Toyota Motor Corp., Japan's biggest automaker, said it booked 180,000 domestic orders for the new Prius gasoline-electric hybrid within a month of the car's debut.
The company had set a sales target of 10,000 units a month in Japan, it said in a statement today. The tally includes 80,000 orders placed before the car went on sale on May 18.
The third-generation Prius was Japan's bestselling car last month, surpassing Honda Motor Co.'s Insight. Hybrid sales have surged on the introduction of new models and government purchase incentives aimed at stemming a 19 percent plunge in domestic vehicle sales last month.
"Demand has shifted from Insight to Prius," said Yoshiaki Kawano, an analyst at auto consulting company CSM Worldwide in Tokyo. "The tax incentives are definitely boosting purchases."
Customers placing orders for a Prius as of today face a seven-month wait before taking delivery, Paul Nolasco, a spokesman for the Toyota City, Japan-based company said today.
Toyota has transferred about 1,000 workers to its Tsutsumi factory in Aichi prefecture from other factories and implemented overtime shifts in April to meet demand for the Prius. It will build 50,000 Priuses a month at its Tsutsumi factory and Toyota Auto Body Co.'s Fujimatsu plant, Hideaki Homma, a spokesman, said June 9.
Toyota gained 1.1 percent to 3,690 yen at the close of Tokyo Stock Exchange trading. They have risen 27 percent this year.
Profit Margin
The third-generation Prius, priced between 2.05 million yen and 3.27 million yen, has a fuel economy of 38 kilometers per liter, according to Toyota, compared with the Insight's 30 kilometers per liter. Toyota has a goal of selling 1 million hybrids annually in the 2010s and offering hybrid versions of all of its vehicles in the 2020s.
Toyota has slashed production costs for the new Prius by 30 percent, short of its 50 percent cost reduction goal.
In early April, when Toyota started taking orders from customers, it slashed the price of the entry-level Prius by 12 percent to 2.05 million yen to compete with Honda Motor Co.'s redesigned Insight hybrid priced from 1.89 million yen.
Gasgoo: auto parts source
