is also increasing). In other words, the cards are not stacked in our favour…
FWIW my next car will be a diesel or hybrid.
Hybrid battery failures are apparently very few and far between, for Prius, other Toyotas, Hondas and even Fords. There aren’t yet enough GM or Nissan hybrids out and about to tell, yet. Nor will there ever be, probably.
Talk about missing the boat. Instead, GM has taken the next boat and it is called the ‘Titanic’. Their Volt is just vaporware, thus far. Besides, Toyota and Honda have an 11 year (and Toyota has a 1 million plus vehicle) head-start on GM.
As for recycling the batteries, it’s been publicized for literally years (and I’ve repeated the comment about oh, once a month for several years on other blog sites and here too) – Toyota and the others have put a bounty on the batteries. Junk yards are far more profitable than GM, Ford or Chrysler and you can rest assured that when they disassemble a hybrid car and read the bounty on the battery, they’ll be more than happy to turn it in for the money.
Besides, I’ve also mentioned this – just how safe do you suppose the billions of pounds of highly toxic LEAD in the standard auto batteries the world over are, especially when being recycled?
In that sense, the Prius comes out WAY ahead as the only 12 volt battery it has is so small, it is actually the same class as a lawn tractor battery! It is not used to start the hybrid synergy drive, but only used to boot the computer.
Back in 1982 I bought a fantastic used 1972 Chevrolet Caprice loaded so much the interior was at least as comfortable as a Sedan deVille for $600 from a very nice couple who had bought it new and cared for it perfectly. I drove that sucker cross country with two friends and a lot of stuff. Then, as now, you couldn’t give away a 13-16 mpg vehicle. There was nothing clean and reliable available anywhere close to $600. A similar condition Chevy Nova would have cost me about $2,000 I didn’t have.
Adjust the numbers for inflation and the used car market is getting back to that point fast. Bargains to be had if you can foot the fuel bill. This time, though, I’m not jumping.
# philbailey :
May 15th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Is that already a million batteries that have to be disposed of?
No. It’s already a million batteries that will be recycled at some time in the future.
# quasimondo :
May 15th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Keep buying Priuses people! The more fuel you save, the more fuel I can use! This is great (for me)!
Well …. it’s a (sort of) free country, so you are of course free to use as much fuel as you can afford.
But (IMO) it is this sort of pointless taunting which is contributing to a dumbing down of TTAC :(
Recycling IS disposal.
Mj0lnir:
At some point, 15 mpg cars will be so cheap that you can drive one and still spend less than buying a Prius.
And at some point, you’ll actually have to start doing maintenance to that old 15mpg car which I guarantee will cost you much more than maintaining a Prius. And at that point when 15mpg cars become “so cheap”, gas prices will be so high that your assertion wouldn’t stand up.
Johnson :
May 16th, 2008 at 12:09 am
And at some point, you’ll actually have to start doing maintenance to that old 15mpg car which I guarantee will cost you much more than maintaining a Prius.
I paid the mortgage and put myself through college for five years as a mechanic. I seriously doubt that maintaining a ’69 Camaro will be very expensive and I’m betting I can rebuild a carbureted small block Chevy for less than you can buy a Prius battery pack.
Since you have no idea how much it would cost me to repair any muscle car I’d buy or what kind of repairs a Prius might need in my hands, you can’t guarantee anything.
Johnson :
May 16th, 2008 at 12:09 am
And at that point when 15mpg cars become “so cheap”, gas prices will be so high that your assertion wouldn’t stand up.Math says otherwise.
If gas is $5.00 per gallon, I get 15 mpg in a muscle car and 40 mpg in a Prius, I buy the muscle car for $12k and the Prius for $20k, and I drive 15,000 miles a year… I can drive the musc le car for 2.56 years before I break even on a Prius.
Right now there’s a 2001 Camaro SS w/M6 on a local used car lot for $9,995 with ~120,000 miles on it. There isn’t a Prius (new or used) less than $24,000 within 100 miles of me.
