Conservative columnist George Will is nothing if not predictable. Will was on This Week with George Stephanopoulos last Sunday where he attacked Obama’s push for eco-friendly vehicles and claimed that the only reason the Toyota Prius is successful is because it is a loss leader.

A key quote of Will’s from the interview sums it all up nicely:

“[The Prius is] affordable because Toyota sells it at a loss, and it can afford to sell it at a loss because it is selling twice as many gas-guzzling pickup trucks of the sort our president detests. So as an auto executive, he’s off to a rocky start.”

Fortunately for Toyota that is just not true. Toyota has in fact been making a profit on the Prius since 2001. Each Prius Hybrid currently earns Toyota $3,100 USD.

This is not the first time that George Will has tried to pull a fast one for his political agenda. He once made false claims against global warming as well as claiming that the  mining process required to get the of zinc necessary for a Prius’s batteries was worse for the environment than buying and operating a Hummer. This second argument was based on a discredited study.