Prius Is Put on Fast Track

Customers at Longo Toyota in El Monte face a seven-month wait to take delivery of the Toyota Prius, the gas-stingy, hybrid-powered sedan.

It’s like that at many dealerships in California and around the country -- a surge in popularity that caught Toyota Motor Corp. by surprise.

Now, Toyota is responding: It aims to boost worldwide sales of gasoline-electric cars next year, partly by increasing production of the Prius by 50%, President Fujio Cho said Wednesday.

Although the Japanese automaker hasn’t decided how many of the additional vehicles will reach California -- the nation’s largest hybrid market -- some dealers said the production boost would be insufficient to satisfy all the Prius orders.

“The demand just keeps getting higher and higher,” said Fred Kabir, Longo Toyota’s new-car sales manager. He said the dealership had only one Prius on the lot -- a light-blue one reserved for test drives.

Toyota’s Torrance-based U.S. operation is “trying to get as much of that [additional Prius production] as we can,” but its share is still being decided, spokesman John Hanson said. “We were the ones who got this ball rolling for the extra production.”

Currently, Toyota makes the Prius in Japan at a rate of 120,000 vehicles a year. The plan is to boost worldwide production early next year to 180,000 vehicles annually.

Earlier, the automaker announced plans to roll out two other hybrid vehicles in the coming months: a Lexus RX 400 luxury sport utility vehicle, and a Highlander SUV.

Toyota hasn’t revealed how many of those new hybrid vehicles will be sold in the United States, but industry observers speculate that the company’s annual sales target is 24,000 for each of the SUVs.

On the drawing board is the idea of making the cars in the U.S. to better meet demand, but Toyota hasn’t settled on any particular location, Cho told an automotive seminar in Traverse City, Mich.

“Sometime in the future we might have to consider doing that,” he said.

Besides the Prius, two other hybrids built by Honda Motor Co. are on the U.S. market: The Insight two-seat coupe and the Civic Hybrid sedan.

Hybrid vehicles combine a gasoline engine and an electric motor to attain better fuel economy and reduced emissions compared with conventional internal-combustion gasoline engines.

They have caught on with green-minded buyers, in part because of their dramatically improved fuel economy. The 2004 Prius earned an EPA rating of 60 miles per gallon city and 51 mpg highway, though in real-life tests the mileage is closer to the mid-40s.

Interest in the vehicles grew in the last year, after Toyota and Honda improved their hybrids’ power and appearance and as gasoline prices climbed to $2 a gallon and higher.

Together, the three vehicles racked up sales of 43,435 last year, up 26% from 2002, according to R.L. Polk & Co., which tracks sales based on car registration data.

About one-quarter of the vehicles were registered in California, and 4,701 were registered in Los Angeles -- making it the top hybrid city in the country. Toyota’s Prius alone accounted for just under half of all the hybrid sales last year, Polk’s data showed.

Sales of the Prius soared to 27,013 in the first seven months of 2004, more than all of last year, according to Bloomberg News.

Still, the Prius accounts for a small portion of Toyota Motor’s overall U.S. sales, which have exceeded 1 million units this year. But sales of the Prius, which debuted in 2000, took off last October after it rolled out a newly designed model with sleeker styling and more space and power than its predecessor.

“Clearly, the extraordinary response to the Prius took us by surprise,” Don Esmond, a Toyota senior vice president, said in a statement announcing the boost in Prius production. “With demand far outstripping supply, customers have been forced to wait many months for delivery.”

Other hybrids are coming. Ford Motor Co. this month is scheduled to start selling a hybrid version of its popular mid-size Escape SUV. Honda plans additional models, including a hybrid version of its popular Accord sedan this winter in the U.S. Nissan Motor Co. plans to have an Altima hybrid sedan ready in 2005.

Those models should reduce consumers’ waiting time for hybrids because there are “a limited number of people interested in the cars,” said Jim Hossack, an analyst with AutoPacific Inc., a consulting firm in Tustin.

“My expectation is that the wait will go down,” he said. “Most of the people buying a hybrid are really trying to make a statement, an ecological and technology statement. I’m not sure how deep that pool is.”

For now, Prius customers at Longo Toyota have no room to haggle. With a waiting list, the dealer is charging the manufacturers’ suggested $22,274 sticker price for the base model, and $26,239 for an upgraded version that has a navigation system and other options, sales manager Kabir said.

How do customers’ react? “Most of them understand,” Kabir said, “because they’ve been calling everywhere else and no one has the car either.”

Times wire services were used in compiling this report.