First time reading this thread. It made me rethink installing a block heater on my PRIME. I guess in your case, the burden of proof was not satisfied. But still 2 long years of saga. I wonder if there are any other similar cases.
If he had driven the 2 hours each way to the dealer to have them inspect & re-route the heater cable so it no longer obstructed the shutters, there would have been documentation of the error that likely caused the fire. That is the downside of sometimes fixing things yourself.
The dealer initially installed the heater with the cord obstructing the active shutters. T The user fixed that themselves, but the main suspect if the fire was a damaged heater cable. Grille Shutter Inoperative and Check Engine | PriusChat
Insurance company spent more than the car was worth trying to get their money back a well as mine. They did their job.
When the 2016 were pending, I was really sitting on the edge of my seat. First pictures started coming, the exterior, the interior, it was a one-two punch, ugh, ugh... Now in 2019, another nail in the coffin: in Canada there's one level still having a temp spare, the base level, go figure. If you want 3-door touch to unlock, you don't get a spare, and you get a sunroof (which I don't like). No levels have 17" wheels. I'm resigned to stick with my low-miles 2010 for a few more years, till some manufacturer comes along with something interesting, if ever. Stuck with: LED headlights, temp spare, 3-door touch to unlock, HomeLink rear-view mirror, fog lights (admitedly useless, but purty), illuminated door thresholds, hatch threshold, back up camera (in the rear-view mirror, another more-or-less useless but purty feature) and 17" alloys.
If you were in a multicar household, you could have both! I go places (family farm) where, even with the Forester, I sometimes need to put on the snow boots, wind pants, balaclava, and hoof it through the drifting snow until the road can be adequately cleared another day. Though after not facing that degree of bad winter road on my shifts for several years, I experienced it twice just last week.
But did they, really? In most states (I do not know about AK), insurance companies owe their insured a duty of "good faith," which among other things, means putting YOUR best interest ahead of theirs. It can get complicated parsing out all the "arrows" of duties and obligations when they start operating under subrogation (essentially taking over your rights and pursuing matters as if they were you). In Florida anyway (I've retired from law and returned to the cockpit, where I'm actually happy doing my job!), in a scenario like this, you should have a insurance lawyer (one who does "first party", you vs your own company, cases on a contingent basis) look the matter over. If they still owe you a duty to recover your deductibles, and try to walk away because they don't want to incur the cost of further pursuit, your new independent lawyer sues your ins co, recovers your deductibles, AND the insurance company pays YOUR atty fees and costs. It's a great dis-incentive for insurers to play the walk-away game. Just some food for thought, and maybe worth looking into. I fly airplanes for a living now, but I still hate it when insurance companies pull wool on their own, premium paying customers. . .
I'm not sure about that, but I am sure that there's a new RAV-4 Hybrid coming for 2019, that actually offers interesting/appealing (for its size) mileage, 41/38/40. The justification for killing the v was allegedly competition with the Gen-1 RAV-4, but that vehicle offered horrible mileage for a hybrid, 34/30, far short of the v and not near enough to interest me. The new 2019 RAV is pretty nice looking and again, offers much better mileage. You can see it here: 2019 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid | Toyota.com
We looked at RAV-4s, but it didn't feel right -- kind of like a new suit that doesn't hang right or something. Way too big-feeling, especially after driving my Gen2 for 14 years. I miss it already. I'm liking the Forester (even though it feels way too big, too), but already missing the Prius's mileage. Boy, talk about thread creep .
