As you will notice in the thread, Oh the pain - the lost mpgs! on the Gen II Main Forum, at least two of our members, donee and bikr357, are reporting actually getting a $1000 rebate, or being offered a rebate, on a 2010 Prius! These appear to be regional, not national offers in the US: I went to look at the Gulf South area website on toyota.com, and there were no rebates, but it looked like 0% financing might apply to Prius Gen III. For those of you thinking of buying a 2010, looks like end of model year bargains may be starting. For those of us following the Prius/hybrid market generally, this is another piece of evidence that Prius is becoming "ordinary"--i.e., buying a Prius Gen III is becoming like buying any other car, rather than being a "specialty" car or buying the hot, new car that commands a premium even in a slow market. In my view, this is good news for consumers generally. In a slightly perverse way, it is even good for the hybrid market--manufacturers are seeing it as just another slice of their market pie.
These regional deal have been going on since at least July. Back then by me it was 0% on I think 36 months or $179 a month on a 3 yr lease with like 3k down.
Cars.com still shows 17,000 2010's available nationwide... hybridcars.com reported 11,799 Prius sold in August, down 16% from July. I'm hoping that even better incentives will be forthcoming after October 4th, when the current $750 (NorthEast) rebates expire. But who knows, maybe the 2011's won't arrive until 2011
the deals For southern CA, the low lease rates have been in place since late Feb, 2010. Back then, the rates were higher (.00075 for great credit) but the residuals were way higher. As I posted in another thread, my buy rate for my son's car was tier 1+ @ .00075 but his II residual was almost 16,500. That same car right now would be .00025 buy rate and residual almost 10% lower @ 15,048. Back then there was no bonus cash for dealers, and one had to have loyalty proof to have the free maintenance. As time has passed, month by month, rates change. Programs change. Residuals drop. The best month to have bought was July's incentives. Those were the best leases this year. Residuals lower/drop according to what the lender (TFS) thinks the market WILL be for these cars in 3 years and they have the right to set the residual since they could be the ones holding the bag in 3 years with ... in my region ... 5,000 used Prius or more!! That will mean they may count on an early termination plan for low mile cars and better clients with more equity at that point... and start diluting the problem early... or, maybe it won't be a problem. Maybe when the plug ins start coming and they are pricy, it will naturally cause folks to default to low mile used lease returns at $16-$20K-$23K because NEW Prius will be very pricy when they plug in? I guess we'll know in 3 years... right?
