14 DAY TRIAL // Recent reports indicate that, throughout the past 15 years, drivers in America and Japan have become quite fond of Toyota Motor's hybrid vehicle, which goes by the name of Prius. Thus, this environmentally friendly car currently finds itself on a roaring third place in the world's best-selling car lines top.
Apparently, the Japanese government decided it was high time to start getting its citizens to buy more fuel-efficient automobiles in the wake of past year's disasters: the earthquake and the tsunami.
As high officials argue, these events have severely crippled the country's automotive industry, and turning to hybrids such as the Toyota Prius was one of the options to help diminish the negative outcomes.
As well as this, it seems that both American and Japanese citizens are utterly compelled to purchase such vehicles by the government's more than attractive tax reductions for such transactions.
According to bloomberg.com, rebates go as far as nearly $1,300 (roughly €1,000), and are available for different version of this car: the Prius hatchback, the wagon, the Prius plug-in and the Aqua subcompact.
Ecogeek.com happily informs us that, in the first few months of 2012, Toyota sold 247,230 such vehicles world-wide, with 86,027 being shipped straight to America.
John Wolkonowicz, a specialist in automotive history from Boston, argues that, as far as hybrid car models go, Toyota's Prius will probably have to wait for a very long time before a worthy rival comes its way, “It’s the phenomenon we saw with Chrysler and minivans. It brought out the first minivan and after all these years, Chrysler still is minivan sales leader. Prius was the first hybrid on the block.”
With gas prices slowly – but surely – going up, odds are that the Toyota company stands to make quite a significant profit on behalf of its Prius model.