February 2010 Dashboard: Toyota Woes Pull Down Hybrid Sales
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Sales trends for hybrid cars rise and fall with the Toyota Prius. Toyota usually sells as many units of the quintessential hybrid as all other gas-electric cars combined. But February was far from a usual month. Multiple safety recalls throughout February, including one issued on the 2010 Prius, threw the company into full damage control and put doubts into the hearts of car shoppers. As a result, Prius sales in February fell 6.1 percent compared to the previous month. Discounts on three-year Prius leases probably prevented even further losses.
Hybrid shoppers took a wait-and-see approach in February, as Toyota dealt with safety recalls.
As severe as these problems were, they were not as bad as the global economic meltdown from a year ago. In fact, Prius sales in February are up 10.2 percent compared to one year ago. Overall hybrid sales matched the Prius sales trends: Year-to-date sales for the first two months of 2010 are up 7.2 percent for the Prius and 7.1 percent for all hybrids.
Largely as a result of Toyota’s woes, February 2010 is one of the rare months where the rate of hybrid sales lagged behind overall vehicle sales, which jumped by 11.1 percent compared to the 3.7 percent decline in hybrid sales. February’s percent market share—at 2.12 percent—is the lowest for hybrids since 1.97 percent in December 2008. Last year, hybrids nearly reached 3 percent of the new car market and are forecast to climb by approximately a single point of market share every year for the coming few years. It remains to be seen how long Toyota is embroiled in safety recalls and how that will affect hybrid sales.
Prius Runaway Story Raises Suspicion
James Sikes at a press conference about the alleged runaway acceleration incident.
James Sikes, a 61-year-old San Diego-based real estate executive, made national news this week when he claimed that his 2008 Toyota Prius sped out of control on California’s Interstate 8. Sikes said, “I pushed the gas pedal to pass a car and it did something kind of funny…it jumped and it just stuck there.” Speaking at a news conference yesterday, Sikes said, “I was trying the brakes…it wasn’t stopping, it wasn’t doing anything and it just kept speeding up.” The story was picked up by major national media and ricocheted around the Internet.
According to Sikes, he was unable to shift into neutral, power down the car, or apply the parking brake—but but he did manage to call 911. Whle Sikes was on the call, which lasted 23 minutes, a California Highway Patrolman raced to the side of the speeding car. The patrolman used a loudspeaker to advise Sikes to apply the parking brake and foot brake simultaneously, and thereby successfully bring the car to a stop. There are conflicting reports about whether or not Sikes tried to put the Prius into neutral during the early part of the incident.
Runaway News Reports
A local television news report misreported that the patrolman used “his own police cruiser as a brake.” CNN reported that the main “claimed that he almost flew over a hill at more than 90 miles per hour in his Prius.”
There were other mistakes in national media coverage, including the report that the Sikes incident caused Toyota to issue a new recall for 2004 – 2009 Toyota Priuses. Those vehicles were included in a late 2009 voluntary safety recall—related to accelerator pedals that could be trapped by floor mats. There have been reports that some Toyota vehicles that received service in a separate recall are still experiencing problems, but second-generation Priuses, such as Sikes’s, have not yet been called into dealerships. Nonetheless, Sikes claims that he was turned away from a Toyota dealership when he tried to get the Prius serviced as part of a recall.
Kuwaiti Scientists Say Peak Oil Will Arrive in 2014
New research out of Kuwait, using a new method of calculating the crude oil production potential of 47 of the world’s largest oil producing countries, has found that peak oil — the period in time when oil production reaches a maximum and then begins to decline — will come much sooner than expected… 2014 to be exact.
