Do not get frustrated when your salesperson/fleet manager or ordering salesperson at your dealership cannot answer questions about your car, or even how many are expected to your regions. I also do a lot of the administrative New Car Manager tasks for my dealership - handling some of the twice-monthly new car allocations, and car ordering, and build order changes, and monitoring the TVO so that I know what to expect with all models we sell... not just Prius. Most of the info I have is because of my position at the dealership. Not one of my retail sales guys has a clue about what's going on with things like this - that is not their focus or their job. That's probably the case in every single dealership, you know. Most of the people who do my job - and that is *fleet sales manager, internet sales director, and a little bit of the new car inventory/manager* thrown in for good measure do not post to boards or share info as I do. If they do, I have never seen it! I wear a lot of hats, but one of the hats I choose to wear is that of being an informational poster here as well. And, now also at Priuschat.com as well as a few other boards. :> I will know late Monday/early Tuesday what I have coming for the first half of the month's Prii... and no matter what is allocated, it's sold. It will be that way here for months. Added a cool collectible to the eBay charity auction http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...51&category=418 and lastly, do not get discouraged about the wait for Prius. It's worth it. It's no one's fault that the car's popularity was so vastly underestimated - who knew? They have added 31% more cars to the global production schedule but all of those cars will not make it to the USA, and that is only 11K more cars total for the world. Certainly still not enough, but an improvement. If we only get 1/4th of those, it's still more than what we have now expected. As for my TRAC cars, I have, for rent: driftwood BG - with N1 and V5 as well blue BC (2 of these) tideland BG - with N1 and V5 as well white/tan BG with N1 and V5 as ewell silver BG So that makes 6 so far. I expect 4 more TRAC cars in January. I guess that gives me a lot of unusual cars to sell at the end of April... but the silv er BG TRAC car's already spoken for and pre-sold. Here's hoping that you all have a great weekend and a terrific week ahead of you! :> Dianne www.carsontoyota.com
I remember reading that the production limiting factor is the NiMh production rate. There is going to be a new battery factory put online sometime next year, but that does not help those waiting now.. Toyota can crank out the cars to meet demand, but with out the main battery... just where would it go?? I know we keep saying wait.. your time will come.. is getting old, but as a 2004 owner... well "all good things come to those that wait" says it all.. Later
Hi Perry! Yes, that is what you read... and it's true. There are only so many batteries that are able to be produced without creating a problem for Toyota, such as being forced to raise the pricing on this car. Toyota is not underproducing it on purpose. There has been speculated because of the untra-low pricing on it. That is simply not the case. Obtaining enough NiMH main batteries immediately, w/o pre planning has GOT to be costly... and they are not wanting to raise the Prius base pricing.
Allocations Thanks for the updates Dianne. It helps to know what is going on during the wait for our cars to come in. Jeff
