- Coca-Cola, Kleenex, AOL's You've Got Mail,
they're synonymous with soda, tissues, and email,
and to be honest,
you can say the same thing about the Toyota Prius
because as far as environmentalists are concerned,
it's the Kleenex of hybrid cars baby.
Yes, we are actually doing this.
Your computer and your eyes and ears are not broken.
So slip on some birkenstocks
and grab a bowl of your best granola
because this is everything
you need to know to get up to speed
on the Toyota Prius.
(upbeat music)
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Now before we dive in to Toyota,
I think it's important to point out
that hybrid powered cars
have been around for a really long time.
In 1899 Ferdinand Porsche built
the first commercial gas-electric hybrid
known as the Mixta.
It sold pretty well,
but when Henry Ford sold the Model T
for a fraction of the price
hybrids basically disappeared until the 1970s.
That's right, I'm talking about everybody's favorite crisis,
the 1973 oil crisis.
Oil crisis.
Do you guys like oil crisis birch?
Go ahead and hit that like button and let me know.
With skyrocketing oil prices,
manufacturers spent billions of dollars
over the next two decades to eliminate
the auto industry's dependence on gas and oil.
But sadly, no one could figure out a way
to mass produce a hybrid car with global appeal,
and that is when Toyota stepped in.
Chapter one, Toyota's future car.
In the summer of 1993, two years before Post Malone was born
AG Toyota challenged Toyota to develop
a revolutionary vehicle for the upcoming 21st century.
He wanted something compact but spacious.
With a long wheel base
and a fuel efficiency at least 1.5 times greater
than the next best car in its class.
Led by Takeshi Uchiyamada,
the Toyota team began working on their vehicle of the future
code named the G21.
Sounds like a Terminator, sick.
To meet the chairman's request for fuel efficiency,
the team developed an all new hybrid drive train
called the Toyota Hybrid System,
aka the THS, aka time for a tech talk.
(upbeat music)
The THS featured a power split device
connecting two electric motors
to a small main gas powered engine.
The drive motor would boost engine output
while acting as a generator during deceleration
to charge the batteries.
The second motor would use the drive power
of the small engine to generate electricity
as well as control the transmission.
The engine output would be divided
between driving the vehicle and charging the battery,
and the continuously variable transmission
would generate engine speed.
All while an inverter converted the current
between the direct current batteries
and the alternating current motors.
It was a great hybrid system,
on paper.
Getting it to work in real life, well,
brother that's a whole nother story.
Toyota planned to unveil a concept
of the G21 at the 1995 Toyota Motor Show,
but they had a problem.
They didn't have a functioning THS to present,
so instead Toyota unveiled the concept's shell.
Under the hood attendees would find
another hybrid system as a placeholder.
This one was called the Energy Management System, or EMS.
Even though this engine wouldn't go on
to represent the final Prius,
it did represent the debut of the Prius nameplate.
Now the word Prius itself is Latin for first.
A lot of you guys commented that in the comments,
and that couldn't be more fitting.
Toyota wanted to beat the other manufacurers
to the hybrid punch,
especially their main rivals over at Honda.
Frickin' Honda.
Following the Toyota Motor Show
the G21 team set out to make the Prius a reality.
They joined forces with matsu,
Matsushita Battery,
Matsushita Battery Industrial Company LTD
to develop the batteries
and got to work on a computer system
small enough to fit inside of a little car,
which apparently proved to be very difficult.
Now I know that sounds ridiculous nowadays,
our phones are computers and so are our watches,
but this is the 90s okay,
this is the year after Post Malone was born.
Computers were bulky and beige,
you kids wouldn't even understand
what it's like to have one computer at your house,
you gotta take fricken turns.
We had these big old things we used to call floppy disks,
put it in there and it held like eight Word documents.
Chapter two, trial and a lot of error.
By 1996, the G21 team evolved into the Prius team,
and let's just say they were freaking out.
Toyota had publicly announced
that the production version of the Prius
would debut in 1997,
and behind the scenes they had already gone
into pre-production mode
to mass produce the car for 1998.
