Toyota to Introduce Prius Hybrid Sedan in the U.S.
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Toyota Motor Corp. will launch its high-mileage Prius gasoline-electric hybrid sedan in the U.S. in late July with a dealer demonstration program that will enable prospective buyers to take one home for a day or so.
“We want to give people the opportunity to really try them out, to live with them for a bit,” said Julie Alfonso, a spokeswoman for Torrance-based Toyota Motor Sales USA.
The company will also begin taking purchase requests for the $20,450 Prius on its Web site, https://www.toyota.com, this month. Toyota will begin delivering the first cars--via local dealerships on a first-come, first-served basis--to Internet shoppers and those who placed early orders through dealers, said Mark Amstock, national Prius marketing manager.
Although the Prius will officially go on sale at dealerships in late July, it will probably be early August before the first models are delivered, he said.
But unlike Honda Motor Co.’s two-seat Insight hybrid, a limited-production model that has been in short supply since its launch in December, the Prius is expected to hit the North American market in plentiful numbers.
Where Honda initially expected to sell only 4,000 Insights in the U.S. this year--later boosting the figure to 6,500 because of unexpectedly strong demand--Toyota plans to deliver 12,000 Priuses, an average of 1,000 a month.
Dealers won’t keep cars other than demonstration and rental models in stock, but will order from Toyota on a sale-by-sale basis, Amstock said.
The company’s target buyer, he said, is computer-literate, college-educated, married, between 35 and 55 years old and has an annual income of $75,000 or more. Ads will run on cable television and in periodicals ranging from Scientific American and House Beautiful to Wired and MacWorld.
The Prius, designed at Toyota’s U.S. studio in Newport Beach, has been on sale in Japan for two years.
The North American version will boast a 1.5-liter, 70-horsepower gas engine (versus 58 horsepower in Japan) and an upgraded nickel-metal-hydride battery pack that is 20% more powerful (the equivalent of 34 horsepower).
Toyota expects the car to get as much as 52 miles per gallon in city driving.
Honda and Toyota so far have the only commercially available hybrid-powered vehicles, but other auto makers are following suit.
Ford Motor Co. recently said it will market a hybrid gasoline-electric version of its new Escape sport-utility vehicle in the 2003 model year; General Motors Corp. has shown several concept vehicles with hybrid power; and DaimlerChrysler’s Dodge division has said it may field a hybrid Durango SUV in 2003.
