May15
Toyota announced on Thursday that its Prius hybrid has reached a major milestone, eclipsing the 1 million mark in worldwide sales. The Prius was first launched in Toyota’s home market of Japan in 1997, but was brought to other markets around the world — including the U.S. — in 2000.
As of April of this year, Toyota has sold about 1,028,000 Prius hybrid vehicles.
In 2003, the Prius received its first major redesign, which included a new five-door body style and Toyota’s updated Hybrid System II. An all-new Prius will debut at next January’s Detroit Auto Show, with sales following shortly thereafter.
The Prius — which is the world’s best-selling hybrid vehicle — is a major pillar in Toyota’s plan to sell 1 million hybrids annually by sometime in the early 2010s. According to Reuters, Toyota sold 429,400 hybrid vehicles globally last year — up 37 percent from 2006.
Now all the import humpers here can circle jerk.
What amazing is the vision Toyota (and Honda) had in mid 90’s. When Detroit was drunk on $10/barrel and sub $1/gallon gas prices they forged technology for the times when it will be $150/barrel and $6-7/gallon. Japanese executives had the same data then as Big 3, and they saw the future. Fords, Wagoners, Lutzes and other “captains” of US auto industry were chasing quarterly numbers. And they still failed to meet those number. To add salt to injury, Japanese executives do not make even 50% of American counterparts with weak US dollar.
Americans are too proud of themselves, always!
I guess when they’re getting incredible mileage, people don’t care if it’s incredibly fugly.
The Prius still makes me laugh. I remember gas misers like the CRX HF, Geo Metro XFi, and Civic VX that were getting better mileage than one of these stupid hybrids more than 15 years ago when no one cared, they might have been stripped down econo boxes but they were super cheap and did not have the battery pack that might last 100K miles and who knows how much those will cost to replace when the time comes.
Hurrah for the pointless little hybrid!
one million units each with a production carbon footprint greater than that of a Hummer plus its emission output over its life expectancy.
How Prius’s carbon footprint is higher then Hummer’s? Who provided calculations, Lutz?
cookie you are funny, you must be lutz’s bitch that loves to lick his ass as he feeds you all the lies you are so eager to believe. Hummer better for the environment? lol Thats just as bad as hearing someone say that cocaine is good for you. Although it is great fun when alone with a sexy lady. All I can say is good job Toyota, you clearly are the leader of the pack in terms of quality, reliability, technology, and sales.
Well let me congratulate Toyota, they deserve it. I have to give them credit for looking ahead. However I still not convinced that hybrids are helping the fuel or environmental issues we face. How much more emmissions are we creating to make the battery, electric motor, etc?
gizmo2, I don’t know economic effect of changing battery pack on consumer, I imagine it will be substantial, but you can’t stop progress because some parts of solution are not perfect. There is no perfect solution out of the gate. I prefer diesel personally, but I admire hybrid technology for efficiency diesel can’t have: recirculating brake heat into electricity.
Hundred years ago automobile was not solving speed problem: trains and even horse carriages were faster then first auto. Trucks were cleaning environment in big cities like NYC, Boston, Chicago that were choking on horse ****. Next gen Prius will be b better then current and so forth. Even GM jumped on the hybrid bandwagon, but after it proved itself.
Piss off Prius, bring the CRX HF back into production. Well, can it please not rust apart this time…
Maybe more controversy than I thought but here is a link to read that you may find intriguing.
http://www.thecarconnection.com/Auto_News/Green_Car_News/Prius_Versus_HUMMER_Exploding_the_Myth.S196.A12220.html
So many different kinds of idiocy here. Hating “imports” is like hating air. Subarus are made in Indiana, Fords are made in Mexico, Volkswagens are made in Brazil, the dashboard of some US cars are made in Ireland. Half of Ford’s product is from their European division. All cars are largely imported now, the US gave up manufacturing and design supremacy decades ago.
