In range, Toyoshima and his team doubled the EV-only driving distance to 22 miles. Japanese automaker, Toyota, is hoping for annual sales of 60k units of its Prius Prime, according to Koji Toyoshima, chief engineer of the next-gen hybrid vehicle. Half of these sales are expected to come from America, and the other half from Japan. Toyota has been working on a new electric car since 2009, but it was not until last year that they began selling their first plug-in hybrid, called Prius. The Prime has a lot to prove and a somewhat battered reputation to fix, given that Toyota itself deemed the previous generation Prius “a failure” after sales of only 75k units since its launch in 2012. To add to the pressure, Honda and Hyundai are both launching direct Prius competitors in the coming years, in the form of the Clarity and the Ioniq respectively.
Japanese automaker, Toyota, is hoping for annual sales of 60k units of its Prius Prime, according to Koji Toyoshima, chief engineer of the next-gen hybrid vehicle. Half of these sales are expected to come from America, and the other half from Japan. Toyota has been working on a new electric car since 2009, but it was not until last year that they began selling their first plug-in hybrid, called Prius. The Prime has a lot to prove and a somewhat battered reputation to fix, given that Toyota itself deemed the previous generation Prius “a failure” after sales of only 75k units since its launch in 2012. To add to the pressure, Honda and Hyundai are both launching direct Prius competitors in the coming years, in the form of the Clarity and the Ioniq respectively.