The LS1 F-bodies get better than 15 MPG, any Prius I can find on cars.com, autotrader, or craigslist is going to be $14,000 more than the Camaro I looked at yesterday, and gas is still less than $3.70 here.
Right here, right now, gas is expensive enough to make low 13 second muscle cars cheaper than a Prius. We don’t need to wait for $5.00 gas.
Basically, you’re wrong. It’s okay if you don’t like my choice of vehicles or my perspective on transportation, but that doesn’t mean you get to make stuff up.
We can argue about carbon emissions if you want to, but it’s already cheaper to buy an old muscle car than a Prius, and as gas goes up that differential will remain in the hot rod’s favor.
# philbailey :
May 15th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Recycling IS disposal.
I suppose it depends on what you mean when you use the word “disposal”. I had understood you to mean something other than recycling.
Humans occupy the world in such large numbers that almost all of our waste needs managing in some way – including cars and car parts that don’t function anymore. I don’t think there’s any reason to single out Prius batteries as waste needing to be managed anymore than you might single out lead acid batteries or many other parts of any other car.
If Prius batteries contain particularly noxious materials and the plan was to just dump them, then it’s a useful point to make about how the Prius has negative environmental effects that conventional cars don’t. But if those materials are being recycled (which I now understand you to have meant all along) there doesn’t seem any particular reason to have made the comment in the first place.
Amazing — every time the Prius is mentioned, a “polarizing” discussion about the battery pack arises, with traditionalists defending driving gas-hogs by citing the higher initial cost of the Prius and its “hidden evil”, the dreaded battery pack.
There are likely millions more tons of NiCd packs in landfills from portable drills (where no “bounty” is given by the manufacturer) than there will EVER be from hybrid vehicles.
That problem is in need of solution; the Prius can hold its head high.
Priora sell like hotcakes in Europe? Really?
At least for Germany the official numbers for January 2008 tell a different story.
You won’t find the Prius in the list “Top 100 best selling cars in Germany” – #100 is the Audi A8 with 456 units.
Toyota only sold 242 Prii to Germans in January, whild Volkswagen had no problem selling 17,213 Golfs (and 302 Phaetons).
But hey, Mercedes sold only 241 R-Class units, so the Prius has it beat.
So that’s how hot the Prius is in Germany: Slightly better than the R-Class, but about 20% less appealing than the Phaeton.
The other caveat to the muscle car argument boils down to insurance, and from having a friend with a late 90’s TA, tires are an order of magnitude higher too. And I know you aren’t even contemplating putting smaller wheels and tires on that car.
Not to mention that as the muscle car era finally starts to draw to a close (sadly I must add) due to rising gas prices, parts are going to become more scarce while the production vehicles continue to have parts manufactured for them. A point in the near future will eradicate the cost advantage you have here and now. We’ve seen it happen before.
Mj0lnir, the comparison of the 10 year old muscle car to the Prius is no more or no less valid than comparing the old muscle car to any brand new car selling for 24,000 dollars. The average new car consumer is not looking for a 10 yr old car and the average consumer doesn’t do their own maintenance, but you are right that this is an opportunity for those looking to pick up an old muscle car particularly if you do your own maintenance. However this in no way diminishes the appeal of the Prius to the average consumer in the market for a new car.
Regardless of what mileage the Prius gets and what the old muscle car gets, you are still buying a load of gasoline to fuel that muscle car. Yeah, I know it either comes at the pump or in car payments but for now, I’ll just keep driving my 35 mpg VW compact which is fairly cheap to fuel, parts are cheap, I can do the service work myself, and the whole car is worth $5K. Not to mention like the person above said – tires are cheaper too (which I am shopping for now).
I don’t want to pay $450 a month to drive I Prius nor do I want to pay $8 a day in gasoline to drive the Camaro. Right now my daily consumption is about $2.25 at $3.70 a gallon and no car payment.
However when we finally need a newer car I’ll be looking for something that gets better mileage and a Prius might be in our future.
I have old cars too and will enjoy driving them occasionally. I have put a hold on the idea of putting one back into daily service b/c it gets 17 mpg – even if my daily drive is short. Maybe it will get driven once a week and the weekends.
