Why New 2016 Chevy Volt Might Sell 50,000 Units Its First Year

Launching entirely new types of cars is expensive, time-consuming, and challenging--as Toyota could have told Chevrolet and Nissan during 2010.

Toyota's sales of its early Prius hybrid-electric cars, however, may offer hope to electric-car fans disappointed at modest sales of the two affordable electric cars sold in high volumes thus far.

In 2010, both Nissan and Chevy were preparing to launch their new plug-in electric cars.

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Both the battery-electric Nissan Leaf and the range-extended electric Volt were five-door compact hatchbacks, and both went on sale in December that year.

First-year sales were 7,500 to 10,000 for each, and second-year sales rose to 23,500 for the Volt while staying just below 10,000 for the Leaf.

The third year saw sales rise to roughly 23,000 for each car. This year, we expect the Volt to stay around that number, and the Leaf to rise to perhaps 30,000.

In a market that averages about 15 million new vehicles a year--and buys 500,000 Ford F-150 full-size pickup trucks each year--those are admittedly modest numbers.

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But while the Toyota Prius may seem ubiquitous today, it's wasn't always so.

In fact, Toyota sold Priuses only in Japan for three years before even putting the car on sale in the U.S. in 2000. And its sales over the first four years were equally modest.

When you graph each of the three cars, starting with their first years on sale, you see relatively similar lines: All three cars sold 5,000 to 30,000 a year in each of their first four years.

But then the second-generation Prius launched for the 2004 model year, and its sales doubled from 24,600 to 53,991.

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Technically, that was the seventh year on sale for the Prius, if you count the three years of Japanese production that U.S. buyers never heard about.

We know the second-generation 2016 Chevy Volt will be introduced in January at the Detroit Auto Show, going on sale in the second half of next year.