Toyota: Prius plug-in coming to the U.S. by 2012

Toyota Motor Corp. has joined the growing ranks of automakers planning to bring advanced battery-powered vehicles to consumers in the next few years.

The Japanese automaker said it plans to have a plug-in version of its popular Prius hybrid on sale in the U.S. within three years.

“The target is 2012 to be coming to market with them,” Irv Miller, a group vice president for Toyota's U.S. sales unit, said at a conference, Bloomberg News reported. Before that, “we're going to study the challenges of consumer demand,” he said.

Toyota had earlier announced its intention to bring 150 plug-in Priuses to the U.S. by the end of this year, but they are going to be doled out to vehicle fleets in what amounts to a large-scale road test.

Today’s announcement by Miller was the first time Toyota has set a date for making the plug-in version of the Prius available to consumers.

Toyota will have plenty of company. General Motors Co. plans to have its Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid in showrooms by the end of 2010, while Ford Motor Co. has said it plans to have an all-electric version of its Focus compact on the market by 2011.

BMW and Nissan have electric vehicles planned for the U.S. market by 2012, and various niche manufacturers such as Tesla Motors are developing plug-in hybrids or electric-only vehicles.

In his remarks, Miller was more restrained in describing the sales prospects for a plug-in version of the Prius than some of Toyota’s rivals have been when discussing their advanced-powertrain cars. That caution is a result of the consumer response in California to Toyota’s battery-powered RAV4 sport-utility vehicles early in this decade, he said.

“We had a lot of people raising their hands for the RAV4 EV,” he said. “As soon as we made them ready for sale, that line evaporated very quickly.”

The standard Prius hybrid, which has an EPA rating of 50 miles per gallon in combined city-highway driving, combines an electric motor with a conventional gasoline engine to achieve improved fuel economy.

A plug-in version would have more powerful batteries that would allow the car to travel a certain distance — perhaps as much as 10 miles, although Toyota has been unclear on this point — on electric power alone. The batteries could be recharged by plugging the car into a household outlet overnight.

-- Martin Zimmerman

Photo: Prius plug-in hybrid concept car at Frankfurt, Germany, motor show last month.  Credit: Getty Images

Insight vs. Prius battle heats up

 Head to the movies this summer and you’re going to see some battles.  Harry Potter vs. Lord Voldemort.  John Connor vs. angry motorcycles.  Mr. Spock vs. true fans.  But one more battle is shaping up to be a knock-down, drag-out slugfest:  the battle between Honda’s 2010 Insight and Toyota’s 2010 Prius.

Back in March, Honda struck first when it announced the pricing on its little eco-baby: $20,470.  It was a clear shot across the bow of Toyota, whose own green darling (the third-generation Prius) hits U.S. and Japanese dealers in a week or so, with a starting price of $22,750. 

Ostensibly, Honda’s bargain-bin pricing shook Toyota up a bit. 

A less-pricey Prius

 

Toyota, apparently spooked by the arrival of the budget-priced Honda Insight hybrid in showrooms last month, is shaving $1,000 off the sticker of the Prius.

Faced with a collapse of the hybrid market and the arrival of the Insight with its $19,800 base price, Toyota blinked and decided to cut the price of the 2010 Prius to $21,000, down from a base price of $22,000 for the 2009 model, according to Bloomberg News.

Toyota plans to announce the pricing on the new Prius on Tuesday, and the car — the first full redesign of the Prius since the ’04 model year — should start showing up in Southern California showrooms in late May.

How many Toyota will sell is another question. Hybrid sales have plummeted along with gas prices, and the Prius hasn’t been immune to the trend. Sales fell 56% in March compared with a year ago, and dealers were reporting 80 days' worth of inventory — a far cry from last summer when every Prius basically disappeared from dealer lots as fast as it showed up.

UPDATE: Toyota confirmed today that there will be a base 2010 Prius priced at $21,000, but that it won't go on sale until later this year. The Prius that arrives in dealer showrooms next month will start at $22,000, the same as the 2009 model.

-- Martin Zimmerman

Photos: (Insight, left, and Prius, right) by Honda and Toyota

Back-to-back hybrid smack: Insight vs. Prius

 

In the handful of people who might actually enjoy seeing gasoline return to $4 a gallon, let's include marketing managers for the 2010 Honda Insight (shown left) and 2010 Toyota Prius (shown right), a pair of all-new hybrids set to do battle this spring. They'll be successful with gas at $2 a gallon, but they'd likely be smash hits if gasoline prices go back up.

Though both names are familiar, these are two new cars. The Honda Insight introduced gasoline-electric hybrids to the U.S. market in 1999, but that car was a little hot dog-shaped two-seater that never sold in big volume. Toyota was a little later to the hybrid party with the Prius, but it was a four-door with a usable rear seat, and it became a far bigger hit than the Insight. It still sells well - the Prius accounts for more than half the hybrid cars sold in the U.S.
  
For 2010, the Insight is back, but it's an entirely different car - in fact, the resemblance to the Prius is undeniable. It's a four-door hatchback with room for five, powered by a 1.3-liter four-cylinder gasoline engine, aided by an electric motor.
  
