2010 Toyota Prius

Toyota ups the ante with its third-generation hybrid

By Nina Russin

2010 Toyota Prius

The problem with doing something well is that everybody else wants a piece of it. When Toyota rolled out the first Prius in 2001, industry insiders saw a limited production car for a niche market.

But Toyota knew its hybrid sedan had more potential than sales of 12,000 units that year suggested. The name, Prius, comes from a Latin verb meaning “to go before.” As it turned out, the public’s initial reaction was a swell before the tidal wave of popularity that followed.

Today, Toyota has sold 700,000 Priuses in the US: 1.2 million world wide. The public has taken to gasoline/electric hybrids like ducks to water.

As a result, the duck pond is loaded with competitive products, including the affordably-priced Honda Insight.

When Toyota began work on the third-generation Prius in 2004, it assigned two thousand engineers to the project. The new model doesn’t look radically different than the car it replaces, but looks can be deceiving. Read the rest of this entry »