That's great news, oh thank gosh.
So why was the Prius team freaking out?
'Cause their prototype could only drive 500 meters,
that's why.
That's less than a half of a mile.
That's the exact opposite
of the whole point of this fricken car.
After days of testing
they got the basic programming under control,
but then came the batteries.
The nickel high drive batteries they used
ended up being half as powerful
and twice the size of what they anticipated
on top of that, the 240 cells that made up the batteries
didn't function properly
when drained and recharged so quickly.
And believe it or not,
this wasn't even the worst of their problems.
(explosion)
Yeah, the Prius prototypes
were exploding from massive electrical fires,
and I gotta say, that's not really a strong selling point
remember the Fiero?
I'm no mathematician, but 20% of your cars catching on fire
is way too many of your cars catching on fire.
So the engineers got to work
on a more aggressive cooling system.
The irony was that while they successfully stopped the car
from exploding, good job,
this new system put so much strain
on the batteries that the Prius' fuel economy
ended up being worse than a Corolla,
which is not the freaking point,
that's again the whole point of the car
was to get good gas mileage.
But despite all the issues,
the Prius team came through
and Toyota was able to debut the car
on October 14, 1997.
Two months later,
the UN's climate control convention in Kyoto
used the Prius as the mode of transportation
for diplomats and attendees.
Environmentalists and auto industry folk
appreciated the then 48 combined MPGs,
but internally, Toyota wasn't sure
how the general public would feel about a hybrid.
Chapter three, the hype of the hybrids, yeah.
Toyota made history with the launch
of the first ever mass produced Hybrid,
and in this untested market
they set a modest sales goal of 1000 units per month,
that's not a ton.
I say modest because in its first month,
they received 3500 orders.
I haven't heard of a success like that
since the buff horses T-shirt.
You guys made this shirt happen on this show.
Now you can show everybody
that you don't even like weak horses,
you like them big old buff boy horses.
Okay, back to the show.
So they got 3500 orders in the first month,
and following that,
the Prius was named Japan's car of the year.
Toyota had a winner on its hands
and quickly set its sights on complete global domination.
High off of their success in Japan,
the Prius arrived stateside in 2000
and it sold just okay.
Referred to as the NHW11,
this global Prius sold 52,000 units
over the course of three and a half years in America.
These subpar numbers
were maybe affected by Toyota's unproven technology.
Low gas prices, and the Prius' road noise
caused by the lack of insulation in the thin glass.
This thing didn't even have a fricken' CD player,
and people in the 90s fricken' loved CD's.
Ask Jeremiah, host of Bumper to Bumper.
Let's see what we got going on in my collection here,
how about 50 Cent, Mariah Carey Music Box,
dang man the hits just keep coming.
And maybe, just maybe
the Prius wasn't a big hit
because the Honda Insight
had already quenched consumers' thirst
for a hybrid one full year
before the Prius even got here.
Americans didn't see the Prius
as a revolutionary car that Toyota had hoped for.
Until 2004.
This completely redesigned Prius
changed the auto industry forever.
Toyota now gave the battery 150,000 mile
10 year warranty to alleviate any concern over battery life.
They upgraded the THS system,
rebranding it now as the Hybrid Synergy Drive
which sounds way fricken' cooler.
Sounds like something that breaks
on the fricken' starship enterprise.
I gotta go down there and fix
the synergy drive captain.
Okay but then when you get back we're kissing.
What dude?
Nothing.
This new system bumped up the Prius' MPGs
now hitting 60 city, and 51 highway.
Plus, the 04 model ditched the boring sedan style
in favor of a hatchback.
Toyota was stoked.
And set a very ambitious sales goal
of 5,000 units per month, and guess what.
It didn't sell very well?
Wrong, Toyota doubled their fricken' sales goal.
Well at least I tried.
Glad to see you're healing nicely.
Second gen Prius' started flying off the lot.
