Best gen Prius to drive to 500,000 miles ?

I agree with your list. The gen 2 is a great 500,000 mile cars. More robust! Love the gen 3 though! The gen 2s little engine can sound a little unrefined

 

Planning for half a million miles is difficult. Even though the Prius is a reliable car, Toyota's engineers didn't design it to last that long. Some have gone that distance, but it's probably an extremely small percent of the whole. If you look at the attached chart from Dashboard Light, you can see that the midpoint at which Prii are traded in is around 125,000 miles. Several go past 200,000 miles, and some hit 300,000. But the ones that can get to 500,000 miles or more without serious repairs are few and far between. So whichever generation you choose, you will almost invariably need to set aside a few thousand dollars for big repairs unless you're extraordinarily lucky.

 

Consider ....spare engine and power train for spare parts.....hybrid battery is consumable part of this engineering....
Going with oil samples and preventive maintenance....ether of two will see this type of miles.......
You will need to go to different weight of oil depending on weather.....
I have seen and worked on prius over 500 k miles......
Expecting this type of life is just not how this cars are designed
Example
Heavy class 5-7 are made up to 500k miles .....will go up to 800k with loss in comparison and oil burning
Class 8 are rated to 1-1.3 million miles and will see easy 1.7 million miles with good maintenance...
If you have reliable shop and watch for online auctions to buy salvaged car for parts you will definitely benefit with this versus gas power
We all know that this car do give you best MPG in stop and go traffic

 

will you be diy'ing, or paying someone to do repairs?

 

Don't buy a Prius based on if you think you'll make it to 500,000 miles. Many electrical things will go wrong

 

My 2009 just hit 245K miles. I figured I was about half way through it's life but am I being too optimistic with statements that a few make it over 200K miles? I've had zero repairs except for the enhanced warranty on the combo meter.

 

An article said only .5% of all private vehicles make it to 250,000 miles.

You are ambitious.

 

My 1982 diesel suburban made it to 438000 miles and still ran but was rusted out everywhere

 

In addition to the regular maintenance you do on your car, driving conditions, environment, and random luck regarding the quality of each individual part of the car all have an effect on how many miles your car goes before it's done. The overall numbers as referenced above say you're in rare company for having made it this far. But no one can say what will happen with your particular Prius. It's fine to be optimistic and hope for 500,000 miles on your Prius. It very well could get there. And it could also have a bunch of things start to go wrong or need repairs due to wear and tear. Since your goal is to hit 500,000 miles, I'd say hope for the best and plan for the worst. That means start saving up money for car repairs just in case, so you'll be prepared if you need to fix something. And in the meantime, enjoy your incredibly reliable car and good luck on the road to half a million miles!

 

I should probably disclose that my cat is bad. I did the acid bath (oxalic acid and citric acid) and it worked for about 4K miles which was more than enough to get it smogged but I didn't use a pump to flow the solution through the honey comb which supposedly is required rather than just have it sit there. In 1.5 years when it's up for smog again, I'll give it another shot the right way. Disclosing that because I said zero repairs which doesn't mean nothing wrong with it

I guess I've been influenced by the 299,999 thread and the multi hundred K odometer readings on craigs list. I'm looking for a Prius for both my mom and my sister and frequently see 250K+ examples. Still, that doesn't tell us what the percentage above 200K is.

Still the 0.5% is the number of total of all makes and models that make it above 200K. I suspect it's much much higher for certain models like the the Prius. We sold our 95 Lexus SC400 3 years ago with 334K miles on it. It too had never had a repair *AND* had never had anything go wrong with it up to that point.

On the Prius, I changed out the transaxle fluid 3 times so far. First at 60K. It was black. Second time at 90K where it looked new and again at 150K where it still looked new. What this told me is that the initial change is the most important to remove break in material.

 

According to the long-term quality index, Toyotas tend to have approximately twice as high a percentage of vehicles over 180,000 miles as the average (22% vs. average of 11%), and the Prius is one of the most reliable Toyotas, so it can be extrapolated there are more like 1-2% of Prii with your mileage or higher, instead of the average of 0.5%. And obviously, your car is doing well. But that's still not a very big percentage, so I'd save for some repairs in your future, just to be safe. The catalytic converter is going to be expensive when you get it fixed "right" for emissions, and brakes are expected expenses as your car ages and the miles add up.

 

$2000 in california. A fraction of that if I drive to another state and have it replaced with an aftermarket that performs just as well OR replace it with a used factory cat. The former not technically legal but it will pass. The latter also not technically legal but it is less morally ambiguous.

But in my case, by the time I need to smog it again, I'll have 320 to 330K miles on it. If it lasts that long, the car will have paid back the entire purchase price in fuel savings plus some. At that point I'd just sell it as is for parts or part it out and sell the remaining as scrap.

 

That's pretty impressive! For my miles traveled and current gasoline prices, I'd have to keep my Prius for 20 years to make up the purchase price in fuel efficiency over my last vehicle. But on the upside, if I make it that far with my Prius, it will have close to 400,000 miles on it!

 

On Car Complaints, it looks like oil burning stops being a problem in the 2012 gen 3 refresh. Overall reliability is a bit better in the Gen 3 according to the current True Delta numbers. So I'd probably suggest a 2012 or later model based on your priorities.

 

Looking at this from a different perspective, Gen II has more repair parts in the junkyard and likely at a cheaper price point.

2009 Gen II likely has the least calendar aging and repaired/aftermarket packs are more available.

So if you plan to fix the car anyway a later Gen II is probably cheaper from a numeric point of view, if you want it to last longer off the bat a 2012+ Gen III is the better deal .

At this point the failure rates are ambiguous comparing the different gen cars.

I guess you won't know until you've driven your selection long enough to break.

 

Our 2007 Prius hit 444,444 miles yesterday. I have changed the brakes once, did the shocks twice, and the catalytic converter twice. The catalytic converter was 1k plus at Toyota. We had an independent muffler shop do it for $200 each time. The car burns a quart of oil every 800-1000 miles. We replaced the headlights twice. That was expensive.

Good luck!

(My 70k XJ8 Jaguar exploded at 60k miles. It was more to fix it than it was worth, how's that for a comparison?!?)

 

The Gen 3s typically were known for burning oil. I had a Gen 2 that burned synthetic oil, but didn't burn as much with conventional oil. Some people run conventional 5w-30 oil in the Gen 3s if they start burning oil since it's thicker.