Hybrid Car Review

Reported hybrid car sales were down for the third straight month, which may surprise some people. But the numbers here are very misleading. The numbers are falling because demand is so high that automakers don't have enough hybrid cars to sell.

The days to turn a Prius are down to 1-4 days (depending on when you check). The same ridiculously low numbers can be applied almost uniformly across all the other hybrid models. With gas prices over $4 in the month of July, fuel efficiency, hybrids, and smaller cars were the order of the day and it shows.

But still, the overall number of hybrid car sales was down 9% to 26,137 units sold. As always, Toyota sold the most hybrids by a large margin, with 20,363 units sold, including 14,785 Prius. But even the Prius was showing an 8% drop from last July.

Honda increased sales of its Civic Hybrid, showing that they, at least, were capable of increasing production when needed of their compact hybrid sedan.

Through July, hybrid car sales are down by 1% and will probably end up around the 0% mark for change from last year. I believe it will be on the positive side, but only by a slight margin. Production is at it's highest point, but until there are new models being sold (and not the monster SUV hybrids from GM) or new production comes online, the numbers just can't increase all that much.

Make	Model	Jul-07	Jul-08	% Change
Honda	Accord	260	3	-99%
Honda	Civic	2,493	3,440	38%
Honda	Insight	0	0	-
Toyota	Prius	16,062	14,785	-8%
Toyota	Highlander	1,205	1,371	14%
Toyota	Camry	4,329	2,645	-39%
Toyota	GS 450h	142	40	-72%
Toyota	RX 400h	1,385	1,439	4%
Toyota	LS600hL	0	83	-
Ford	Escape/Mariner	1,578	1,265	-20%
Nissan	Altima	1,131	715	-37%
GM	Yukon/Tahoe	0	351	-
Total		28,585	26,137	-9%
Make	Model	Cumulative, 2007	Cumulative, 2008	% Change
Honda	Accord	2,304	194	-92%
Honda	Civic	19,634	22,472	14%
Honda	Insight	3	0	-100%
Toyota	Prius	110,565	106,227	-4%
Toyota	Highlander	15,517	14,424	-7%
Toyota	Camry	32,399	33,177	2%
Toyota	GS 450h	1,136	499	-56%
Toyota	RX 400h	10,042	10,477	4%
Toyota	LS600hL	0	720	-
Ford	Escape/Mariner	15,050	12,687	-16%
Nissan	Altima	3,907	6,290	61%
GM	Yukon/Tahoe	0	1,487	-
Total		210,557	208,654	-1%

Related:

• Hybrid Car Sales, June 2008
• Hybrid Car Sales, July 2007