Featured Why Toyota Only Sold One Prius in China Last December

There's a Bloomberg article making the rounds right now (and an Ars Technica article citing it), in which Bloomberg noticed that Prius sales fell off of a cliff in China, and only ONE UNIT sold in December!

They go on to speculate that it's because of the new Prius's styling, and the fact that Prius production ended in China in 2015, so any new Priuses are subject to high import taxes. They even compare Chinese-market Prius pricing to that of the Audi Q3, as an example of those high import taxes.

There's only one problem.

The Gen 4 Prius isn't sold in China, at least per Toyota's Chinese-market website. The production that stopped in China was aligned with the Gen 3's discontinuation (in Japan, Toyota changed over to the Gen 4 in December 2015). And, the Chinese market pricing is of the Gen 3, which isn't subject to the import taxes.

The news here isn't that the Gen 4 flopped in China, it's that the Prius was discontinued altogether in China, over a year ago. The sales figures that they give are consistent with the discontinuation of a model, and the unit sold in December was a leftover. Some of the conclusions may be correct - the Prius's styling in general might not work well for China (and their figures for 2015 sales - roughly 700 units - indicates that it doesn't sell well in China), and the Corolla/Levin (both are basically the same car as the US-market Corolla sedan) is available as a hybrid, and likely will sell better. But, the Gen 4's not a flop in China, it's just not sold there.