The world's best selling car
Forget just US sales, let’s think worldwide
Before the end of this decade, Toyota believes the Prius family will outsell the Camry. Whatever. Why not shoot for the moon?
Within this decade, could a car like the Prius C help the family outsell the Corolla, and I mean in terms of total worldwide sales?
I must admit even the idea of outselling the Camry first sounded a bit lofty to me, especially based upon today’s hybrid adoption rates, but Toyota has been pretty accurate with its hybrid forecasts for many years now, so I bet the Prius will top the Camry before the end of this decade. But the Corolla and its massive world-wide sales are another matter.
In the recent past we’ve pitted the Toyota Prius C Versus non-hybrid compacts and subcompacts. Still, there is some gray area around whether the Prius C is a compact or a subcompact, for instance, and how this impacts pricing and perception. The C is larger than a Yaris, for instance, and offers the same total interior volume as a Corolla, but in hatchback form. So what’s the right comparison? Regardless, the sub-$19,000 C is fairly competitive against the competition, typically recovering its hybrid premium in just a few years, while offering a huge gasoline savings if owned long term. Add a gas spike or two and the Prius C really could be a bargain.
And it was that kind of thinking — managing gasoline costs — that made the Toyota Corolla the world’s best selling car according to The Bottom Line.
Obviously, however, the Corolla didn’t require a hybrid premium. It offered cheap upfront price and better long term fuel economy, and that’s a big difference this time around if the Prius is to eclipse the Corolla. But energy spikes are a lot more common this time around as well. Besides, even if the US taps Canadian oil sands, or fracks the hell of its massive shale supplies, I still bet the long term fossil fuel price story is inevitably higher. It’s simply going to be hard to move fast enough to offset rising worldwide demand for fossil fuels, and we’re certainly not moving that fast.
Anyway, based on today’s gasoline prices, if you compare a comparably equipped Corolla to the Prius C, the long term Prius story is at least enticing, but let’s compare the C to a few other all time best selling vehicles in the world. Following the Ford F-Series, the Volkswagen Golf is the third best selling vehicle in the world, while the Volkswagen Beetle is the 4th best .
Compared to the Volkswagen Golf, the Prius offers about 5 cubic ft less interior volume, while compared to the Beetle, the C offers an extra 7 cubic ft of interior volume. So the C compares pretty well to both in terms of size.
In terms of price in the US, the Golf comes in around $18,000, while the Beetle is $19,800, according to BottomLine. If the C comes as promised, at under $19,000, it’s already cheaper than the Beetle and only slightly more than the Golf. While the Golf diesel offers some pretty impressive fuel economy for a non-hybrid, the EPA estimates the Prius C will still be $700 cheaper to fuel per year compared to the Golf. Thus, the C will turn that hybrid premium into a gasoline-saving investment in just over a year. Versus the Beetle the C is already ahead.
So far, the story looks pretty bright for the Prius, but these two VWs have a few tricks up their sleeves. For instance, both are offered in a manual version, offering a nice price reduction for those that choose this option. Likewise, in many foreign markets even cheaper versions of these vehicles are produced. But in this era of global scale and platforms, the world’s offerings are going to have to be more alike than different in order to maintain profits long term, at least I’m making that assumption. Thus, I’m betting the hybrid price premium translates into foreign markets. And, even if buyers choose the manual version, the C still offers a a great long term fuel savings story, although the manual version does make the upfront costs of the hybrid premium more difficult to swallow.
Likewise, in 2010 the Prius outsold the Corolla in Japan, but that was before the C. Since its launch late last year, more than 100,000 smaller C hybrids have already been ordered in Japan. To be fair though, tax credits are helping to drive this hybrid craze in Japan. Still, combined Prius family sales could crush the Corolla this year in Japan.
Nevertheless, overall, I think it’s safe to say the C, the Prius and Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive aren’t yet ready to top the Corolla, but the potentially tremendous fuel saving advantage is getting closer if packaged in a sub-$19,000, fun to drive Prius C offering. And if lithium can drive the hybrid premium a few hundred dollars lower in the next few years, the Prius C becomes just that much more compelling, even if this is as high as gasoline prices ever reach. Even more revolutionary, couple the Prius hybrid drive with something like wave disk technology — making the Prius 30 percent lighter (more fuel efficient) and 30 percent cheaper – and the Corolla’s days are numbered.
The hybrid revolution isn’t here yet, but it wouldn’t take much to incite the cause, at least in terms of Toyota.
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