Toyota Reports 20k in Japanese Orders for Prius

Remember my article on the Prius price slashing going on over in Japan? Looks like that might be having some big effects on sales and orders. Honda expected to make it's big splash with the Insight and Toyota is trying to douse that fire with the Prius price cut.

Thanks to AutoblogGreen for the colorful picture! I just couldn't include one of the drab, low quality photos that Toyota had with the car's press release. The report on Prius sales comes from Reuters via local Japanese newspaper Chunichi and Nikkei who broke the information on Prius orders.

Orders already received are over 20,000 and Toyota expects that number to increase to 40,000 before the car's official on-sale date. Think the price cut had anything to do with that? No doubt, in my opinion the Prius is a better car at a (now) similar price. Toyota's goal is 400,000 Priuses worldwide in 2009. To put that number and the orders received into perspective , Toyota Japan sold a total of 73,100 Priuses in 2008.

Honda has managed to sell an impressive 18,000 Insights in it's first month on the market. That is an extremely good number, beating Honda's expectations x 3.6. They expected to sell 5,000. Talk about beating expectations!

The price tag really has launched Honda right into volume with the Insight, and it's broken through to the mainstream. I've heard people talking about it as the "people's hybrid" and things along those lines. It remains to see if Toyota will drop the price in the United States as well. I would expect a similar drop, and a similar sales increase if they do decide to do that.

Stay tuned! This drama is just beginning.