Announcing the Plug-in Version of the Toyota Prius: ZZzzzzzzz

Apparently, I’m wrong about the plug-in version of the Toyota Prius. When I first saw the prototype at the “Plug-In” show a year ago, I thought to myself (and actually asked the representative in the booth) “Are you sure this car is actually going into production? It seems like something that will never be built.”  But it looks like they’re moving forward with it.

The problem with the car is that it offers essentially nothing to the customer of any real value: higher cost, two drive trains to maintain, the necessity of both filling up and plugging in, and an improvement in gas mileage that will virtually never pay for itself.  And keep in mind that the car will enter the market a full year from now at the earliest (spring 2012 ) while companies like Ford, Mitsubishi, BMW, GM, and, of course, Nissan, are making improvements in their much better thought-through EVs.

I don’t like to irritate the innocent folks assigned to attend their companies’ tradeshow booths; they’re normally fairly junior, and certainly not a part of the decision-making cycle for bringing products to market.  This is why I withheld my suggested name for the car: “The Prius Irrelevant”  or “The Toyota Yawn.”