This metal thing broke off while I was driving

That is the pulley for the gasoline engine water pump. Your gasoline engine will not have cooling until the pulley, pump, and belt are replaced. Do not drive it anywhere or even run the engine. Either repair these things yourself, have a friend do it where the car is right now, or have your car towed on a flat bed to your mechanic's shop. You are very lucky that this didn't happen in the middle of nowhere aka BFE.

 

Never heard of this happening to a Gen 2 Prius before. It seems that the water pump seized somehow and the bolts holding the pulley to the pump sheared off. Very unusual. No recall for the water pump that I'm aware of.

 

Now you know you can trust your mechanic. When he says it is broke, it is.

Next time he says your ____ needs repair, get it repaired.

And yes, trying to drive the car will cost you a new engine.

 

I think they define 'no problem' differently than you.

I bet when their mechanic reports they have a problem, they do not wait until it jumps out of their car and onto the ground before they fix it.

Right now you have wasted $500 extra dollars of your money by not fixing it until it parts fell off, trying to use the car before towing it will cost you another $2000. Enough poor decisions in a row and it will be cheaper to buy a new car.

 

7 years old is not new.

Any part of a car can fail at any time.

You also hear of problems with Prius' well under 100K miles.

The Prius is a very reliable car... on average. There are the extremes at both ends. Somebody recently had a whole engine fail followed shortly by the transaxle.

Again, any part of a car can fail at any time. Abnormal noises or dash indications are the car screaming at you to fix something. Listen next time.

+1 to the towing suggestion.

 

When you hear of taxis or other fleet vehicles going the distance, they're well maintained by a fleet mechanic and generally driven by professional drivers.

 

At least, you immediately stopped the car to pick up the belt and the engine coolant pump pulley. I assume this means you did not try to drive the car beyond that point. If you did drive the car for any further distance, you probably destroyed the gasoline engine. If that was the case, you are now looking at a minimum repair cost of $2K to have a used engine installed - if you can find an independent mechanic to do that work for you.

The car is seven years old, that is not fairly new. "No problems" does not mean that the taxi did not receive any maintenance or simple repairs over the 200K+ mile service life.

Further, not all Prius will have the same outcome as a high mileage taxi. I am sure you have heard of a "bell curve", where various outcomes will occur to a sample population.

You do not expect every human being to enjoy exactly the same lifetime, for example. Your ultimate lifespan depends upon your genetic makeup, the circumstances in which you are living, available medical care, the amount of physical dangers in your environment etc.

My 2004 has almost 220K miles on the odometer now. I guarantee you the car would not have been able to reach that reading if I was oblivious to the need for simple repairs such as the engine coolant pump, inverter coolant pump, etc.

 

wow, i don't think i've ever heard of that happening before. 77k? can't blame you for thinking it was a scam.
have you owned it since new? seems to me something fishy is going on.

 

I wouldn't expect something fishy - sounds like the vehicle had an impending failure (water pump bearing wear), the mechanic found the cause of the failure, the OP declined the repair, then the bearing seized.

 

perhaps someone overtightened the belt.

 

I've been there!