Does anybody know how many Gen III Prii have been sold in the US so far? This is to get an idea of how representative the "What 2010 Prius Do You Have" poll might be of all 2010 owners. We currently have 392 respondents in the poll.
Check the Hybrid market dashboard at June 2009 Dashboard: A Hybrid Recovery? | Hybrid Cars It says 12,998 Prius units sold in June in the US market, but does not say how many of those were Gen III.
I think that point is correct; I forgot about the G3-G2 split. However, I also think I remember reading that the June sales were 85% G3, 15% G2 (hope my memory is right.)
Following the online inventory at my dealer, they've sold 3 Gen III's. Mine was the first on June 16, a silver IV with solar roof was the 2nd (met her a couple of days ago in a grocery store parking lot) and the 3rd in the last 24 hours. They now have 14 on the lot.
Actually, it's not necessary for the number of respondents to be a large % of the population being sampled to get accurate results, it's just necessary for the respondents to be (1) of a reasonable size (say 400 - 1000 people) and (2) a random (unbiased) sample. Think about how accurate the news polls are at predicting presidential elections (ok, we had Truman 60 years ago) with 400-500 people sampled. I'd worry more about (2), but making the sample bigger won't help if it's biased.
The dealer we bought from had 30 in inventory at the beginning of the week, we showed up this afternoon and they had maybe 12. 3 were bought (ours included) while we waited.
True. You make some good points. Not sure whether Priuschatters can be considered an unbiased sample. Do you think that we are more likely to go for the high-end stuff than the general population because we are already Prius enthusiasts?
Excellent question and I don't really know the answer, although I'd be surprised if it were a huge effect. I must admit that in my own case, I was not really a Prius enthusiast, per se, until a few days before I purchased it. I started out thinking I was going to buy a Ford Fusion Hybrid and went to 3 Ford dealers. But after figuring the price difference, and reading more about the quality and the better mileage of the Prius, I "switched brands." Another thing, the poll is coming up on 400 people, so you now approaching a reasonable sample size.
I'd go low end because it is the tech under the bonnet I'm interested in, the toys I'm not so into. all Prius from II to V have the HSD drive train.
I would personnally tend to beleive the Prius enthousiasts are a biased sample - but I have no data to support it. But the simple fact that the poll is voluntary makes it biased. I have heard that voluntary polls generally collect more extreme opinions - those who don't have a clear opinion often dont bother answering...
However this poll doesn't measure opinion -- it's just asking which one people actually selected (I know -- preference can also be thought of as opinion). But I agree that it is probably biased just because the majority of the population doesn't know about or care about Priuschat. Only those who are particularly interested in reading and writing about the Prius are on these boards anyway.
It occurred to me that another reason this poll might be skewed is because many of the people who subscribe to Priuschat are owners of previous generation Prii. I suspect that many of those who already own a Prius and want to buy a new one are, like me, upgrading to 2010 precisely because of the new cool toys.
PriusRos, are you still wondering whether the survey is biased? Look at the new poll: http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii...-prius-owners-poll-what-do-you-do-living.html and see how many of them are software dev / IT / electronics etc. I guess the proportion is not quite representative of the general population...
Yes, that's true! Maybe it's mainly these types who would subscribe to a forum like this just to talk about a car. That's the other thing I'm wondering....It seems to me that this is a really high-volume forum with hundreds of posts added daily. Are other car forums that popular? Every time I get a new toy -- Garmin, iPod, Wii, whatever -- I tend to look for an appropriate forum to read about it and ask questions. But I've haven't found anything that comes close to the amount of traffic that is generated here.