Toyota Expects a Quarter of Prius Customers to Choose AWD-e, but 25 Percent of Prius Is Not What It Used to Be

As America’s new vehicle market shifts to vehicles with four driven wheels, greater ride height, and dog-friendly tailgates, it seems more than sensible for the Toyota Prius to take part in some community outreach.

The Prius, America’s 10th-best-selling car just a decade ago, can keep doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. Or, the Prius can make a significant change – via available “independent electric, magnet-less rear motor” – to offer all-wheel drive, one of the feature sets that’s drawing car buyers away from cars.

And that’s exactly what Toyota has done for the otherwise refreshed 2019 Prius ( reviewed last week by our own Matt Posky). In a manner of speaking, Toyota expects big things from the Prius AWD-e: 25 percent of Prius customers, to be precise.

But one-fourth of all Prius volume is not what it used to be. In fact, it’s a far cry from what it used to be. A mere fraction of what it used to be. One-quarter of all Prius volume will make the Prius AWD-e barely more common than the Alfa Romeo Stelvio.

For the Prius, despite a market that’s much more open to green vehicles as a general concept, times have changed, and not in its favour. In 2007, for instance, the introduction of an AWD Prius that would earn 25 percent of all Prius volume would have resulted in over 45,000 annual sales in the United States. But sales of the Prius – by which we mean the core Prius model, not the C or V or Prime – have plunged 60 percent since 2007. In the last half-decade alone, Prius sales are down by half, a startling drop attributed to a number of factors.

COMPETITION

In bites and pieces, little by little, vehicles such as the Ford C-Max, Hyundai Ioniq, and Honda Insight have eaten into the Prius’s pie. Then there are the hybrid versions of mainstream cars, from the Ford Fusion and Kia Optima to Toyota’s own Camry.

Throw in a nascent EV segment, plus a new wave of attention-grabbing green cars, and the Prius’s initial thunder is long since lost. After peaking at over 181,000 sales in 2007, Toyota is on track to generate around 50,000 Prius sales in the U.S. in 2018. (From a high of 236,655 sales in 2012, the entire Prius lineup won’t likely top the 90,000 mark in 2018.)

CONSUMPTION

In 2018, two of three models in the Prius lineup are rated at 52 mpg in combined driving. With average fuel prices at $2.42/gallon and big leaps in ICE efficiency, a new Prius saves just $443 compared with a new CR-V over the course of a year.

You won’t be wrong in suggesting that the Prius and CR-V aren’t direct competitors. But don’t ignore the fact that Prius sales tumbled 60 percent since 2007 while CR-V sales jumped 71 percent during the same time period. The CR-V provides meaningful context. Regardless, the Honda is just an example of the advances made by the very vehicles American automobile buyers want. (Fun fact: the Prius’s fuel cost advantage over a F-150 tumbled from $1,504 in 2007 to $824 in 2018, using a 2007 F-150 4.6 4×4 and a 2018 F-150 2.7TT 4×4 as examples.)

CAPTIVATION

True, they are still just cars, the very sort of machine that’s rapidly fallen out of favour in the U.S. market. But an AWD-e offering could be what Toyota requires to sell more copies of the Prius in Colorado and the northeast (even with degraded fuel economy that takes the Prius AWD-e back to levels the Prius first managed in 2010.)

Besides, the 2019 Toyota Prius AWD-e has ride height on its side. It sits two-tenths of an inch higher than the regular Prius. Don’t for a moment think that there won’t be Toyota sales consultants trying to turn that fraction of an inch into a selling point.

[Images: Toyota]

Timothy Cain is a contributing analyst at The Truth About Cars and Driving.ca and the founder and former editor of GoodCarBadCar.net. Follow on Twitter @timcaincars and Instagram.