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Specifically a Prius?

Great deals!
Just ask a dealer in your area.

If you are looking for a deal on a new Prius, i would wait a little while. Right now, there are NO incentives coming from Toyota, and the dealer is not going to sell the car for less than invoice. Invoice on a 23,500 sticker Prius is around 22,200. Depending on what happens over the next month or so, there is always the possibility that Toyota will do something to try to entice customers back to the showrooms, including incentives. If it were me, i would wait and see if anything develops.

I suppose the other issue is whether it's worthwhile to replace my car since I can get 45 mpg on the highway.

Go via the internet person, not the onsite salesmen.
My guess is THAT RIGHT NOW- is the time to buy, if they have Prius on the lot.

They will never sell at a loss of course, but you should be able to get a decent deal-gasoline prices are low, and Toyota is having problems.Everything says this is the time to buy-IF THE DEALER ACTUALLY HAS PRIUS INVENTORY.Hasn't Toyota shut down the assembly lines??
check more than one dealer, and be prepared to be flexible in respect to colors options etc.If you need some sort of special order-something not on the lot or readily available via dealer trade-you won't do as well.

Now is the time to buy if a dealer has inventory.
In several months the price of gas could be up, and this problem could be forgotten.

BUY NOW,BUT BE FLEXIBLE TO GET THE BEST DEAL.Yes there will be other bottom feeders-like me(if I needed one and had the $$) and you- out there and they will drive up demand.Since you already have a FE car, you probably won't get a deal good enough to make you pull $20,000(or whatever the trade difference is) out of your pocket
Charlie

I suppose the other issue is whether it's worthwhile to replace my car since I can get 45 mpg on the highway.

Do you do most of your driving on the highway?? The prius isn't know as a highway car but If speeds aren't above 55-60 mph it can do pretty good.

are you in the market for a car or just thinking about one since there might be deals out there??

Do you do most of your driving on the highway?? The prius isn't know as a highway car but If speeds aren't above 55-60 mph it can do pretty good.

are you in the market for a car or just thinking about one since there might be deals out there??

Just thinking about it in hopes there might be a deal. I guess the other option is to wait until a viable, mass produced electric car becomes available, which I'm willing to wait since I should have a house by then.

I just came back from a Toyota dealer. They're not budging from MSRP on the Priuses. The Corollas, on the other hand, they'd be willing do some deals on.

Hard ball huh.Well Toyota dealers are always tough to deal with. How many Prius did they have on the lot? If they had just 4-5, no surprise no deals.If they had 15-20 then I'm really surprised.

There must be low numbers of Prius available- but plenty of Corollas.
Charlie

They had about 8 new Priuses and 40+ Corollas. Hehe. They also had a generation 2 Prius for $28k. I was thinking: WTF? Yeah, it was "decked out" but not in any meaningful way. I could get new Prius for less.

On a (wild) tangent, just read this article that's a depressive froth of digested employment stats: "How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America"

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201003/jobless-america-future

and got to thinking what kind of car would be the best long-term option for that kind of hypothetical environment.

Thinking a used Prius 2, possibly w/ plug-in conversion, would make an excellent extended-recession vehicle. If you have an EV, what do you do if you have an extended period of underemployment and have to foreclose or abandon your house? Do you plug it in at the extended stay hotel? You're probably going to have to use gas to get to job interviews at long, unpredictable distance. And unlike Insight 2 or the sub-compacts, it's big enough to sleep in semi-comfortably if you have to park overnight.

You're going to want your car to be reliable, cheap to maintain, high MPG, flexible on power, and most importantly, paid off. So thinking if you can get Prius cheap now, it's a conservative, long-term play, and maybe an ideal extended-recession vehicle (ERV).

You will never get a real deal if you just walk in and ask "whan kind of deals are you offering?" That takes a serious intent to buy and time at the negotiating table. As was already said, shop at a dealer with plenty of inventory.