Why so few shop recommendations?

Keyword:
"decent."

Advice:
Don't limit yourself to Prius Mechanics for HVAC work, and look for indy shops with loooooong waiting periods and good reviews....if you "want the best."

Top 10 Best Auto Air Conditioning Repair in Washington, DC - Last Updated August 2019 - Yelp

 

Or be able to pay the price that Toyota asks for their service shop.

I don't think you should find the situation either surprising OR disappointing.
The Prius is somewhat unique in a lot of respects and most independent shops just can't afford the training to "do it right" so they just don't do it at all. Most "american car" garages won't work on exotic foreign car brands either. Similar situation.

I recently got a CanAm Spyder (3 wheeled motorcycle) and NOBODY will touch it except the CanAm dealers.

 

i would say most prius owners fall into three camps:

dealer service, regular private mechanic or diy. prius are so reliable, it generally isn't necessary to find a specialty shop until they are too old to be worth fixing

if you're in cali, there are a handful of recognized alternatives because there are so many prius.

i still cannot find one in the boston area after 20 years

 

Trusting a car forum to recommend a mechanic in your area is no different than looking at a Yelp review. This forum is used by people all over the world, surely to find one in your neck of the woods would be quite a challenge......unless you live in a big Prius city like Los Angeles and San Francisco

 

If you can DIY a motorcycle repair, you can DIY most Prius repairs. All you need is techstream (a computer program) that helps you with the diagnostics and reading of various ECU's on the Prius.

Regarding your statement of various clearly knowledgeable people taking part, those are usually not the mechanics you'll be going to, they are the enthusiasts that work on their own cars. The mechanics will be the same as the yelp reviews you read about in your own general area.

AC is also not very different in a Prius, only the oil used is a different non conductive ND-11 oil. So if you go to a "hybrid" aware specialist for AC repair, they can handle a Prius without any issues. This car has been around since 1999, surely after this many years, you'll find quite capable mechanics that can repair this car. Main thing people say about going to a Prius expert is because you don't want the wrong oil mixed or put into your car, that'll screw up the entire system.

 

@wjtracy is in Your area and may have a recommendation .

Good luck and keep us posted .

 

If you go back to the earliest days of Prius pre-2008 or so, there was a list of approved hybrid mechanics in the USA. That list included MAC in Ashland, Virginia way down towards Richmond and I think it was Hillmuth in Maryland.

Since then it has been pot luck. I use my regular shop West Springfield Auto because they have a guy formerly with Toyota. I am not sure he is still working there, but he did my inverter pump last year. One option in DC area we have PriusHybridRepiar.com and they travel to the site. I saw their advertizement-rich custom painted Prius on I-270 is how I saw them. Various places but we have very little consumer input here.

It's a little bit like the Maytag repair man with Prius being so darn reliable.

 

I have never had repairs that were not road damage. I only really do routine maintenance, and the Dealer is fine and competitive. (Kirk Toyota, Grenada MS)

So it is hard to say much about other mechanics near me. And everything else is rumor.

 

All the way down in San Francisco there’s Luscious Garage. And all the garages I’ve worked in the past 30+ years they are definitely ahead of the pack. And when it comes to hybrids service for your Prius there at the head of the game. There is those who lead there’s those who follow then there’s those who just need to get out of the way. Luscious Garage is definitely a leader.
But I will tell you lack of Training and not just learn by mistake Training like most shops do when they bring in a new technician who knows nothing a lot of expensive mistakes to both the shop and the owner of the car happens but never gets talked about. Most shops have those large automatic recovery recycle and re-charge machines usually several years old or older and they’re charging accuracy is not that good plus or -2 or 3 ounces which is a lot to the small charge quantity of a Prius. Most shops do not own a refrigerant identifier so every time a car comes in with Unknown contaminated gas they just suck it into their machine and mix it with all the gas that gets spread like a virus (STD) and pumped into all the cars that they work on after that . I’m top of that they have a Lotta overhead and it’s all about time and money high production and very very rarely if ever do they leave the vacuum pump on long enough to actually clean out your system thoroughly. When it comes to being cheap or lack of knowledge they do not even own the equipment let alone even know that it exists to literally measure the moisture content in your air-conditioning system after they finished performing a vacuum. They don’t care because it takes extra time and it’s not profitable. Then you have to include the shops that dangle the golden carrot in front of their technicians to make a bonus by moving fast and selling parts you could just let your imagination fly and guess what happens in that scenario.

 

Lots of good info. there.

But could you PLEASE put some white space between lines occasionally.
I find it almost impossible to read the way it is.

Thank you.

 

General observation: Washington D.C. appears to be the third biggest metro hotspot for Prius ownership after LA and SF.

#2: Hybrids are what, 2-3% of the automotive market.

Given these two? I'm not surprised that there are few recommendations overall, though if I really wanted to know where to go, I'd find a way to ask a taxi driver where they get theirs fixed.

 

DC is the only "state" with hybrid incentive (sales tax free over 40 EPA City).
VA and MD are pretty big Prii states, VA in part due to older HoV benefits which are phasing out.

 

With the exception of a few shops where the owner is a Prius expert it’s a pretty dicey proposition to recommend a garage. The Prius expert may have left for another job, is on vacation, retired. Then you get someone else and come back here and say Skibob tricked or cheated me. Why bother with the hassle.

 

One good reason for recommending not just the shop but also the mechanic's NAME.