Hybrids aren’t a perfect solution, but I suppose the knuckle-draggers will continue to insist that sticking with the same-old IC motors we’ve had for almost an entire century is still a viable way to go. You’d think the appeal of a nearly infinite amount of torque would sway the gearheads into realizing that electric motors are not, in fact, as gay as pink french poodles, and are instead a pretty awesome way to get around. Read up on the Fisker electric (mentioned in this blog) and you’ll see that 0-60 times under four seconds are going to become commonplace, once we’ve put the IC engine in its watery grave. But hey, I guess it is a little too much to ask when we try to get the local caveman to part with his favorite club…
02WRXPSM, excellent post.
cookie4me, I read the article you attached. Couple of comments: what would happen to ore from those mines if Toyota would not buy them? Would it be still extracted? It was going for 2 centuries already and Toyota is 70 years old company. The second one, since CNW is research company and does not manufacture anything but research - who paid for this research? I am equally appalled by Gore theories as those of “research” companies who’s mission is still to collect revenues, but from whom? 2 wrongs don’t make it right, but so far except for CNW “research” I haven’t seen anything proving that Prius is more harmful then Hummer for environment. I did read concerns from scientists that electromagnetic field in hybrids may lead to cancer or some other dysfunctions and I believe it can, but it is to individual not planet as a whole.
Knock the Prius all you want, but there is truth in one- million-plus sales.
iffy looks aside, i just filled up my prius at 3.72 a gallon and it cost 29 bucks. that’ll get me over 450 miles. my wifes car is a caddy cts, but i think the ride of the prius is better. and still not a single problem at 54k miles. enough said…..
xyunya,
I guess that is the debate. I thought the article did a good job of highlighting the flaws in both the CNW article and the Toyota information. The good thing is that future battery tech will be better for the environment.
Murphy1, I rented a Prius recently and I was impressed. It does ride nice and has competent road manners as long as you only use about 6/10ths of the car. If you try to push it in the handling department, it gets sloppy. It feels quick until you floor it and not much more happens. I drove it about 500 miles on the highway at speeds of 75 to 85 and floored it on all on ramps to get up to speed and for passing. I was impressed that the average fuel economy for my trip was 44MPG.
I’m not concerned with the environment as much as I am my wallet. In my findings, the Prius impacts my wallet much less than any Hummer offering (and nearly any other vehicle of the same size), which is why people make that choice. Most car buyers (especially in the U.S.) are more concerned with their own wallets and their own impacts than they are the environment. If the general population was really so concerned with the environment, they would ride mass transportation, move closer to work, buy bicycles and walk. But no, most of us are still buying cars. People are selfish. People buy cars because they like them for whatever reason. I’m more concerned with my own money than I am with the trees. Sorry, but that’s the hard truth. The reason I see why the Prius sells so much, despite being more harmful to the environment (according to CNW) is because it is easier on your wallet than almost any other car.
Also, the first Prius ever sold belongs to a taxi driver in NY, and it had no problems aside from regular maintenance for over 200,000 miles. I’ll pull up the reference if you want, but I did a report in college concerning alternatives to the IC motor in cars, and that was one of the tidbits to combat the “more moving parts means more possibility of things going wrong” concern that had been raised about hybrid reliability.
And in other news, Toyota announced a battery recall affecting 1,000,000 Prius models…
“I guess when they’re getting incredible mileage, people don’t care if it’s incredibly fugly.”
Incredible mileage if you’re traveling below 30MPH at that.
smart hybrid
“So many different kinds of idiocy here. Hating “imports” is like hating air.”
Hmmm…. yet, blatant bias against the domestic manufacturers is perfectly acceptable??
The fact remains, the Prius, as a hybrid is totally pointless… There’s not much reason why a small car can’t obtain similar, if not better mileage by conventional means. That’s not to say hybrids in general aren’t pointless, they just make far better sense in large cars/trucks that cannot benefit from Prius-esque dimensions.
If anyone really cared about the environment or their wallet… they’d go buy a little VW diesel instead.