Sep

Be Wary of Toyota Prius Advertised Mileage

Posted by admin Published in Toyota, Car Buying

Thanks to stricter checking methods designed to better reflect “real world” conditions, the government’s fuel economy ratings on 2008 models have gone down considerably.

The Toyota Prius hybrid, for example, had been rated at 60/51 mpg city/highway for 2007, numbers that drew motorists to showrooms like a magnet when gas prices tickled and thereupon topped $3 a gallon at the neighborhood filling station.

Under the 2008 rating system, the Prius window sticker now reads 48/45 mpg city/highway, which is closer to the truth, but some Toyota dealers and their staffs aren’t telling folks the truth.

A survey of 200 Toyota dealers nationwide found a third told folks who
called to ask the mileage rating of a Prius that it gets “up to 60
mpg,” says Art Spinella, general manager of CNW Marketing Research, a
company that studies why citizens buy what they do. The company conducted
the survey earlier that month.

Those dealers additionally construct the same 60 mpg claim in their radio and TV advertising, Spinella said.

“It’s underhanded and misleading,” he said. “Toyota isn’t doing it.
The ads aren’t in newspapers

where you can cut them out and have proof
they did wrong. The ads are generally on radio or TV where you don’t have
a copy, so that whether anyone complains all the dealer has to do is stop
running the ad for a while.”

Ironically, consumers haven’t complained considering many of them still
don’t realize the 2008 mileage ratings have gone down or what the
rating should be - -either the old or the new one.

But dealers who advertise the Prius at 48/45 have taken their fellow
dealers to task and are the ones calling either local dealer trade
associations or their state attorney general’s office to complain and
force offending dealers to clean up their act.

The survey results show it’s moment for Toyota to sign the offending dealers as well, Spinella says.

Related
Last Chance for Toyota Hybrid Tax Credit (KickingTires)
New MPG Figures Coming (KickingTires)