A few posts ago, I wrote about XM radio passing four million subscribers. In my book, I’d say that’s pretty successful — at least so far. Another hit is Toyota’s Prius. Here’s some interesting facts about the Prius as “reported”:1 in the WSJ today:

* Toyota sold 11,345 Prius vehicles in April alone
* The Prius outsells the *entire* Mercury product line
* The Prius outsells the *entire* Volvo _plus_ Jaguar car lines

Toyota plans to try and parley the success of the Prius into some of it’s other product lines such as the Camry:

bq.. The Japanese auto maker said it will invest $10 million to start production of the Camry hybrid — the first hybrid vehicle to be produced in North America by Toyota — in the second half of 2006. It plans to produce 48,000 hybrid Camrys a year. That would be slightly more than 10% of annual Camry sales in the U.S., which totaled 426,990 last year.

p. Detroit has a lot of issues — especially it’s high labor and pension costs –but it would surely do *a lot* better if it relied less on large SUVs to make all of its profits.

[1(WSJ article on the Prius)]http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111634314806635830,00.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal