Is Prius a 10 year automobile?

How many years can you drive after the battery replacement? Can you buy another vehicle for $3850.00. You know the condition of the one you have and how it was maintained. Do you want to take a chance on an unknown vehicle? I guess it is a personal decision.

 

Get in touch with these guys, ReInvolt. Their quoted price for the battery is $1675 plus shipping and they get your old battery. They also offer install to local customers for $282. They have several affiliated garages around the country as well. I'd speculate realistically it would be close to $2400 when alls said and done, depending on your location.

Have a look through their site:

Remanufactured Hybrid Vehicle Battery Packs

I've emailed them with questions regarding a previous Honda Civic Hybrid in our family, it sounded positive and doable.

 

The following is probably not the most fair comparison, but I recently traded from a Honda Accord to my Prius.

I figured it would be very easy to save, in gasoline costs alone, at least $30/mo or $360/yr or $3,600 over 10 years.

I suppose it would be smart to setup a battery replacement account leading up to the 10+ year mark so it's more tolerable when the time comes.

 

Looks like an 8 hour drive, 450~ miles to the nearest installer in your area.

 

considering that you paid $22,000. ten years ago, and you can buy a new one at a price in the same ballpark which is lightyears ahead of the gen I, i would go with a new one. and i bet it will be 15 years before you're faced with this decision again.

 

I think of it as a 20 year 300,000 mile vehicle barring major accidents or a salty environment.

 

Why is the number of years more important than the number of miles? Shouldn't it be the other way around?

The GenI doesn't hold its value as well as subsequent generations because it was not as versatile and dare I say it is not as desirable? They are great cars but you take a chance with new technology.

The same dilemma could occur with any non-hybrid when you have to replace the transmission or engine instead of the HV battery. Thankfully the engine and transaxle failures are uncommon compared to a non-hybrid. The GenI did have a higher failure rate than GenII and III.

 

I figure the OP might have saved about $2,900 in gas in those 130k miles over a Corolla. Assuming 41 MPG in Prius , 31 in Corolla and $2.75 avg gas price over the years, which may be off.

 

Nobody knows, yet. If cars typically last a long time in your environment then I'd expect that the Prius is a 20 year car but with an expensive component that will be replaced once or twice during its life.

If the OP's Gen 1 Prius has been otherwise reliable my suggestion would be to replace the battery, and keep the car but be ready for the Prius c in case of future problems.

 

Please, please: post any details if you go with them. I've watched the videos on their website, read through most of the text. They seem diligent and knowledgable, capable of replacing your battery with one that is better than new.

Assuming you drive the car to the New Mexico installer: hopefully you would be able to set it up so that when you show up the refurb battery is there, ready to swap. That is likely the cheapest shipping scenario as well.

We have a situation with an 06 Civic Hybrid, sort-of ailing. In our location the've got nothing nearby. I believe they're still able to work out something, shipping to competent local mechanics.

 

I don't know what the depreciation rate of the Prius is in the US, but I'd guess the OP would lose more than the price of a battery for his Gen 1, in the first year, if he bought a new Gen 3.
A new battery would give him more than a years worth of motoring in his current car. Better the devil you know.

 

I put 305,000 miles over 10 years on my last Toyota and plan on doing the same with the Gen III Prius. I had less than $1,000 in repairs excluding brakes and tires over the life of the vehicle.

Right now the Prius has 72,000 miles and it is 2 years and 4 months old. So far I have zero repairs.

 

We have a 2005 gen II Prius w/ 99k miles. We've replaced the shocks, struts, and water pump (and tires of course). Other than that, we followed the regular maintenance schedule and were planning on driving it for another 99k miles, at least. The car runs like the day we bought it.

The only reason we're upgrading to the gen III is because our car has severe hail damage and we got a good deal to trade it in. If it weren't for the hail storm, we'd still be planning on driving it for another 7 years.

 

It's mileage sensitive because of charge/discharge cycling.

 

Those numbers don't sound so good, especially factoring the drive (that is a fairly serious haul), the time, a nights accomodation and so on. Not bad, but mehh...

Unless you you can figure it as a working vacation, see the sights while you're there. There's still some unknown dollar amounts, and the advantage is dwindling. Also, these are re-furb. batteries, and I believe the warranty is one year. Frustrating!

I think ReInvolt has to do something, either sweeten their offering (ie: better battery technology, they are talking about lithium batteries in the near future), or lengthen their warranty, and/or reduce their price.

As is, it's getting to close to Toyota's price, which I'd assume is all new components.