@ Orian- Other than trim parts, you can find anything you need for most GM musclecars at thousands of junkyards nationwide, and you’ll be able to do so for years to come. If you’re looking for a numbers matching garage queen you’re SOL. I’m looking for a daily driver so between salvage yards and the aftermarket I should be able to keep a 3rd gen F-body or Fox Mustang on the road for decades.
As far as insurance goes I don’t think liability only on a DD muscle car will be significantly more than full coverage on a Prius. I’m an insurance agent, so I say that with some confidence.
@ Sherman Lin- you are 100% correct. However, the Prius’ appeal to many consumers doesn’t invalidate my analysis of costs, nor does it apply to me. I’m not attracted to the Prius, and I’ll be able to drive a $5000 – $10000 “muscle car” for years before I begin to equal the purchase price of a Prius.
I’m happy that the Prius appeals to people who are bad at math, and I’m happy that it’s sales success and rising gas costs are lowering the costs on vehicles I want to drive.
Right now there’s a 2001 Camaro SS w/M6 on a local used car lot for $9,995 with ~120,000 miles on it. There isn’t a Prius (new or used) less than $24,000 within 100 miles of me.
You made me curious so I checked Autotrader and Vehix. While Vehix was useless for finding a Prius for sale near me with a price on it (price available on request), Autotrader found plenty with and without prices.
I saw a 2004 Silver Prius with 51,383 miles for sale at $17,850 and ironically it was 100 miles away from my zip code by Autotraders figuring.
Extending the search to 200 miles gave me:
2001 White Prius 146,840 $8300
2003 Blue Prius 101,520 $11000
2002 Blue Prius 78,601 $11999
2001 Silver Prius 65,500 $13000
2004 Silver Prius 119,000 $13750
2004 Silver Prius 100,500 $14500
2004 Silver Prius 93,201 $14999
2005 Green Prius 32,366 $15900
2005 White Prius 130,226 15988
and 8 other Prius between $16K and $18K.
A good chunk of the roughly 20 Prius I saw listed were in Smyrna GA, you might as well call it Atlanta.
I’m not willing to drive 3 hours each way to test drive the ones that are in Atlanta but I think your statement about a 2001 Camaro being cheaper than any Prius you can find is just not a reliable benchmark.
2001 Camaro SS w/M6 ~120,000 $9,995
2001 White Prius 146,840 $8300
Do you really expect the Camaro to come out ahead in that comparison?
How about this one?
2001 Camaro SS w/M6 ~120,000 $9,995
2004 Silver Prius 100,500 $14500
I agree you can buy a beater and come out ahead vs a Prius. I agree you can buy a $9995 special and come out ahead vs a Prius in some situations. I don’t agree that a $9995 car is a beater.
From http://www.beaterreview.com:
Of course, any vehicle we review has to have a local market value, in “Good” condition (as defined by Edmunds.com), of less than $5,000.
We try to cover the spectrum, so you’ll find rust-buckets for $800 that barely meet our self-described criteria as well as nice $4,500 rides that might not meet your definition of a “beater.”
@ dhanson865- I’m not in Atlanta, I’m in Utah. As of this morning there are two Prius for $20,000 on Autotrader within 100 miles of me. If I want one cheaper than that I have to drive to Vegas.
If you aren’t willing to drive 3 hours to buy a used car, why should I have to drive 5?
No matter how you slice it, where I sit right now, I can drive a RWD V8 cheaper than a Prius for years.
I’m not insulting the Prius, and I’m not sure why you people are so offended that I would dare to claim that it’s not the cheapest car to own.
If your goal is lower out of pocket costs, the Prius is not always your best option.
I don’t understand why that’s controversial.
If I want a Prius, I pay (as of this morning) $20,000 or I drive to Vegas. If I want a RWD V8, I can pay anywhere from $1500 to $15000 after a 10 minute drive. If I buy a car in the middle of that range I have ~11,500 to spend on gas before I equal the purchase price of any Prius advertised in my city.
