Success of New Prius has beaten any expectations

According to Japan Automobile Dealers Association, Toyota Prius with 22.292 sold has been ranked at top of all the new cars sales in Japan for June 2009 by beating Honda Fit with 12.016 sold, followed by 9.092 of Toyota Vitz and 8.782 of Honda Insight, another hybrid hit.

According to Sankei Newspaper on July 23, Toyota has up to now received more than 230.000 Prius's orders so customers have to wait for their car delivery beyond the next March 2010, the dead limit to receive the government subsidy of 250.000 yens for the purchase of a fuel efficient car and scrap of a car of more than 13 years old.

New Toyota Prius is so popular now in Japan that used Prius with a premium price of 500.000 yens may be sold, never seen in the car market destined to a large public and not collectors, while Toyota is considering to divert a part of exportation to the inland needs

But, the boom of hybrid car sales is not so euphoric for Japanese car makers because the sales of no hybrid cars remains weak. In fact, car dealers are complaining that people are not interested in no hybrid cars at all. They come to a show room and ask you "Do you have a hybrid car to sell". If you respond "no", they immediately quit you. This "hybrid only" behavior of consumers may be disastrous for the car makers who don't have hybrid cars on their catalog such as Nissan.

New Hybrid Prius Released in Japan

On May 18, 2009, Toyota launched the third generation of Hybrid Prius in Japan. This new version improves the performance of a previous version by 10% (from 35.5km instead of 38km per liter) while its price has been lowered from 2.330.000 yens to 2.050.000 yens (ca. 21.600 US$ or 15.800 euros in Japan) for a basic version.

Toyota proposes this competitive price in order to compete with Honda Insight which has been already available in Japan since last February with a cheapest price of 1.890.000 yens, while the previous Prius may remain available at a bargain price of less than 2.000.000 yens.

According to Japan Automobile Dealers Association, Honda Insight with 10.481 sold has been ranked at top of midsize new cars sales in Japan for April 2009 (the 4th position if you include compact car sales in statistics), while 80.000 new Hybrid Toyota Prius has been back-ordered before its release (you have to wait 4 months to get it if you order now).

With this price range (you pay about 10% more for a car purchase of the same category but go 30% further with the same amount of gasoline), there is no doubt that hybrid cars should dominate the green car market promoted by President Obama for the next couple of years, because FEV (full electric vehicles) or FCHV (fuel cell hydrogen vehicles) are still handicapped by a weak battery capacity or/and a low number of charging stations