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NASHVILLE -- Toyota Motor Corp., with its sales plunging in the United States, is freezing its plan to build the Toyota Prius in a new plant near Tupelo, Miss. For how long? The automaker doesn't know.
Toyota's board in Japan reached the decision late today to halt the project "due to the steep decline" in U.S. sales.
Sales of the hybrid car have softened in recent weeks as gasoline prices dropped from a summer spike of more than $4 a gallon. The Prius sold 8,660 units in November, down from 16,737 in November 2007.
Total Toyota sales in the United States fell 32 percent in November.
This is the second time Toyota has changed plans on the $1.3 billion Mississippi project, which already has begun to draw component suppliers to the area.
In February 2007, Toyota announced it would spend $1.3 billion there to produce a new generation of Highlander crossovers. But after Toyota broke ground, SUV sales began to soften. In July of this year, Toyota said it instead would build the Prius there.
A spokeswoman for Toyota's North American manufacturing operations says the company will continue constructing the building, which is about 90 percent complete. The company made its decision today before it had begun ordering the equipment that would go into the plant.
Toyota has no timetable to resume the project, the spokeswoman says, but it will remain a Prius factory whenever the project restarts.
Toyota halts U.S. Prius project - Automotive News (http://www.autonews.com/article/20081215/ANA01/812150248/1176 - broken link)
Prices will go back up again!
Now is when they need to work on better technology for the cars, cheaper technology for them also to drive prices of them down. The are expensive and the Money saved on gas vs the purchase price is not worth buying a hybrid. Make them cheaper and offer better rewards (from the Gov or whoever ) to get people in cars before the price goes up again.
Prices will go back up again!
Now is when they need to work on better technology for the cars, cheaper technology for them also to drive prices of them down. The are expensive and the Money saved on gas vs the purchase price is not worth buying a hybrid. Make them cheaper and offer better rewards (from the Gov or whoever ) to get people in cars before the price goes up again.
Exactly! By next summer, prices will be back up to $3, $4 bucks a gallon.
Exactly! By next summer, prices will be back up to $3, $4 bucks a gallon.
Your probably one of the people ranting this past summer that we would never see cheap gas EVER again... sooooo many people were singing this tune. Don't speculate because your probably just going to be wrong.
I really don't think the Prius is the deciding factor. Overall car sales makes it a poor business decision to be expanding production in a declining market. The current level of production of Prius cars, lagging behind demand just six months ago, is now caught up due to fewer buyers of every model.
Not very many people alive today have ever seen the kind of economic down turn we're looking at in the coming months. Goldman Sachs even downgraded Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) today due to a poor consumer outlook for the next six months. This company was trading at 200 a year ago. This morning it was at 98 and got a downgrade despite signs of continued sales growth in all products.
Both Toyota and Apple are international corporations at the top of their game in their respective markets. When the best of breeds are getting knocked down, you can bet that the overall trend is still down for the economy and the market. It will turn around, but don't expect much improvement before the end of next year.
And to think that the congress wanted to force the big 3 into making this very type of car in the bailout package.Just goes to show that congress should pretty much stay out of making business decisions. They mad one in setting up Fannie Mae and mac ;that that was enough to see they are out of their league .
I cant believe anybody would think that prices are going to stay this low :S
Yes they will fall for a while but give it 2 years and people will be crying it is too high again.
NOW is the time for America to get off foreign oil.
With the depression the Gov and the Auto / Energy Industry can kill two birds with one stone.
They can invest in Solar, Wind and other energies. Invest in running cars on something other than oil. This will create countless jobs to get over the depression and help get off foreign oil.
Kill two birds with one stone.
Either that or we can just believe its gonna stay this low and act shocked when it sky rockets again.
We've got so much production amped up and so many oil tankers filled with oil and with the economy prices are not coming back for YEARS. It's 1983 all over again.
I'd agree though I'd rather see us pay ourselves than foreign sources for oil. Algae based fuels are probably going to be the most practical of all based on some new developments.
Wind, solar all that has yet to prove cost effective and you can't control mother nature when the wind dies down sometimes or the sun is hidden. Solar is still rather ineffective on a large scale. They've shown the electric grid can't handle more than 5% of cars powered in such way. And they wont work in winter, especially in cold climates. Electric may have an application in some uses but on a large scale it's another boondoggle. Also producing that electricity consumes a large measure of resources not to mention hundreds of pounds of lethal chemicals in the batteries of each electric car.
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Nice try
