Considering a Prius Plugin

these batteries are amazingly robust. a good test drive wood include a full charge and see if you can make around 10 miles before the engine comes on. make sure all hvac is off.

we have seen very few failures, and i don't recall any out of warranty.
someone recently posted that they retired their pip at 425,000 miles because of everything but the battery.
lots are at several hundred thousand miles.
of course, you still have to deal with the gen 3 egr/head gasket problem, and the brake actuator.

but i must ask, why buy a pip if you're not plugging in? you lose the spare tyre and storage space under the hatch floor.

 

I own a 2012 plug-in Prius and I bought it brand new. I have had No issues with this car and I’ve taken it to the dealer for every maintenance. When I first got it after plugging in the EV charge would be around 11 miles now it’s around 10. They told me that the battery was guaranteed up to 10 years or 100,000 miles. I have 180,000 miles and still going with no issues. It’s been a really great car.

 

I don’t think you’ll go wrong with Tampa hybrids

 

suggest having your son take a look at plugshare.com search Dartmouth College.
It's a bit more complicated now with all the different charger company networks, but once your son find a few chargers near to where he spends many hours in his day, Plugging in isn't all that difficult. Some chargers are still free to use, even at this late a date.
The initial steps of getting a free network access card are typically the biggest hurtle for most people.
It's nice to have two network cards from the companies that have the most EV charges in the areas an owner frequents often but one chargepoint access card has served me well since my PiP in 2014. Although the city has recently installed another networks chargers and if I couldn't charge at home I sure would have gotten one of those network cards too.
The PiP takes two hours to charge from empty on these level 2 chargers linked below and uses around 3 kWh from the charger, if I remember right.
chargepoint network charger on campus with charger fees listed

Dana parking
PlugShare - Find Electric Vehicle Charging Locations Near You

ESCS parking
PlugShare - Find Electric Vehicle Charging Locations Near You

Hanover parking
PlugShare - Find Electric Vehicle Charging Locations Near You

Thompson parking
PlugShare - Find Electric Vehicle Charging Locations Near You

your son might get hooked on driving electric only like many of us still posting here have.

ps: zoomed out on the map and see a cluster of 5 more locations at the medical center on campus.
here's one of them
Hitchcock med
PlugShare - Find Electric Vehicle Charging Locations Near You

I hope these links work for you

 

Got '15 PiP in May (65k) and have driven 2,300 miles. 50-52 mpg in Hybrid mode. Charged 3 times a week, it gets ~62 mpg. Toyota updated the pistons & rings to solve the oil-burning issue mid-year 2014. Search for VIN when this happened. PiP has the same issues as regular Prius... clogged EGR circuit, oil burning after 100k, head gasket, brake actuator. Change oil every 5-6k instead of 10k. Check coolant and oil levels regularly.

I'm kinda lazy about plugging it in regularly, so my concern is how will this affect the longevity of the main battery? In hybrid mode, the battery operates at 17-24% of full capacity.

 

it's better for it. li-on likes low state of charge.
plenty of people bought them for cali hov sticker, never had an issue.

 

either do more coolant changes, or test ph for acidity.

 

the only way would be to retain trip a and b, which is unlikely. i did it for around 50-60,000 miles or so.
there is a screen for each which shows ev/hv percent when toggling the display arrows on the right side of the steering wheel.

 

These numbers are accurate if they've never been reset since new. If the 12v battery is disconnected, all trip'dometers go to 0. When I got mine, it had only 86xx miles because the owner replaced the 12v battery a few months back. The EV-only portion was 24%. A test drive with a fully-charged main battery gave 10 miles.

 

if the numbers add up to the total mileage, you're golden. even if they make up a significant amount of miles, that tells you quite a bit.

 

Here's how a few of us used to play with the cons screens that might give you a few ideas, mostly how misleading they can be unless you know how they've been used. The Prime has a similar, but different set that shows both trips as well as the ODO ratio. But all can be reset at any time. And it's easy to reset them by mistake, before leaning the painful lesson.

Top 20 MPGe | PriusChat

 

I can attest to that!

But other than a reset, those numbers are lifetime, or, iirc, whichever trip meter/odometer is selected. It's been a while since I had my PiP.

 

I also have a hard time remembering all the new stuff I had to learn about the PiP gauges worked.

The Primes EV ration screens are all lifetime unless reset. I finally was able to observe finally this year that the EV ratio gauges don't reset at the normal trip guage 10k mile reset. Luckily for me as I'm pretty sure my trip B is still showing lifetime while both my ODO and trip A gauges have had their mpg stats reset.
The only way I can be kinda sure is that Trip B from day 1 was showing a couple 1/10th of a mile short of the ODO mile flip and still does.

 

the buttons on the steering wheel change the screen options, and if you hold them down, whatever screen is up will be reset to default.
i think they do get reset when the 12v is disconnected. some people put 12 volts to the jump point if replacing the battery.

 

I think @bisco's comments are right although I don't remember for sure about the 12V disconnect causing a reset. Different cars lose different stuff when you do that and I can't recall which is which.