Want to be a Prius Owner.. Please advice

For the most part, Toyota's been pretty good about taking care of "major" issues with recalls. That being said, i have and 06, so i don't know much about the 02's.

For maintainence, i'm pretty sure it's actually a little less. Typically the stock tires suck, but those should already have been replaced, so you shouldn't have to worry about that. The brakes tend to last a bit longer than normal cars (due mostly to the regenerative frictionless braking), and i haven't heard anyone complain about excessive maintainence on the 02's.

There are several factors that effect mileage. distance per trip, temperature, speed, inclination, and the habits of the driver. Given the long trip length and the higher temperatures, you wouldn't have to worry about the engine warm up wasting any gas. There are some really good articles on here about how to improve your mileage (in terms of optimal speeds and different techniques like pulse and glide).

So in short, browse around the site and i'm sure you'll get a feel for the car and how much everyone loves it!

*EDIT*
here's a link to get you started: http://priuschat.com/New-owner-Want-MPG-he...rst-t15311.html

 

my guess would be '04. everything before (in the US) was a first generation, then the '40-'06 is the second generation, most likely to be replaced in the '08-'09 time frame with the third generation.

of course, there was even a generation before that (Zero, Null?) in Japan that never made it to the US.

 

Toyota began building and delivering the 2004 model in 2003 so you may find one (like I did) which reduced my buy-in by around 4-6K. If you can stretch to it, definitely get the current shape car. The Prius I seems to be a bit of an orphan as far as mods and knowledge base goes.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jcas @ Jul 25 2006, 11:00 AM) [snapback]292058[/snapback]</div>

I don't know if a member named tochatihu will see this thread, but he is a Classic owner who is always very helpful and willing to share information about the car. You could try sending him a PM and I'm sure he'd respond to your questions.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Tideland Prius @ Jul 25 2006, 11:50 PM) [snapback]292420[/snapback]</div>

Errors in documents live on for years. Corrections & Retractions rarely get noticed. So inaccurate sources still get quoted. Problems like that plague the scientific community. So be thankful don't have to deal with it more often. Unfortunately, we do still have some antagonists that intentionally exploit this situation.

Prius was SULEV.

That fact absolutely infuriated certain Honda hybrid owners, since they only had ULEV originally. There is a wealth of supporting evidence available in old forum posts from the "classic" era. The history is pretty interesting.

Without low-sulfur gas, maintaining SULEV for the entire required 120,000 duration is somewhat of a challenge. Levels of sulfur varied too much throughout the country for any guarantee to be made. So when Honda finally started to build a SULEV version, they abruptly decided against making it available anywhere except the 5 CARB states. Toyota didn't care. ULEV was so much dirtier and only had a rating duration of 100,000 miles. So the special cleansing equipment and system operation was available to everyone nationwide from day one for Prius. I was delighted, since the gas I use had been low-sulfur (despite not living in a CARB state) since way back in 1999.

I wonder what other hybrid history will be obscured & distorted as time proceeds.