2010 Toyota Prius photo
The recent move by Honda to slash the price of its Honda Civic Hybrid by Rs 8 lakh may have something to do with the decision. Days after the price cut, Honda was able to sell off all its entire inventory. Honda sold 98 Civic Hybrids in a day after the price cut was announced. It had managed to sell only 35 units of the car since its launch, in June 2008.
Honda has said that it will restore the prices of the Honda Civic Hybrid when the next batch of cars come in.
When Honda announced the price cut, Toyota had said that it prefers to wait and watch before taking a decision.
The major reason why hybrid cars, like the Honda Civic Hybrid, are finding it difficult to take off in India is the crippling import duties and resultant prohibitive prices.
Before the price cut, the Honda Civic Hybrid was priced at Rs 21.5 lakh. Toyota had planned to price its Toyota Prius in India at Rs 20 - 22 lakh.
At that price, the Prius obviously would meet the fate of the Civic hybrid. Low sales volumes. Probably, the response to the Civic hybrid price cut has convinced Toyota that the temporarily revised price of the Civic is the ideal price point for the Prius in India. And as the company is sure it won’t be able to sell it at that price, no go for now. Just our guess.
If it were not for the high import duty, 114%, hybrid cars would be very popular in India because of high fuel efficiency, low emission, and better technology.
The other problem that Toyota faces is that it does not have the requisite infrastructure to manufacture hybrid cars in India, and even if they did low volumes would not allow manufacturing to be viable.
Toyota had plans to import a limited number of Toyota Prius as CBUs and sell it in India, but they back-pedalled because of lack of charging stations and other infrastructure requirements.
Toyota Prius is the world’s first hybrid vehicle and the market leader in the segment. It was first launched in Japan in 1997, and then launched across the world in 2001.
The Toyota Prius is sold in 40 countries and regions. It’s highest sales, nearly 60%, have been in North America, one of it biggest markets along with Japan.
In May 2008, Toyota had announced that sales of the Toyota Prius had crossed 1 million.
The Toyota Prius has a fuel efficiency of 20 km/l (58 mpg) for highway and city driving.
As of now, Toyota Kirloskar will continue its wait-and-watch policy for the Toyota Prius launch, and focus on the India launch of Toyota Fortuner and a new compact car, by mid-2009 and 2010, respectively.
Finally something worth buying:hap2:
