Published December 5, 2012
By Pete Brissette
Toyota reported on Monday that November marked the second best month of sales for its Prius Plug-in, with 1,766 units sold, since the plug-in hybrid (PHEV) began selling in March of this year.
The November figures make the Toyota PHEV the sales leader among major brands for the month. October remains the Prius Plug-in’s best month to date, with 1,889 sales.
Toyota’s Prius with a plug managed to best the Chevy Volt, which saw 1,519 units moved last month, a little more than half the 2,961sold in October, ending a strong three-month run for the car that recently topped Consumer Reports’ annual auto owner satisfaction survey.
Ford’s C-Max Energi, in its second month on the market, saw sales of 1,259 units in November, a few hundred sales shy of the Prius Plug-in. Take into account the Energi’s nine-fold increase from 144 units sold in October, and the Ford plug-in hybrid could be a serious contender to eclipse the Volt and Prius in the coming months.
Despite the C-Max’s tremendous leap and the Toyota’s steady gate, neither were enough to offset the nearly halved Volt sales, leading to a modest but measurable decline in total sales for the three models between October (4,994) and November (4,554).
The drop in Volt sales may at first seem an ominous sign, but culpability lies mainly with recently ended sales incentives for the car, and limited supply following a planned four-week shutdown in October of the company’s Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant in Michigan.
We'll have more news soon when we post our Dashboard which has been delayed slightly by technical issues.
