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