The 2010 Prius is slightly larger than the 2009 model it replaces, and is classified by the EPA as a "midsize" car, while the Insight is a "compact." Really, the difference in interior space is not that noticeable. The Prius' 1.5-liter four-cylinder gas engine is now 1.8 liters, and while the basic hybrid battery pack is essentially the same as in 2009, the rest of the drive system is, Toyota says, 90 percent new.
 
Here are the dueling hybrids in a nutshell:

Countdown to new Prius -- 60 days and counting

 
Toyota announced today during a monthly sales call that its new 2010 Prius will be available in dealerships at the end of May.

The car, recently reviewed by L.A. Times auto critic Dan Neil, features much-lauded improvements and refinements in nearly every area. An increased wheelbase, improved aerodynamics, more legroom, a larger engine and the much talked about feature of three driving modes -- EV, Power and Eco.

Toyota said pricing would not be released until mid-April and also did not comment on whether pricing would be reduced to compete with the upcoming Honda Insight hybrid, which has been announced at less than $20,000.

-- Joni Gray

Photo: Toyota

Berkeley: Hybrid capital of California

A decade after the first hybrids hit America's streets, a pretty tired stereotype about typical hybrid drivers has emerged: they are young, educated, upper-middle class, live in cities on the coast, vote Democrat and adorn their Toyota Prius with Wiccan and Earth Mother bumper stickers.

Turns out that stereotype is pretty much dead-on.

A new study by UCLA's Institute of the Environment, set to be published tomorrow in the office's Southern California Environmental Report Card, took at look at hybrid ownership in California on a demographic basis. The findings discovered that the rate of hybrid ownership is much higher in areas with pro-environment voting records and areas with higher incomes.

The study's author, UCLA professor Matthew E. Kahn, correlated 2007 hybrid registration data with voting data, by ZIP Code. He also did the same with median household income data. He noticed that the area around UC Berkeley, which has both high incomes and extremely high rates of environmentally-friendly voting, happened to have the highest hybrid ownership rate in the state: 5.24% of all cars registered there were hybrids.

That's an impressive number when put into the proper perspective...

Honda's new hybrid is hot in Japan

The new Honda Insight hybrid, slated to go on sale in April in the U.S., is already big in Japan.

Reuters reported today that Honda has received almost triple the number of orders it expected for the car after it went on sale in its homeland on Feb 6.

“The response has been overwhelming,” Honda executive Hiroshi Kobayashi told reporters at a test-drive event in Tokyo. Demand has been such that the automaker intends to expand its production plans for the car, Kobayashi said, although he declined to specify by how much.

The Insight, he added,  is drawing interest from a broad range of vehicle owners, from mini-vehicles to sedans to minivans. There’s currently a 30-day wait to take delivery of a new Insight.

The strong response is occurring even as the Japanese auto market suffers through the same slump that is depressing auto sales around the globe. New vehicle sales were off 20% last month in Japan.

The Insight’s popularity could be due to its price — it starts at around 1.89 million yen (just under $20,000 at current exchange rates), almost 20% less than the rival Toyota Prius.

In Japan, Honda is also boasting fuel economy of around 61 miles per gallon for the Inisght. Based on U.S. mileage tests, the current-generation Prius gets 46 MPG in combined city/highway driving. The third-generation Prius, due in showrooms in the U.S. and Japan this spring, will get around 50 MPG combined, Toyota has said.

You may remember that the original Insight, a futuristic looking two-seat that hit these shores in December 1999 — actually beating the Prius to the U.S. market by more than six months. The Prius made up the lost ground, however, and became the purpose-built hybrid of choice for Americans. The original Insight was R.I.P. by 2006.

The new Insight is slated to go on sale in the U.S. in April. Officially unveiled at the Detroit auto show in January, it has been lampooned a bit for looking too much like, well, the Prius. But, as in Japan, it’s expected to cost less than the Toyota hybrid, which should be an important selling point in these economically challenged times.

-- Martin Zimmerman

Photo: The new Honda Insight hybrid is unveiled at the Prince Park Tower hotel in Tokyo on Feb. 5. Photo credit: Gianni Giosue / European Pressphoto Agency

Detroit Auto Show: Building a better Prius

Toyota Motor Corp. finally lifted the veil from its completely redesigned Prius this morning in Detroit at the North American International Auto Show. The big news: 50 miles per gallon.

Spy shots leaked on the car not long ago, but Toyota's Bob Carter, group division head and general manager, did titillate the standing-room-only audience with a few details about the new car, due out in the U.S. and Japan this spring.

Carter said the third-generation Prius would beat its predecessor by 4 mpg, a 9% improvement in fuel economy, thanks to a more efficient engine and smaller, lighter components. At the same time, this Prius ups the engine-only juice to 98 horsepower thanks to new, 1.8-liter four-pot, and the combined electric/internal-combustion hybrid potency is up to 134 horsepower (the second-gen Prius pumps out 76 hp and 110 hp, respectively).

