UMW Toyota have released the new prices for the Toyota Prius and Toyota Prius c after the government’s tax incentives for CBU hybrid vehicles ended at the end of last year.
The following are the new prices, OTR including insurance for private registration:
- Toyota Prius – RM 216,400.52
- Toyota Prius Luxury – RM 230,916.00
- Toyota Prius C – RM 153,170.43
As you can see, a B-segment Prius c now costs as much as a D-segment Camry, while the Prius and Prius Luxury‘s prices have been pushed up to way over RM200k.
The Prius was first launched in Malaysia in August 2009 with the pricetag of RM175k. The RM175k pricetag was possible because of a 100% import duty exemption and a 50% excise duty exemption. The government later increased its incentives to 100% exemption for both import duty and excise duty, bringing the Prius price further down to RM139,900.
Later, the Prius facelift was launched in 2012 with two spec levels – the normal Prius for RM143k and a Prius Luxury for RM148k. The smaller Prius c came in at two spec levels – RM97k for the normal spec and RM104k for the Prius c TRD Sportivo.
While the Prius and Prius c were pretty popular cars when they had tax-free prices, we don’t think there will be many takers for these two cars at these new price levels, except for buyers who qualify for tax-free pricing such as those under the TalentCorp program.
However, UMW Toyota is set to come back into the incentivised hybrid game with the Toyota Camry Hybrid. Pricing was last rumoured to be slightly higher than the RM181k range-topping Camry 2.5V. In fact, we’ve already seen the Camry Hybrid at JPJ Putrajaya as well as driving on public roads.
This model did not qualify for the previous CBU hybrid incentives which required a model to have an engine of 2.0 litres and below as it had a larger 2.4 litre engine. The Camry Hybrid will be locally assembled to qualify for duty exemptions for CKD hybrid cars provided by the 2014 National Automotive Policy (NAP), which doesn’t set an engine displacement limit. The new CKD hybrid incentives are set to last until end-2015.
