Prius makes spring debut

During a recent media ride-and-drive program for the redesigned 2010 Prius, Toyota said prices have not yet been determined. But the automaker acknowledged that one of the challenges facing the car is Honda's new Insight, a Prius look-alike with a starting sticker price just below $20,000. The 2010 Insight is already on sale.

The '09 Prius has a base price of $22,720 (including freight); but Ed La Rocque, Toyota's U.S. small-car manager, said Toyota believes that the “sweet spot” for the vehicle is between $24,000 and $25,000, which is the current average Prius transaction price.

But with all of the changes and new features, Toyota will be hard pressed to price the new model anywhere near what Honda is asking for the Insight, and a fully equipped 2010 Prius, with such high-tech gadgetry as a self-parking system borrowed from Lexus, could run close to $40,000.

Offering so much technology in the new Prius has created an internal controversy at Toyota headquarters in Japan, where the company's new leaders reportedly are questioning the decision to offer a long list of premium features that seem to push the popular hybrid into the luxury class.

Other available technology will include radar cruise control, lane-departure warning and lane-keep assist, and a pre-collision system that takes over control of the car when a collision is determined to be imminent.

Intelligent parking assist, which will parallel-park the vehicle for the driver automatically, is a system Toyota introduced on its flagship Lexus LS 460 luxury sedan two years ago, but never has offered on a Toyota model before now.

There is a concern that Toyota might be abandoning the original idea of the Prius as a mass-market vehicle, but La Rocque said the company believes that takers of the fully loaded Prius with all the gadgets probably will be a small percentage of customers.

The company expects to sell about 180,000 of the cars annually in the U.S. market, including 100,000 during the rest of 2009, he said.

La Rocque declined to confirm recent reports out of Japan that Toyota would offer a less expensive hybrid based on the subcompact Yaris, perhaps as early as 2012, to combat the Insight.