Rumors of a solar roof option proved to be true, but not as people had imagined. Instead of a solar-powered air conditioning system, the new Prius has a solar-powered ventilation system. Carter explained that this would take some of the load off the air-conditioning system by pre-cooling the interior of the car on hot days. That's nifty, we think, but not exactly game-changing.

Apparently it takes quite a bit of juice to run an air conditioner. But because the A/C typically draws on the engine thanks to belts, Toyota has invented another nifty feature: belt-less air conditioning. Instead, the new Prius will have air that runs entirely on battery power, which Carter called the first of its kind.

To further reduce parasitic drain on the engine, the Prius' water pump is also electric. Without all the hindrances, the Prius is able to drop its zero-to-60 time to 9.8 seconds from 10.4 seconds, "on par with a mid-sized sedan," Carter said.

The new car will use the same battery as the old one, but Carter said it would be able to operate in a pure-EV mode as well as "economy" and "power" settings. No word on how much range it will have on battery power alone.

Carter said the new Prius' coefficient of drag drops to 0.25, which is one-hundredth of a point better than the current model. All while increasing interior volume by 5 cubic feet.

Toyota sold about 160,000 Priusi (Priususes? Prions?) last year. In its first year of sales, Carter predicts, the new model will move about 180,000.

Take that, Honda Insight!

-- Ken Bensinger

Photo (top): The next-gen Prius will get 50 mpg, Toyota says. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

Photo (botto): A roof ventilation system is designed to ease the load on the A/C.

Related photos: 2010 Toyota Prius

Prius U.S. production delayed indefinitely

Plans to produce the Prius hybrid in the United States have been put on hold indefinitely, Toyota confirmed today.

Reports surfaced in Japan last month that the automaker was delaying the start of Prius production at its plant near Tupelo, Miss., until 2011 at the earliest. Plans had called for the gas-sipping cars to start rolling off the line in 2010.

Now, as Prius sales continue to plunge along with auto sales in general, “it is impossible to say at this time when production will begin,” Toyota said in a statement.

Spokesman Mike Goss said Toyota remained committed to starting Prius production in Mississippi someday.

To date, Toyota has spent about $300 million of the Mississippi plant’s anticipated $1.3-billion price tag. The automaker plans to finish building the plant, now about 90% complete, but it won’t install the metal stamping machines, robotics and other expensive equipment needed to assemble cars.

Prius sales plunged 48.3% to 8,660 in November compared with the same month a year ago, worse than the 36.7% drop in overall U.S. light vehicle sales. The year-to-date sales picture is somewhat better, with Prius down 9.6% versus 16.3% for the industry overall.

Prius sales have been hit by a double whammy of falling gas prices and the U.S. recession, which is keeping buyers out of dealer showrooms. Last summer, when gas prices were topping $4.50 a gallon, dealers in Southern California were selling Priuses for $3,000 to $5,000 over sticker, said Jesse Toprak, executive industry analyst at Edmunds.com.

Those days are long gone, Toprak said, with Priuses occasionally selling below sticker, which ranges from $22,000 to $24,270, depending on the model.

Toyota now has about a one-month supply of Priuses in the U.S. compared with a 14-day supply a year ago. During the summer, the cars were basically selling as soon as they hit the lot. Overall, Toyota has a 73-day inventory of cars in the U.S.

There may be further bad news on the horizon for the Prius. Honda’s new five-passenger Insight hybrid is due out next year and talk is that it will have a base price around $17,000.

“It’s going to be the most serious competition Prius ever had in the U.S. market,” Toprak said.

-- Martin Zimmerman

Photo: Groundbreaking at Toyota's Mississippi assembly plant, April 2007. Credit: Toyota Motor Corp.

American-built Prius may be on hold

If reports coming out of Japan are true, it may take longer than expected before you can buy a Toyota Prius with "Made in USA" stamped on it.

The Japanese business paper Nikkei reported that Toyota has decided to delay the start of Prius production in Mississippi from 2010 to 2011 at the earliest. The move was being made to save money at a time when Toyota, like other automakers, is suffering through a wrenching sales slump.

A spokesman for Toyota’s Torrance-based U.S. sales arm wouldn’t confirm the Nikkei report. Delaying the move is being looked at, spokesman Bill Kwong said, but no decision has been made.

Almost all Priuses are now assembled in Japan. Toyota planned to shift production of its Highlander SUV from Tupelo, Miss., to a plant in Indiana to make room for its first Prius assembly line in the U.S.

Through October, Toyota had sold 142,365 Priuses in the U.S. this year. The hybrids, which have the best fuel-economy of any mass-production car sold in the country, were in hot demand over summer as gas prices peaked at an average of $4.61 a gallon in California.

But a shortage of the nickel-metal hydride batteries needed to power the cars prevented Toyota from taking full advantage of the escalating demand. Then, as gas prices plummeted and the credit crisis took hold, Prius sales began to suffer along with those of other models and almost certainly will fall well short of Toyota's goal of selling at least 175,000 units in the U.S. this year.