Hi. we are considering selling our 2008 Prius to our daughter but we are worried about the battery giving out. The car has no issues right now. The battery charges full green. Any opinions?
As we often say on here these are great cars that are very reliable and fun to maintain if you or a friend like to work on cars... Everything your need to know to fix a Prius yourself is on this website. But if you're dependent on dealership or a mechanic who has a big shop and has to charge high hourly rates you can get priced out of your car real quick. I live in Washington too! I'm in the Olympia area and you can get a lot more years out of battery packs if they've been well maintained and periodically reconditioned (every 18 months max). This only costs $150 - $300 and I do this kind of work as a hobby so my prices don't carry the overhead of a whole auto shop. And a new battery pack good for ten years or longer start at $1600 with $100 for install. Brand new is a good option if you want a pack that will last longer than the car and you plan to upgrade to a Gen3 Prius, which uses the same pack. Get in touch if you live near by / have questions: 360-789-7843.
we sold our '08 to our daughter in 2012. when she hit 130k in 2018, we encouraged her to trade in on a suburu
As long as its going green should be fine. Get a obd2 Bluetooth scanner and download the Dr. Prius app and can run battery tests and monitor the battery. The packs are lasting about 10-12 years. My 07 with 260k on the clock is still fine but I suspect it was changed around 8-10 years ago Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
It all depends on how much your trying to sell it to her for. We purchased our 2008 with 240k miles and original batt for $3500. After about a year we got the first battery issue light. I expected this a some point so I called my local toyota dealer and they sold me one for $1800. They let me drink the new one home swap it out and return the old one without charging me for the core. Its a great car they run forever and will allow you to drive the car for a while even after the batt light has let you know its about time to swap. That sounds like a horrible idea haha. While a brand new subaru maybe be reliable for a while they have boxer motors and maintenance is costly. the cylinder heads are not on top but facing sideways making even sparkplug changed difficult. and are prone to headgasket leaks which require the engine to be removed to be done. I have 250k miles on muy prius, you dont see alot of subarus with that mileage having little to no work done.
she won't likely have it long enough to see trouble. fingers crossed, traveling back and forth from ny to ma, i prefer to see her in a low mile awd car. if she were just tootin around town, i would have said keep the prius
