Annual cost of maintenance?

the thing is, your car has seen the cheapest part of it's life. now you're heading toward fluid changes, spark plugs, potential oil burning, and services beyond the maintenance manual like water pumps, throttle body, pcv, intake manifold, on and on. going to be hard to average, one year at a time.

 

And the biggest variable is probably how much you do yourself and how much to pay someone to have your fun for you. I think shop labor will roughly double the cost.

 

that would be a lot. how many miles/years do you hope to keep it?

 

For a biz, the standard mileage deduction is the way to go. You don't need to keep track of the expenses of the car things like fuel/maintenance/etc.

 

I always took standard deduction tax-wise. 2500 miles a month.

Every two months Tire rotation for $15

Every four months add oil and filter change another $56

Every 12 months Air filter and ATF WS change for $265 total

I have been good on tires, every 4 years? for $400

$15 * 6 = $90
$56 * 3 = $168
$265 * 1 = $265
$400 / 4 = $100

so about $625 a year for 30,000 miles?

 

You could lower your cost further than this too by not diogn a ATF WS change every year. Every 30k seems frequent to me, ESP if your paying Toyota to do it. I'd say that could be every other year and you'd still be more than good. I understand its relativity cheap mainteance and insurance in the long run but keep in mind this is a fluid that Toyota says is good for the life of the car, doing it at all is going to be a plus. Take Toyotas claim about the fluid as you will, lol

 

Good call, I actually do my transaxle service at 30,000 miles, 90,000 miles and then every 90,000 miles so I picked the expensive period for me. If I was still doing 30,000 a year (I retired) I would be doing that $110 every 3 years

 

2500 miles x 12 months = 30,000 miles
30,000 miles x .54 deduction per mile = $16,200 per year tax writeoff

Nothing else you can tax deduct but you can keep log for personal reasons. That many miles you might have to replace a cracked windshield, bent rims and other things hard to account for. I would guess $1000-$2000 per year your true cost.

 

Battery(s) replacement?

 

Average is every three years for coolant (both systems), brake fluid, and HSD fluid (WS transmission fluid). Each is approx. $250 at the dealer, so add $250 each year to cover all three.
But the "standard deduction" would be fine. Prius is much less expensive to operate than other vehicles so you would be coming out ahead, with no argument from the tax man.

 

I used TripLog TRIPLOG - Best Automatic Car Mileage Log Tracker & Fleet Management Reimbursement App for both time tracking and IRS reporting of my business mileage, very nice. I only had one vehicle, but it scales to a fleet. (it was also used for charitible driving, as I take ladies to their Dr appointments 2 hours away)

Most of my license plate fee is deductable.

 

^ I appreciate all of those are rough numbers for tax purposes, but they all seem very high, even for pricey full-service dealership. I've done everything but the coolant changes, the supply costs are under $50 for each, and an hours labour.

 

It's what it cost for Pearl at the best dealer for service in Edmonton (not just my opinion, but published fact). Rough numbers of course. I'll be getting Pearl S done this summer. I still do oil changes but afterwards I keep wondering why. I'm getting too old to crawl under cars!

 

Unless you live in sandstorms, it would be a waste to change your air filter every 10k miles. And actually air filters filter better with age. Try 30-60k.

I'd get a filter minder.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Engine, cabin? I agree, either way.

 

When I bought my car with 105,000 miles on it, a total of just over $1800 had been spent on maintenance & repairs in its 7 years or so of existence. That works out to roughly $260 a year. Figure you'll be driving double the miles per year and that turns into $520 a year. Even after adding in extra costs for additional high mileage maintenance and repairs, my guess is you'll be easily under $1000/year on average for the next 3-4 years.

 

This is also good advice. I checked mine every 10k and it was good. Only until about 50k did I notice that it was getting somewhat nasty. For sake of an easy mileage to remember to change it at, I decided on 50k. *90% of my driving is highway*

 

Which filter are we talking about, lol: cabin or engine?