Trading in a 2018 for a 2020

A few thoughts on having traded in my 2018 Plus for a new 2020 LE (different name, same trim).

Financials

First of, if you can get a state tax credit you may actually come out of this with a plus. The math for me was

27000 negotiated dealer price
-3000 current Toyota rebate
-20500 trade in value
= 3500
+ 200 sales tax
+600 fees
= 4300.

That's what I paid. Once you add in the federal tax rebate of 4500 and the MA state incentive of 1500, it's a profit of 1700. I only had 2000 miles on the old car, though, so the situation will obviously change with different trade in values.

The positive changes

For me, what drove my decision (apart from the free money) was the 5th seat. With that I think I'll be happy with the car for many years to come.

Other changes:

White interior elements replaced with black (which I already had replaced as a customization on my 2018)
Seat heater buttons moved from the obscure to the accessible.
Space in front of the cup holders now has a nicely perforated bottom so that things don't slide around.
Larger sun visors.

The plus/minus

The infotainment unit is now an Entune 3 system with Apple car play. While that's great progress from Toyota, it's of no use to me, as I use Android. The saleperson was predicting that Android Auto could be retrofitted for a fee given that Toyota started to roll it out in some models like the Rav4 and the recent history of Toyota retrofits of CarPlay into select models. But there is no guarantee that's ging to happen and I'm not yet sure I want to pay the 200$.

The menu navigation at the side of the display was converted into physical buttons. My 2018 had the Toyota navigation. I found that rather painful for searching and entering destinations, and thus never used it for navigation, but it was still nice to have it always available on the display to orient myself quickly on the map when my phone navigation was not on.

On the 2020 the internal navigation was removed from the lowest trim. Instead there is an app called Scout GPS, which seems to be at least as bad for searching and navigation as the Toyota internal system but with the added pain of being complicated to set up and always requiring an app on your phone to run.

Toyota safety connect seems to be new. Its's free for the first 3 years and registration got pushed onto me by the sales person. Maybe Toyota gets percentages from some optional offers that accompany it such as the Verizon car wifi plan. Safety connect itself could be useful. It's supposed to be able to track your car when it's stolen, but I'd love to know how difficult that could be disabled by a professional thief. It also gives you a button at the top near the cabin lights to connect to a Toyota dispatcher for emergency services or roadside assistance and will call automatically in case of crashes.

There is a Toyota App which connects to it. There is a single useful thing on it, it shows your tire pressure for each tire. Nothing else, no location, charge status, etc.

The negative

On my 2018 I had a flexible cloth trunk cover that pulled up when opening the hatch. While it looked a little flimsy it was actually very convenient as it was flexible enough to stay on top of a large load in the trunk:

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTnEDt44mOHLlKHJK8BF7_9jKg47h_VfZfObvwWoK0gFFbnRvvT&s

In my 2020 I have a hard cover that gets arrested horizontally and does not lift with the trunk. While it looks more solid, there is so little space between the cover and the raised floor that I find it entirely unpractical. Good enough for hiding a laptop bag I suppose.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQYfedO_faAAXqnMz5DBWMIJJGJv1HQ3m3eVFD9aKnmA66gpJHN5g&s

I was looking on the web how to buy the cloth cover but wasn't able to find it anywhere. If anyone knows where to get it, please let me know.

 

I bought the car in 1/2019 from leftover dealer inventory, so same mpy here. Combining ride sharing & rental should indeed come out cheaper for us, several of my friends do it that way, but now I'm the cool guy who can offer rides in his Ferrari, so screw the economics

Wow, that's a difference. What speaks for the trade-in in Massachusetts is that you only have to pay sales tax on the value difference.

 

I got burnt with a rental in San Francisco once where someone took interest in my ragged looking backpack in the trunk and smashed the window. Since then I'm paranoid and try not to leave anything in plain sight in the car. Just checked my hatch and the 4 hooks, where the cover's strips would be attached to, are gone. What a shame, will check out the throw strategy.

 

They discontinued the rebate for PHEVs in 2019 but now reintroduced it in 2020:

MOR-EV eligibility requirements effective January 1, 2020:

• Only purchases and leases made on or after January 1, 2020 are eligible.
• Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) with a sales price under $50,000 are eligible for a $2,500 rebate.
• Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) with a sales price under $50,000 and an all-electric range of 25+ miles are eligible for a $1,500 rebate.
• Zero-emission Motorcycles (ZEMs) will no longer be eligible.

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MOR-EV | MOR-EV is a statewide program that issues up to $1,500 in rebates for plug-in electric vehicle buyers

The car list on their website hasn't been updated yet but based on their stated requirements the Prius Prime should be eligible.

Sounds like the vehicle excise tax in Massachusetts which is 2.5% of value yearly. They define value as 90% of MSRP in the model year, 60% in the next, 40% in year 3, and so on.