Toyota has announced plans to reduce the price of its Toyota Prius plug-in vehicle in order to boost lagging sales. The price drop will go into effect only for 2014 models and won’t mean any changes for the 2013 models.
They’ll be taking the base price of the Toyota Prius plug-in down to just under the $30K mark at $29,990 which is a $2,010 drop from the current model year. The Advanced model gets a 12% price chop that takes it down to $34,905. The 2014 Toyota Prius, which goes on sale next month, also gets a $2,500 federal tax credit to help lure buyers.
Although the existing 2013 Toyota Prius models sitting on dealer lots won’t benefit from the price cuts, there are still plenty of incentives available to potential buyers. Just how much those incentives will drop the bottom line depends on what region of the country you’re in since they’re largely state-based rather than federal.
Toyota is also under pressure in the state of California to comply with their Zero-Emission Vehicle program. Since Toyota has the biggest share of vehicles sold in the state, it has to make as many of them as possible low emission plug-in hybrids and battery-only vehicles to keep the balance.
Back in August, Toyota started offering both reduced leases and loan deals for its battery-powered RAV4 in order to boost sales of that vehicle. They’re not the only ones, as Honda, Nissan and General Motors have also offered lease discounts and price cuts to get buyers into rechargeable vehicles.
Last year, Toyota fell short of its sales goal of 15,000 Toyota Prius vehicles in the United States. They instead managed only 12,750 last year. Year-to-date sales for 2013 are 7,974 through September.
Overall, sales of plug-in hybrid and battery-only vehicles in the US are at 67,000 units through September. That beats the total of 52,000 sold for all of last year so the year will end with a new sales record.
Nicole Wakelin fell in love with cars as a teenager when she got to go for a ride in a Ferrari. It was red and it was fast and that was all that mattered. Game over. She considers things a bit more carefully now, but still has a weakness for fast, beautiful cars. Nicole also writes for NerdApproved and GeekMom.