Especially in traffic heavy cities
like Los Angeles and San Francisco.
California's high gas prices
and absolutely unbearable commutes
turned the Prius into Hollywood's next big star.
Most car companies have to pay celebrities
to promote their brand.
Ask me how I know.
But Toyota got the best of the best for free.
I'm talking Thomas Hanks,
Jennifer from the block Aniston, the goop Paltrow,
and a certain Mister Bradford Pitt.
These A-listers validated the cool factor of the Prius.
Yeah I said cool factor,
because as much as you wanna hate
on this revolutionary car,
you can't hate Toyota for selling
a basic quality Hybrid for $21,000 dollars.
Toyota not only doubled their Prius sales in 2004,
they also doubled their numbers in 2005
and increased those numbers by 80% in 2007
to a massive 181,000 units sold.
So when 2009 rolled around,
everyone expected great things
and Toyota dropped their all new Prius
right into the great American recession.
- We're down over 16%.
- 18%.
- 21%.
- 43%.
- Now while other manufacturers were struggling to sell cars
the Prius' numbers stayed pretty strong.
This third gen Prius kept consumer interest
with its added user selected drive modes.
A low speed electric mode for sneaky silent driving.
Eco-mode for long road trips,
and an all new power mode
for when you wanna unleash all 98
of those beautiful lightning Hybrid horses.
(upbeat music)
and if you had an extra $10,000 dollars
lying around during the recession,
you could load up your new Prius
with a solar PV roof panels to cool the cabin,
or you could add on intelligent parking
and lane keep assist.
This is (bleep) future stuff back then.
Prius sales didn't really spike until 2012
when Toyota unveiled an all new Prius family.
These new additions included a plug-in hybrid
featuring a more advanced lithium ion battery
which enabled emissions free driving
for a range of 13 miles.
You wanna learn more about these batteries
and if they are actually worse for the environment
than just gas stuff,
check out this episode of Wheelhouse.
Say plug-in ain't your thing,
and you need a compact.
With just a small loss of power and mileage,
the new Prius C was a great entry level Prius
which made city parking a whole lot easier.
Christina fricken has one,
we put it on cool wheels.
She's got some fricken OZ's and track tires on her Prius.
But let's say the C and the plug-in
just aren't big enough for you.
Well, Toyota thought of that too.
The Prius V came as a wagon,
it was by far the largest Prius in the family,
just like Colby.
This whole new lineup sold fine
and kept the Prius name relevant,
but then in 2015,
Toyota was faced with their biggest challenge yet,
other hybrids.
Chapter four, the future of Toyota's future car.
While Toyota was knowingly Cannibalizing Prius sales
with the introduction of the Hybrid Camry
and Hybrid Highlander,
other manufacturers were popping up
and taking big old bites out of the Prius market pie.
So to fight back Toyota released
the fourth gen Prius,
built on the Toyota's new global architecture platform.
And let me tell you,
it wasn't really a looker.
It looked like a bad guy from Star Trek.
Captain, look out there's a fricken enemy ship
on the starboard bow.
Let him get close, then I'll kiss him.
What?
Nothing.
I kind of like it,
but I like weird stuff.
With its 2015 release,
Prius sales finally began to decline
and Toyota had to make some changes.
The Prius V was sent to the farm,
and the Prius C was discontinued
in favor of the slightly larger 2020 Corolla Hybrid.
Sadly, the Prius is currently suffering
for being a trailblazer.
Some people prefer Mountain Dew over Coca-Cola,
generic over Kleenex, Gmail over AOL,
the Prius couldn't fend off
the inevitable oversaturation
in the market that they basically created.
It's responsible for selling 12 million Toyota Hybrids.
It revolutionized the automobile industry
and convinced consumers to re-think gas dependency.
Yeah there was a 2018 facelift,
but the Prius is old at this point.
Its fans are old.
And now there are younger, arguably better hybrids
and EV's out there stealing all the spotlight.
Thank you guys so much for watching this episode
of Up To Speed, and everything else on Donut Media.
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