Auto Mechanic: "I'd Go Broke If The Prius Was All I Worked On"

[matcom]

<snip>

Gus Heredia feels a kinship with the lonely, sad-faced repairman in the old Maytag ads.

Heredia, 54, is a Toyota Prius technician at North County Toyota in Anaheim. As the car that started the gasoline-electric hybrid groundswell approaches its fifth anniversary in the United States, he finds customers with Prius problems few and far between.

"We get an average of about 100 cars a day through the service department," Heredia said. "Maybe three or four are Priuses, and they're usually just in for an oil change. I'd go broke if the Prius was all I worked on."

Toyota Motor Corp. began taking orders in the U.S. in June 2000 for its fuel-sipping Prius hybrid passenger car, which arrived at dealers the next month. Although Honda Motor Co.'s two-seater Insight was the first hybrid here, it was the Prius that became a hit that caught the auto industry by surprise.

Toyota has sold 163,000 Priuses in the United States, and it has doubled production this year to keep up with demand. The company expects to sell 110,000 Priuses this year, up from 53,991 last year.

There are other hybrids on the market: Honda's Insight as well as gas-electric versions of its Civic and Accord, Toyota's Lexus RX 400h luxury sport utility vehicle and Ford Motor Co.'s Escape compact SUV. At least nine more hybrids are expected in the U.S. by 2008 from Toyota, Ford, Nissan Motor Co. and General Motors Corp.

The Prius continues to be the top seller and one of the most technologically advanced and complex passenger vehicles in the market today. It's also one of the most reliable.

For three of the last five years, the Prius has been rated top among compact cars in J.D. Power & Associates' closely watched initial-quality study.

"It's been a case of diligent hard work and conscientious development paying off," said Dennis Simanaitis, engineering editor at Road & Track magazine.

Hybrid vehicles use two power sources: an internal-combustion engine and an electric motor. Neither technology is particularly complex — gasoline engines have been around for more than a century, and electric motors are even older.

The genius lies in a hybrid's computer programming, which determines when the vehicle will run on electricity and when and how it will shift to gasoline mode, and in the design of the electrical controls that enable it all to happen seamlessly. Reliability is made, or destroyed, there and in the automatic transmissions that link the two mechanical systems.

"And the nice thing about electronic controls … is that they're easy to debug," said Dave Hermance, executive engineer for advanced vehicles at Toyota Technical Center USA in Torrance.

http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-fi-prius1jun01.story

[Hobarticus]

1. 'Magine that...engineering and craftsmanship pays off....

Who knew?

[trotsky]

2. Not the "Big 3" American auto companies, that's for sure.

You'd think they would have learned by now.

[lateo]

4. What they learned...

was a poorly made car creates residual income in repairs.

[northzax]

3. well let's see

there are only 163,000 of them in the US. Figure 15,000 in southern California (defined as Valley to Border in this analysis, and I'm being generous. There are probably 10-15,000 in the US from the first year.

plus, as pointed out in the article, electric engines are easier to diagnose and service (wait'll they all hit 90,000 miles and need new batteries, that'll pick up his bottom line)

So we have a car that is a tiny percentage of the cars (I bet there are not more than 5% of all the toyotas in S.Cal that are Priuses) so these numbers are about right for the percentage of the vehicles on the road.

imagine being an Aston Martin specialist in Omaha, there just aren't enough of them to keep you in business. Now imagine that there are 20 Aston Martin specialists in Omaha, no matter how good you are, not matter how much each car costs to service, there ain't enough Aston Martins in Omaha to keep you in business.

[GOPBasher]

5. This makes me want to buy one even more! n/t