What happens if you put the Prius badge on other hybrid models? Toyota may soon find out.
While hybrid sales volumes may still be modest, Toyota Motor Co. appears to be convinced there’s enough demand to introduce an array of gasoline-electric models that would share the Prius badge with the Japanese maker’s most popular entry into the emerging field.
Toyota has steadily expanded its line-up of hybrid-electric vehicles, or HEVs, since launching the first version of the Prius, a decade ago. It eventually promises to offer the high-mileage technology in virtually every product in its line-up. But as TheDetroitBureau.com first reported, last month, senior American officials have been seeking to broaden the use of the Prius name, essentially creating a hybrid-based brand-within-a-brand.
Based on a meeting, in Las Vegas, between senior Toyota Motor Sales USA executives and American Toyota dealers, earlier this week, it appears that the American argument is carrying sway, not surprising since the maker’s new CEO Akio Toyoda believes the U.S. market is critical to Toyota’s long-term success.
An American version of the Toyota Auris, a hybrid unveiled at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show, may also get a Prius badge.
A report in the Wall Street Journal quotes Toyota’s top American executive, Jim Lentz, telling dealers there will be a Prius-badged line of hybrids, though they will continue to be sold as Toyotas. That’s a slightly different approach than the maker has taken with its youth-oriented Scion brand. Models such as the xB and tC carry Scion badges, though they’re sold out of Toyota showrooms.
Through the end of August, Toyota has sold 94,000 Priuses in the U.S., making it by far the industry’s best-selling hybrid, even though sales are off 20% for the first eight months of the year. But with help of a new, third-generation hybrid, and the Cash-for-Clunkers program, Prius volumes have improved since the beginning of 2009, when they were down as much as 65% compared to peak monthly levels the year before. In June 2008, as American gas prices were soaring to record levels, Prius sales briefly topped 20,000 a month.
Exactly what would be badged Prius remains to be seen. It’s unlikely Toyota would use that designation for models like the current Camry Hybrid, which simply substitutes a gas-electric powertrain for the gasoline engine used in a conventional Camry midsize sedan.
Toyota unveiled a concept version of the Prius Plug-in Hybrid at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show.
In an August interview, Lentz, president of Toyota Motor Sales, suggested a vehicle designated Prius would have to be much more distinctive, and perhaps like the original hybrid, not be offered with a conventional, non-hybrid powertrain.
One possibility might be an American version of the Auris, a distinctive, small HEV that Toyota unveiled, this week, at the Frankfurt Motor Show. A plug-in version of the current Prius hybrid is also on tap, and was unveiled in Frankfurt, this week.
The strategy, say industry observers, is both promising and risky. It could extend the aura of the Prius name to other hybrids. And it could generate economies of scale when it comes to marketing future hybrids. But if Toyota isn’t careful enough about which models it dubs Prius, and if some of those new models don’t meet consumer expectations, that could damage the prestige of the original Prius hybrid.