Resting my elbow on the door armrest of my 2007 Prius I felt a crack. The plastic underneath the cloth had cracked, I know they tried to make the Prius as light as possible but this is obviously a design fault. I am worried that the fabric will tear will further use. I read the post about about taking the door panel off and that is probably what I will try to do and then reinforce the area that cracked. I now have 74000 miles on the car, I imagine that this problem must be happening with a lot of the genII Prius.
I've heard of one other case. You can just get a salvaged part. Steve at Plug In Hybrid Electric Vehicle PHEV can probably send one at a reasonable price. JeffD
I'm approaching 90,000 miles. The door arm rest on mine cracked in the same way a while back. I don't remember when, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was somewhere around 70,000 miles. So far it hasn't torn through the fabric, if it does I'll look into replacing it.
due to dirt and grime I tried to replace mine, toyota makes some great cars but they tend to not make avail parts that you need replacing w/o replacing a whole bunch of good parts, that door panels is around $680 + tax, its been so long since I priced one out I can't remember for certain, you can't buy just the armrest which is what we'd all like to replace just the drivers one for around $20. Its the same with the door actuators, you can't replace the $9 parts, you have to buy a whole new locking mechanism, $380 + 45 minutes of labor.
During my driver side mirror replacement yesterday I fixed the crack on my door armrest. With the door panel off I took about 6 inches of Gorilla Tape and placed it over the crack. It actually feels better than new now! No longer do I feel a hard elbow rest or a cracked elbow rest on the door armrest. Now it feels rather good with some cushion to it.
