A reason why Apple stays away from pre announcing products ...

Although this is typical for an automobile company - I think this is a good example of why a company such as Apple tries to stay away from from pre announcing products. This is such a let down in design from Toyota - so much so that it might actually slow sales of the popular Prius.

This is what the original (and expected) 2010 Prius was to look like:



This is what it actually will look like as confirmed by Toyota:




From awesome to ugly in 6 seconds.

A similar thing happened to the Chevy Volt - but the kind of radical "bold to conservative" prototype/actual car design is usually expected from GM.