The Prius Will Be OK

With the fourth-generation Prius launching into a market with dozens more “green” cars than the third-generation ’10 model faced six years ago, many industry watchers are busy writing the car’s obituary.

But the Prius will be just fine.

Why?

Because thus far no other automaker has fielded an entry that has proved much of a challenger, and realistically no one will, at least not in the near term.

Of the 45 other hybrids in WardsAuto’s segmentation-by-power source chart, the Prius outsold all of them through August.

The hybrid with the next closest volume to the Prius’s 95,730 deliveries? The subcompact Prius C’s 26,282.

After that? The Camry Hybrid’s 21,641.

You’re seeing a pattern here, right?

Yes, not only does the Prius dominate all hybrids, but Toyota dominates all other brands selling hybrids.

Adding Lexus’s 23,242 deliveries through August into the mix reveals Toyota also is the best-selling automaker of hybrids in the U.S. with 177,502 sales.

Ford is a very distant second, with 26,963 Fusion and C-Max hybrids sold this year.

Other alternative-powertrain vehicles, with better fuel economy than the Prius, also have had underwhelming results.

The first-generation Chevy Volt, due to its similar size and breakthrough extended-range technology, was expected to be the Prius’s toughest foe yet.

But, and it pains me to say this as a 2-time Volt owner, the car has been no challenge whatsoever.

Chevy has sold 8,315 Volts this year, down 36.7% from like-2014.

The Volt’s total sales since its 2010 launch don’t even equal Prius volume this year.

At the fourth-gen Prius’s recent unveiling in Las Vegas, Toyota Div. Senior Vice President Bill Fay told me the car still gets cross-shopped against the same competitive set it did years ago, namely other hybrids by Toyota and Honda’s Civic lineup.

Why? Because when people think of an eco-friendly car, they think of Toyota, and more specifically the Prius.

And why shouldn’t they.

The Prius has been one of the most reliable cars, not just hybrids, over its nearly 15 years on the market, according to analysis by J.D. Power and Consumer Reports.

And Toyota is consistently one of the industry’s most reliable brands.

The Detroit Three have improved, but at the brand level still generally fall below the Japanese, at least Toyota and Honda.

So that’s a wordy way of saying most buyers leaning green are likely to tilt toward a proven winner than take a chance on something new, from automakers with more dicey reliability.

That’s not to say I think Toyota once again will sell 181,221 Prius liftbacks (what the automaker calls the original body style) in a calendar year.

That record, hit in 2007, was a confluence of climbing fuel prices and emissions rules in California, which back then still permitted lowly regular hybrids such as the Prius in carpool lanes.

And for the ultimate eco- or tech-minded car geek, the fourth-gen Prius’s 10% fuel economy improvement, which should amount to 55 mpg (4.3 L/100 km) vs. today’s 50-mpg (4.7-L/100 km) average won’t slice the salami (tofu?) when you’ve got pure EVs such as the Nissan Leaf and Tesla Model S getting the equivalent of more than 100 mpg (2.4 L/100 km).

But most EVs are too small or too pricey to capture the kind of audience the Prius has enjoyed. Perhaps not until the Model 3 arrives in 2017 from Tesla, an automaker with perhaps more cachet than Toyota, will we see a true challenger to the Prius’s green crown.

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