Figure in depreciation on a Prius, insurance, gas, etc, and it’ll be years before the Prius pulls ahead.
For the same amount of money over the next 2 to 4 years I’d rather drive the muscle car.
Mj0lnir, you’re FUDding. Prius’ depreciation has been one of the lowest.
Mirko Reinhardt :
May 16th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Priora sell like hotcakes in Europe? Really?
At least for Germany the official numbers for January 2008 tell a different story.
You won’t find the Prius in the list “Top 100 best selling cars in Germany” – #100 is the Audi A8 with 456 units.
Toyota only sold 242 Prii to Germans in January
There’s more to Europe than just Germany, a market which is tough for non-German automakers to conquer for very obvious reasons. The press release Lieberman quoted shows that Prius sales in Europe in 2000 were 700 units, 2001, 2,300 units, 2002, 800 units, 2003, 900 units, 2004, 8,100 units, 2005, 18,800 units, 2006, 22,800 units, 2007, 32,200 units, and 14,200 for the first four months of 2008. Not huge numbers overall, but a significant upwards trend.
M1EK :
May 16th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Mj0lnir, you’re FUDding. Prius’ depreciation has been one of the lowest.
I’m not sure what FUDding is, so maybe I am.
However, even if it doesn’t depreciate much, it still depreciates so you have to figure that into total cost.
The bottom line is that there’s no way that any Prius for sale within reasonable driving distance of me costs less to run for the next three years than any number of V8’s that I’d rather live with.
There’s a $10,000 price difference between the cheapest Prius around here and a nice muscle car. If I go less nice on the muscle the difference comes closer to 15,000 dollars. Take either figure- $10k or $15k- factor in depreciation (even small depreciation is still depreciation)insurance and gas, and a 15 mpg muscle car will take years before it becomes more expensive for me than a Prius.
Use dhanson’s numbers. You buy the $8500 Prius, I’ll buy a $3500 RWD V8 and we’ll see who spends more money over 12 months. If gas is $5.00 a gallon I have to drive ~15,000 miles before my costs equal your purchase price. That’s about a year’s worth of fun while your car is sitting in the garage.
If you use vehicles I can purchase around here I get to drive for 2 to 4 years before I equal your initial expense.
Will the Prius eventually be cheaper than a V8? Yes.
Do I want to drive a Prius long enough to make it a paying proposition? No.
“As gas gets more expensive, the purchase cost of a 15 mpg car gets lower making it a cheaper option than a Prius” is not a radical statement.
Don’t drive to Vegas. I’m not going to drive to Atlanta either.
My point is are you or I either one anything like the average US consumer?
Is Utah a realistic average market to sample from?
Is a medium size metropolitan area in Tennessee a realistic average market to sample from?
Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population and pick a city at random in the 75th to 125th spot between the applachians and rocky mountains or anything in the 100th to 250th spot on the East or West Coast and find a zip code and try that search.
For example #150 Cape Coral FL 33900 100 mile Autotrader Search:
2002 Blue Prius 105,740 $11500
2002 White Prius 47,162 $14995
#144 Dayton OH 45401 100 mile Autotrader Search:
2001 Light Aqua Prius 133,922 $10991
2001 Tan Prius 111,742 $10900
#128 Providence RI 02906 100 mile Autotrader search:
2001 Green Prius 99,655 $9995
2002 Light Blue Prius 116,837 $9995
2002 Dark Blue Prius 63,599 $11595
2003 Beige Prius 64,500 $14995
#200 Columbia, SC 29201 125 mile Autotrader search (did 200 mile search but I’m only copying the ones that are in the 100-125 mile range):
2004 Silver Prius 119,000 $13750
2004 Silver Prius 100,500 $14500
I’m leaving out the ones that have obvious accident damage. Many of the ones I listed are 1 owner carfax certified (not that that is a perfect guarantee).
I never said the Prius is the cheapest car to own. I don’t own one. What I found controversial was that you would say that someone should consider not being able to find a Prius for less than $21000 less than a hundred miles from you in Utah as part of a reasonable cost comparison for us to discuss on a web site that has users not only across the US but Internationally as well.
