Plug-in Prius will enter China

Although the demand for electric cars in China is getting higher and higher, Toyota still plans to use the Prius as a breakthrough for hybrids to gain a favorable situation in the increasingly fierce new generation of “green” energy wars.

On May 24th, Mr. Uchida Takeshi, Vice President of Toyota Motor Corporation, made a special trip to Beijing to elaborate on Toyota's market strategy for new energy vehicles and to unravel Prius' technical entanglements before the latest generation of the Prius can be domestically produced in China.

As the chief engineer of the first-generation Prius, Uchiyamada is known as the "father of the Prius" inside Toyota. In his view, since the birth of the Prius, the cumulative sales volume has exceeded 3 million, and China is the first outside of Japan. As a result of the advanced production of Prius hybrid vehicles, Toyota will strive to enhance the market performance of sales in China and quickly introduce the plug-in Prius in the test phase into volume production and introduction into the Chinese market.

In fact, since the birth of the Prius, the cumulative global sales have already exceeded 3 million vehicles. However, after the second-generation Prius entered the Chinese domestic market, sales of the Toyota Prius did not achieve satisfactory results. In this regard, Uchiyamada believes that because many parts of the Prius still need to be imported from Japan, the price is difficult to reduce. In response, Toyota has realized that the sales of the Prius are short, and in the third generation of the Prius, it promotes the procurement of components. Localization, reducing the terminal's sales price.

It is understood that the Prius, which is powered by Toyota's third-generation hybrid technology THS, plans to drive off the production line at the Faw Toyota Changchun plant before the end of the year.

According to Uchiyamada, according to the plan, through the change of the body, Prius will invest a lot of derivative products in the market in the future.

In the face of more and more competitors launching hybrid and low-priced models, Uchida is not worried that Toyota's advantage will be reduced. On the contrary, he believes that Toyota has accumulated sufficient technical advantages and cost control competitiveness through hybrid production.

Uchiyamada believes that Prius plug-in hybrids can be manufactured at a relatively low cost compared to competitors' new energy models.