Even CO Energy Office ExDir had hard time getting a Prime

but is it a carb state? follow the money

 

The problem is the dealers, and maybe ultimately limited supply from Toyota.

The dealers are no help with the tax credits. We can get $4500 federal credit and a generous $5000 refundable credit from the state of Colorado. But if you ask a dealer about that they will just say to talk to a tax professional. Yet they don't say the same for all the other financial paperwork they have you do when you buy a car.

With the tax credits the Prime is the cheapest Prius, and better equipped than a standard Prius for the price. There's almost no reason to sell the regular ones. But they don't have enough of the Plus trim, and the higher trims are much more expensive so not as good of a deal.

If you ask about Prii they won't steer you to the Prime, probably just a regular one instead.

When I bought mine, Boulder Toyota got a literal boatload of Primes (more than 20 of them). But I no longer see their sparkling headlights when I drive by. I just checked their inventory, and it looks like they have five Advanced and one token Plus that they probably won't actually sell you for various reasons. After that I started seeing more of them around, and I figured they'd start to become more common. But it's almost a year later and it's still a surprise to see another Prime around here. Even standard gen IV Prii are uncommon, but that's probably because they are relatively ugly and expensive.

I'm sure Toyota isn't selling these at a loss, so unless there's a supply constraint like on the batteries they should ramp up Prime production to make as many as the market will buy. If they put pressure on the dealers, I'm sure they can find a way to sell them.

It's not just a Toyota problem, all dealers are useless. I have a friend who was looking for a 2019 Crosstrek PHEV. One of the dealers said they don't sell them in Colorado because of the altitude. But that's a blatant lie because you can buy one in California and drive it to Colorado. The engine is probably reused from another Subaru, and obviously the EV system doesn't care what altitude it's at.

 

He must have gotten it very early. I was down at Boulder Toyota Wednesday and they had over 20 of them.

 

Actually, Toyota may be selling them at a loss, but a net gain with carb credits

 

I imagine the unavailability of AWD has something to do it. While not a PHEV, it will be interesting to see how the 2019 AWD-e models sell in CO