Hi all, I’ve been learning a lot from lurking these forums and had a question I wanted to get everyone’s thoughts on. I found a 2016 Prius v with the ATP. It’s been driven in the PNW area as a fleet car, hence how it has like 40k mi/yr on it. It seems pretty significantly cheaper than other v’s of this year and with this technology package (it’s about $16k) My question is, is a newer year worth it or would I be better off with a lower mile Prius v that’s from 2012-2014? I hear that the electric battery depends more on age than on miles driven, but I don’t know if that’s true. I’ve also heard the 15/16 years fixed the oil burning issue? Is that true? Is the 2016 with ATP significantly safer? It has pretty extensive service records and it did get serviced at a dealer every 5k miles, and I’d be driving it for a long time.
I think the price is way too high. In my area its a $12k car with a trade-in value around $10k. As far as driving it a long time, be ready for a battery in 50k miles. I believe battery life is miles tempered by the average temperature. Oregon may give you more miles. There are other expensive parts as well, eg the tech package, the abs system, the egr system or the inverter. If you could swing it, I would buy a new 2020 hybrid, maybe the Rav4 which has the same mpg as a v, a ten year 150,000 battery warranty and a second generation active safety system. Toyota is starting to get 2020 inventory on the ground, you get a 2.5L system and electric awd.
a newer car is worth it, but not with higher mileage. sounds like you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. maybe rethink the whole hybrid thing
Price is too high. I just offloaded mine (traded it for a Sienna due to us having outgrown it as a family), it was worth $4K in trade and probably not a lot more than that on the market. It had 229K miles and I had to get the head gasket done at 216K. Apparently that's a thing with these. It cost ~$3,000 so be prepared. Knowing what I know now, were I to buy another v with 150K miles, if they couldn't prove that the head gasket had been done, I would knock a bit off the price for the risk of having to do it relatively soon (you never know how the previous owner treated it). But I don't know why people knock the hybrid batteries. I used the heck out of mine, running it on battery power whenever I possibly could, and at 229K miles it was still performing within a few percent of how it performed brand new. I live in Ohio where the temperatures aren't exactly "stable" year-round. You're probably better off getting an older one, whether you want to get one with high miles or not. For $16K, I'd buy an older one with low miles.
