how to value our Prius?

Don’t be talked into junking your car or selling it cheap. To someone very familiar with Prius and very DIY capable this car is a good buy. Without either good DIY capability or a family friend who is a highly experienced and fully equipped Prius mechanic it will be very complex and expensive to really fix the car yourself. The used car market has cooled a little but is still very high. In days of old before covid and horrible inflation a low offer of $1000 would have been reasonable. Now even $3000 is lowball. But it’s a dog eat dog world and many people will try every tactic imaginable to get your car for cheap.
Congrats on getting 6 more years out of it. And for getting another car. That is smart.
Now be tough and hold out against the horse traders. And do not let anyone mess with anything on the car before they buy it. Unscrupulous buyers will try to tell you a lot more is wrong with it than really is. Keep them away. With persistence you will locate a buyer who will fly in and drive your car away. Selling it to a car flipper will be settling for a lowball offer.
This isn’t easy and your success depends on how much healthy cynicism you can exercise.
My guess is you should be able to get $4000 - $5000. Mostly because of the inflated car market. Carmax and others are only interested in how much they can underpay and then immediately resell. You want to find the end user who is realistic and can fix the issues. And if you don’t absolutely need to get rid of the car fast you have a strong hand.
Good luck.

 

Spend some money and get your mechanic to give you all the codes in the computer and list all the lights on the dash that are lit up. The group will help figure out what stuff is wrong. You need to know that before anyone comes to look at the car. There are more people who will try to lowball you but knowing what is wrong will be invaluable in negotiations.

 

To do this you need a highly experienced Prius mechanic who has Techstream or a high end code reader, not just any mechanic with a generic minimally capable code reader. Another real challenge, but doable with persistence.

 

A techstream reader is optimal but even a torque pro or dr prius app on your phone will provide something. You are looking to sell not fix, so a basic list of codes is enough to tell you when a potential buyer is making something up. I doubt anyone will be coming to look at it with a techstream reader.

 

Sounds like the 12volt battery is on the blink. Replace it with a new one and all those lights should disappear. My 2008 did exactly the same thing, the year after I bought it in 2014 - it had the original 12v from the factory in it.
All the lights came up like a Christmas tree on the dashboard.
Fortunately, I’d read about that right here!
Promptly replaced the battery at my local Toyota dealer and surprisingly I haven’t had a problem since - and that was 9 years ago…!!! I’m expecting the 12v battery to go anytime now (as it will normally malfunction in freezing weather) but so far, it’s been working flawlessly.

Note: I had a high capacity “Cellink Neo” auxiliary battery installed underneath my seat - to power my Thinkware F800 dual dash camera system - providing an up to 36 hour continuous operational capacity - it charges to full after 45 minutes of driving and allows for 24/7 parked surveillance. I had this professionally installed - but I sometimes wonder if somehow, the (January 2019) installation of that auxiliary Cellink Neo 12v battery under my seat is prolonging the life of my 12v vehicle battery in the boot - it seems too much of a coincidence that my 12v has lasted 9 years so far….


iPad ? Pro

 

"mechanic said it would probably cost more to fix than it was worth... and then he sold me a camry"

i think that's all we really need to know

 

Well you got it out of the mountain Brook area back down to Huntsville with almost nothing so there you go like I say that car should bring around 3 grand to either a college student or somebody that's running deliveries right around 3K or so. That's just the southeast market I mean if you hold on to it and you keep advertising and you got plenty of time to wait nobody really cares somebody might come along with $4,500 at some point All of them here lately I've seen them start out at 6:00 and $7,000 and be either removed from the marketplace in 3 days not sold but removed or I've seen prices drop to as low as 3000 from the $7,500 or $7,000 or $6,500 they were asking three days prior and one just recently dropped about 1900 from over 4500 listed so there's always this kind of nonsense these cars are actually plentiful out in the wild a lot of them are parked in people's yards and they don't know what to do and they've gotten bored with trying to sell it or whatever so they just sit I see them all over I passed them on the daily look right out of in the yard no tag and all I just have too many it's not worth it to go into business with these things because well all of the things I mentioning above there's a guy up the street from me that's made a business over the pandemic of these electric semi-electric hybrid cars he sells a lot of Chevy volts and lots of generation 2 Prius And he's buying these things for $2,000 and such and trying to sell them at 8:00 and it's been a very slow process for him I think he's kind of buying other cars now to sell because the niche market he was trying to fill just wasn't really happening like that.

 

Dealers here locally are asking upwards of $8000. I just bought one the same color as yours and `135,000 miles for $2500 from someone like you who thought there was too much wrong with it. If I were to turn around and sell it I'd start with an asking price of $5500. Familiarize yourself with this site.

Used 2007 Toyota Prius Liftback 5D Ratings, Values, Reviews & Awards

 

Well that is in Colorado down here in the dirty south Yes you could ask that and then work your way back because down here everybody's driving new cars they're not hearing about a 2009 Prius the old lady car or whatever the stigma may be at the moment that comes to the person mind. Down here folks are driving brand new cars even if they are Chevy Sparks they're new these people down here we can't tell him anything but that's okay I like it just like that. There are a few Priuses at car dealers car lots buy here pay here whatever neighborhood car lots that will have $8,000 slapped on them and some of these cars will be under a hundred K usually not but it's possible and they've had nothing done to them so they're at their 10 11 whatever year old they are. And had nothing but regular general maintenance tires batteries so on and so forth any recalls possibly in the neighborhoods where these cars are in these car lots the people are pretty good owners they try to take care of their stuff and usually all of that info is in the glove box untouched. So then you're paying the $8,000 the car still seen a few parking curbs even with old people and things like that any normal dings or what have you on a 2009 that would occur probable. So you're paying near $8,000 for that and then having all the problems to arise in short order once you start driving it regularly or at least that's been my experience that's why I don't pay anything like that for them because there's that.