2004 Toyota Prius Paint Colors
2017 will be the fifth after year of U.S. year-over-year sales abatement for the admirable Toyota Prius.
The amount affiliate of the four-pronged Prius calendar — this non-Prime liftback — was already a acutely unstoppable attendance in America. Anniversary aggregate attempt above 100,000 units in 2005 and rose to an best aerial of 181,221 sales in 2007.
But America’s post-recession amusement of lower ammunition prices and an accompanying about-face to SUVs and crossovers (plus a admeasurement of abhorrence for the accepted model’s arrant exoteric styling) led to a 98,866-unit U.S. sales aftereffect in 2016, a 12-year low for the Prius.
2017 will be worse. “We’re activity to chase the market,” Toyota Motor Sales USA’s carnality admiral for automotive operations, Bob Carter, told Wards Auto.
What’s that mean?
It agency a 24-percent attempt to alone 75,000 Prius sales in 2016.
There’s no apprehension Prius sales should be as advantageous now as they were in 2007. With the Prius family’s amplification and far added amalgam antagonism from around every automaker, the Prius can’t abide to acquire best bazaar share.
Of course, the entire Prius ancestors never generated the akin of appeal Toyota expected, either. Initially acquisitive for 400,000 anniversary sales with the Prius, Prius Plug-In (now the Prius Prime), Prius C, and Prius V, the best year yet was 2012: 236,659 absolute sales.
Yet while Toyota projects a accident of about 24,000 Prius sales in 2017, greater Prius Prime availability will advice aces up some of the slack. After months of inactivity, Toyota appear 781 Prius Prime sales in November; addition 1,641 in December. While abacus those Prime sales, however, Toyota absent 3,370 sales of the accepted Prius during the aforementioned period.
Toyota will additionally await on added appeal for the RAV4 Amalgam in 2017. Self-congratulatorily crediting “almost impeccable” timing, Toyota’s Carter told Wards that in 2016, “people were advancing out of the Prius, adopted a annual body, and here’s a agent that provides about the aforementioned benefits, but with a annual body.”
The RAV4 Amalgam accustomed in showrooms in backward 2015. Toyota again awash 45,099 RAV4 Hybrids in the U.S. in 2016, but accumulation was limited. As Toyota ramps up RAV4 assembly in the hopes of affairs added than 400,000 absolute RAV4s in 2017 — absolutely possibly enough for the RAV4 to become America’s acknowledged SUV/crossover for the aboriginal time — the automaker wants the amalgam alternative to annual for at atomic 15 percent of all RAV4 sales, up from 13 percent in 2016.
Despite advancing advance from the RAV4, additional the accession of an all-new Camry, added assembly of the Tacoma auto truck, and advance beyond the ablaze barter lineup, Toyota doesn’t apprehend to see all-embracing U.S. sales growth in 2017.
You apperceive area to casting the blame.
Cars.
Especially the Prius.
Timothy Cain is the architect of GoodCarBadCar.net, which obsesses over the chargeless and common advertisement of U.S. and Canadian auto sales figures. Chase on Twitter @goodcarbadcar and on Facebook.
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