It has been redesigned but how of the material justifies a cost increase? The article mentions about how is how more standard features, but doesn't go into detail on anything besides the hybrid changes. When there are already complaints (valid or not) about the premium of hybrids, why even have an increase? I liked how Toyota when they redesigned for 2004 didn't raise the price. I am not just dissing on Honda either, as we all know Toyota has since had several price increases that I don't agree with.

If hybrid prices are rising in the absence of redesign, improvement, etc., it's simply the law of supply and demand. With high gas prices, cars with great FE are popular. An old thread here noted that strangers are offering to buy hybrids from current owners. How many people are approaching strangers with offers to buy their SUVs these days?

The "S" in MSRP means "suggested". The dealer can charge more if he thinks the market will bear it. If you don't like it, find a more reasonable dealer or a different car.

Case in point: I bought my '05 HCH on 3/31 at a nice discount to MSRP. The next day, that dealer started charging full MSRP because demand was so high.

Toyota announced a while back that it was working on reducing the costs of hybridship by ramping up in-house production of the electric motors and power electronics (they kicked out production of an SUV to make room for motor production) and other routes, such as the recent buy-out of their battery supplier, the joint venture with Panasonic, now most of the components are in-house so they should drop in price. If that translates into increased profit margins or reduced prices has yet to be seen...

2001 Prius Photos       2005 Prius Photos
'97 Prius Simulation Prius inner workings

Materials costs are far from the only part of the cost of a car. There's the engineering effort and new tooling required, which can run into the hundreds of millions and must be shared among tens or hundreds of thousands of cars. There's also the law of supply and demand, which no business is going to ignore. If hybrids are in demand then automakers are not going to sell them at cost, without profit!

Basic principle of a free market economy: Cost has absolutely nothing to do with price. The recent run up in fuel costs proves that.

Price is determined by how much consumers are willing to pay. Cost only affects the ability of the manufacturer to produce a profit on what they sell. If they can sell something for more then they can make it, they will make a profit and thus stay in business.

Support the Troops - Drive a Hybrid!

Here's some Examples of over MSRP on (New) Vehicles:

Thunderbird
Z06 Vette 2006
Certain Really High End Mercedes
1st Mini Coopers
1st Volkswagen Beetles
TDI Volkswagen Beetles
1st Honda 6-Sp. Accord Coupes
Honda Insight's

Point here is; Dealers not the manufactures set the price to (Us) the consumers. M.S.R.P. stands for (Manufactures Suggested Retail Price) and believe me or not it (The-Price) is set by demand. If alot of people are talking about and putting deposits on certain models and to really make things even worse price wise is when the Manufacture says they are only going to make a set number of that vehicle then lookout because here comes the (You-Guessed-It) price gouching from the Dealer.

In short; Supply and Demand dictates price. If we want it bad enough we swallow our pride open our check book and (Sign-Up).

Terry