The Japanese automaker focuses on cutting tailpipe emissions first, with efficiency second.
The new, fifth-generation Toyota Prius prioritizes style and performance alongside efficiency. That was a major change for the company that for the four previous generations had only been focused on the most efficient travel possible, which was traditionally linked to gas mileage.
Toyota still does that, but what has changed is the messaging.
The launch of the new Prius hybrid and Prius Prime plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) is the first time Toyota wholly switched up its message on the model line.
The first-generation Prius premiered in Japan in 1997 at a time when few knew what hybrids were. In 2000 it went global, becoming the world’s first mass-produced gasoline-electric hybrid car, and came to the U.S. with a retail price of just $19,995.
In the era of the Y2K panic, NSYNC popularity and the dot-com boom, Toyota had to educate buyers. The Prius didn’t need to be plugged in to work. The company developed a dialogue with interested early adopters resulting in a pool of over 40,000 potential buyers that were given early access to the Prius microsite and its special-order feature.
Before it arrived in showrooms on June 30, 2000, Toyota already sold 1,800 Prius vehicles via online requests (another pioneering idea).
A few years after, celebrities were driving the second-generation Prius throughout Los Angeles and into paparazzi and press photos
«We got guys like Jeff Goldblum and Ed Begley Jr.
