A week ago Toyota announced an “Eco-nomic Savings Bonus†on the Prius. This bonus took the form of $600 to $2,000 price cuts on the Prius’ option packages. The first question that came to my mind was, “But how much of the cut is real?†Meaning: how large is the cut in the invoice price? Well, I now have the invoice prices on these packages, and my suspicion was correct. First off, Toyota bumped many option package prices by $150-200 a few months ago. Cuts in MSRP, invoice, invoice vs. beginning of year Package 2: 600, 442, 442 Package 3: 600, 243, 123 Package 4: 800, 356, 196 Package 5: 2000, 1341, 1181 Package 6: 2000, 1214, 1054 Touring 5: 1750, 1178, 1018 Touring 6: 1750, 1051, 891 Dealer margins have been cut from around 20 percent to 10 percent of a much smaller MSRP. What this means is that much of this "bonus" will be counteracted in the size of the discount a dealer can provide. I've gone into more detail here: http://www.truedelta.com/blog/?p=90
