Hi everyone, does anyone have experience with owning a Prius for a long time but driving it under 10k miles per year? Does the battery still just last 8-10 years or does it last longer because it wasn’t driven much?
the consensus is that time is harder on the battery than miles. this is due to the fact that many taxi's go hundreds of thousands of miles on the original battery, while average miles per year doesn't seem to last any longer. that being said, toyota designs the battery to last at least 10 years and 150,000 miles under all conditions, and most do better than that. you can expect good longevity in most cases
The midsize town my wife and I live in has quite a few Priuses ranging from Gen 2’s to even a Gen 5, and the vast majority of them are owned by folks our age (retired), driving them less than 5,000 a year. Nearly all are owned by the original owners. I have yet to find an owner with ANY significant problems with any part of the car. Another Prius group based in Europe that I am part of has similar reports. Based on these real world results I would not be concerned in any way with low annual mileage (assuming proper preventive maintenance).
Which battery are you talking about? FWIW, our ‘10, purchased “new” in November of 2010, currently has 96k kilometres (60k miles). It’s build date was August 2009, so it also languished on dealership lot for 15 months (which Open Road Port Moody opted NOT to disclose). The hybrid battery seemed fine from the get go, and doesn’t behave any different now. With our very limited use now, I do keep the 12 volt on a maintainer. And while our drives our sporadic, they’re usually quite lengthy, enough to warm up the engine thoroughly and give the hybrid battery some exercise.
I’m asking about the expensive battery. What is a maintainer? And is the 12 V the expensive one? Thank you.
No, the regular 12 volt battery, typical on all cars. By maintainer I mean a “smart” 12 volt battery charger, one that can be left on indefinitely, won’t overcharge. the expensive battery is often referred to as “hybrid battery”. Toyota recommends at least trimonthly drives to exercise the battery, so any amount of regular usage and it should be fine. again, our 2010 is seeing very limited use the last 4~5 years, and doing fine.
My Prius is March 2017 and has only just clocked over 20,000 miles. Still performing as well as the day we got it. Only ever goes into the Dealer once a year for service and MOT. Original 12v battery too.
