Confusion at its finest

Looks to me like something might have scraped that.

I would replace it. It is a layered hose, with a metallic reinforcing layer, but that's rusting now.

So the part is a shade under $80 list price, not super-cheap but also not a huge deal for what might be the only time in your life you ever have to replace one. The labor isn't very difficult to change it.

Some dealers might be listing it around $60.

The link I gave above is for the one on the right. After a lot of squinting at your photo I kind of convinced myself that's the right side, no? The one for the left is the same list price, but different part number.

 

I’d trust the Toyota folks. And I’d have them replace it as there are special brake bleeding procedures the Firestone grease monkeys have no clue on. I’d say you have some time to wait to replace. The inner armored part is the muscle of the hose and is safe. Trust the Toyota mechanics who aren’t scaring you into immediately replacing it. Run from Firestone unless it’s only for tires.

 

i would trust the dealer over fire hose. still, if you could find someone to replace it for a few hundred bucks, it might be worth it. just make sure they have prius brake knowledge.

 

FWIW......You need to figure/out what caused this.......(certainly looks like "Something" is chafing on the hose)......before you have it replaced

 

I suspect it isn't desperately urgent. I've seen ancient brake hoses working fine - they look perished on the outside, but that's really just a covering. But - as mentioned by another post, it's worth checking out the "WHY".

It also depends on how long you intend to retain the car.

 

As to why that happened: have you ever had the brakes serviced? Notice the longitudinal grooves on the hose? One reason for them, maybe the main reason: when the caliper's off the rotor, it is possible to inadvertently rotate it before reinstalling, introduce a twist in the hose. And then the hose maybe be heading off in an unorthodox direction, rubbing on something.

The grooves in the pic may have a twist, not sure. Or, they could have had a twist for sometime, and then at a second lift-off of the caliper the twist was noticed and remedied, but by then the hose had abraded?

 

Or something got kicked up off the road one time and took a slice out of it. It might be hard to reconstruct just what happened after the fact. But anyway, the hose is damaged now.

If it were me I would just stop at the dealer and buy the right front hose for $60ish and a bottle of brake fluid and go home and change it myself. But then I have the stuff to go through the bleed procedure easily afterward.