Your exact location and ability to buy a used Prius has very little to do with the rest of us being able to do so for well under $21000. I believe I’ve shown that it is easy to find a used Prius under half that cost so long as you don’t live in a sparsely populated area.
Hey, make up your mind. First you compare a $21000 Prius to a $9995 Camaro. Now that you see there is an option to buy a used Prius around $8500 you want to switch to a $3500 RWD beater?
Which is it are we comparing what we can do with $5000 or what we can do with $10000?
If you buy a $100 econovan and drive it for a year you will beat anybodys cost per mile. That isn’t the point.
Pick a price level and stick with it.
dhanson865 :
May 16th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
If you buy a $100 econovan and drive it for a year you will beat anybodys cost per mile. That isn’t the point.That is exactly the point.
My whole point is that for any price you pay for a Prius, much less the price I’d pay if I actually had to buy one here and not Atlanta, it would be cheaper for me to drive a V8.
I said “It’ll be cheaper to drive a 15 mpg muscle car than a Prius”, so when you start searching classifieds for $8500 Prii, I get to point out that there are $3500 muscle cars available.
“cheaper per mile” is my whole point.
dhanson865 :
May 16th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Pick a price level and stick with it.No can do- if my assertion is “15 mpg V8’s will be cheaper than Prius\'” I don’t have to artificially limit it.
You found a Prius that’s less expensive than a Camaro I want. Ignoring the fact that I’d have to fly cross country to buy it, that doesn’t prove that “a” muscle car would be less expensive. It proves that a particular car doesn’t compete. If my goal is to drive a RWD V8 and save money over a $8500 Prius, it’s still entirely possible. Just not with that particular Camaro.
Subjectively, I’d rather drive a $3500 Chevelle than an $8500 Prius.
dhanson865 :
May 16th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Which is it are we comparing what we can do with $5000 or what we can do with $10000?Neither. “We” are comparing how much it’ll cost you to run a Prius vs. a muscle car. How much money you have to spend on gas is a function of how much you save over the price of the Toyota. If I pay $20,000 for the Prius I can drive a pretty nice muscle car and save $10,000 for gas. If I pay $8500 for the Prius I get to drive a less nice muscle car and spend $5000 on gas.
I never stated that only pristine, EFI Chevrolet’s would be considered- the only criteria I posted was 15 mpg and muscle.
Since the point is that for any Prius you can buy, I’ll spend less money and drive a car I enjoy, the price you expect me to pay for a Prius dictates how much car I can buy and still come out ahead.
If you want me to stick to a budget, tell me how much money you think it’s reasonable to spend on a daily driver and give me a zip code.
Assuming your total budget is around $8k to $10k, I can probably find a car I want to drive for at least $5000 less than any Prius advertised within reasonable purchasing distance.
If you choose my zip code, I guarantee it.
What concerns me, as a Ford fan, is: why hasn’t Ford come out with a Prius-killer?
Ford and Toyota, both starting with a blank sheet of paper, have developed near-identical hybrid systems. So Ford owns competitive hybrid technology; it just doesn’t seem to exploit it effectively.
I would have expected Ford to have on the market by now something a bit smaller, a bit cheaper, a bit sportier and better-handling, a bit less economical than the Prius, but which is nevertheless seen by the public as a direct competitor to the Prius.
It seems that Prius fills a previously-unsuspected and rapidly-growing market niche and has it all to itself. The D2.8 have preferred to make “hybrid versions of…” vehicles rather than dedicated niche vehicles. I think they missed a gap in the market. Fair enough, it happens. But by now they should be attacking Prius head-on.
How would you describe the Prius niche? (Hey, that’s a good thread for if you get the forum going). “Mid-size economy champion” “Visibly eco-friendly and not a bad mid-size vehicle” “Not a bad car with really low running costs” “Non-diesel economy champion”? It’s really important to get the correct answer to this question in order to build a Prius-beater.