maintenance costs

That is why I got the exteneded warranty. I want worry free costs for 100k. I think the regular maint. items aren't too much more to worry about. So far I got 32k and bascially just change the oil and tires

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(etack\";p=\"73255)</div>

Your regular mechanic can do some things--like routine maintenance and changing brake pads (which should last much longer in a Prius anyway) and things. Other stuff, especially the software-related things, will have to be done by Toyota for now. A lot of it is under warranty for a long time anyway. I believe as hybrids become more common non-Toyota mechanics will be able to work on stuff which now only Toyota is doing.

 

Maintenance costs for the first 24k miles for me (not including oil changes): $0

Maintenance costs expected for the next 76k miles (I purchased the 8/100 warranty): $0

Sure, there will be the standard 'at 50,000 miles we check over this and that and it'll cost you more to have us look at that than a normal oil change would', but that's typical of every vehicle out there today.

Plus, this car, I expect, will have significantly less maintenance costs than most, as seeing that the brakes are used much less, the engine is smaller and more efficient, it has the long life fluid, and so on. Feel free to download and checkout the maintenance book on our file library here, it'll show you exactly what you can expect for the first 100,000 miles.

Andrew Gant already has 124,000 miles on his 2004 Prius Taxi in Canada - do a google search on prius taxi if you wish to find out about his experiences with the 2002 Prius he drove for 180k+ miles.

-m.

 

The hybrid components are 8yrs/100K miles. Not sure if the MGs are covered with that. Some extended warranties for full coverage are 7 years/100K.

 

MGs are Motor/Generators. There are two of them and they work in concert with each other and the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) through the PSD (power split device) to bring motive power to the wheels. The computers determine the role each of the three motive components (MGs and ICE) play when driving down the road, who is generating power, who is powering the vehicle and what relative speed or RPM to run them at.

In practice it is a ballet of engineering when they are all running together. But we can't see it work. But you can see a simulation of it on the older model here. I hope your Java Virtual Engine is up to snuf.

http://www.wind.sannet.ne.jp/m_matsu/prius...e=en?Country=US

 

I really wish the database that did the acronym link would be updated so we can avoid these complaints.

That simulator is really cool.

 

I don't know if we've actually done a good job of answering this question. Any car, with very good or very poor design and manufacturing, will have very low maintenance costs if everything is covered under warranty.

I think this person was asking: if the warranty isn't an issue, how much maintenance will the car need as it ages? If the original poster agrees, I'd like to move the discussion more in that direction.

To me, this means there are three areas of discussion which will help us decide:

First, the car might have maintenance and wear items completely separate from what's needed to operate the vehicle. Relative to a "normal car", how would the Prius fare here? (These kind of failures include things like the navigation DVD reader being damaged. That's annoying, could be expensive, but it won't stop you from driving the car.)

Second, the car's design introduces new wear components that don't exist in conventional cars (like the HV [high voltage] battery pack). How much repair and maintenance will these components require?

Third, the car's design also eliminates systems that can wear out in conventional cars (like the PSD [power split device] instead of an automatic or manual transmission). How will these differences eliminate some repair and maintenance costs in the future?

I have my own answers for some of these, but my answers come from lurking on the site for 6 months, not from actual Prius ownership or formal training. I'll post my answers in another reply.

None of us know these things with any certainty, because these cars haven't been around for long enough. Those of us with technical knowledge, though, can share our educated guesses, so we can help others make informed decisions. Conventional wisdom suggests the more complex a car is, the more can go wrong -- but many of us (myself included) feel conventional wisdom is only half right in this case, maybe less.

--Spence

 

That simulator IS cool!!!! And really, really fun!

Glad it’s not my car!
I know it wasn't politically correct, but I thrashed the hell out of the thing!!!!
8.6 MPG!!!!

I drove it like my dear departed uncle use to drive . . . stand on the gas, slam on the brakes . . . all the time . . . nothing in between!


Rick57, Kyle Pehrson, prius mdt, [Pruis Master Techs all]

Would you guys be so kind as to check over the simulator Prius?
I think it’s in bad need of new tires and a brake job. While you guys are at it, you may also want to check the oil, traction battery, MG2, PSD, motor, etc.
Oh, by the way, I think I smelled smoke coming from the area of the inverters too.

 

Re: maintenance costs/simulation comments

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sufferin' Prius Envy\";p=\"73382)</div>

I'm not skilled or inclined enough to build something like that, let alone program anything, but I have gotten a great deal of enjoyment out of the simulation. Keep in mind that it is for the 2003 and earlier model, you can tell by looking at the car graphic and the appearance of the spedo display.

 

Going back to the original topic, well, it is hard to say what major repair costs are going to be. Things that have typically ben cars achilles heals, such as transmissions, have been removed in favor of the power split device and MGs 1 and 2. So, one set of potentially expensive maintenance items have been replaced with another set of potentially expensive maintenance items. But because they operate differently, wear and tear will be different, and as such there may be no maintenance concerns at all.

I point to the Prius Taxi driver in Canada who has put a lot more miles on his cars in a very short period of time as proof that the Prius is reliable and inexpensive to run. Sure, there are more things that can go wrong, but they are less mechanical in nature and more electronic in nature. Solid state electronics, if properly protected from the elements, dust and crud can run almost indefinitely.

Electric motors and generators are very reliable, and sometimes under very poor working conditions. First off they are a low impact device. They spin. Unlike an ICE which has the jarring up and down movements of the pistons and a continual series of controlled explosions, any kind of motive force generated by a continually rotating movement has significantly less wear (ex. jet engines, electric motors, electric generators, steam and gas turbine).

In the tree fruit industry refrigeration is essential. Large compressors are used to keep huge storage rooms cold, usually between 34 and 37 F. The compressors used are a function of the size of the room or rooms to be cooled, but the actual compressor will be outlived by the huge electric motor turning it many times over. And also be aware that most compressor rooms for these cold storages are not very clean not air conditioned and barely heated and highly industrial in nature. In other words, a very poor operating environment.

So, the hybrid components of MGs 1 and 2 shouldn't deviate from the typical wear patterns of other electric motor/generator devices already used in industry, even though the MGs are of different design and much better protected from the elements and temperature stresses than electric motors in the rest of industry.

 

The motor generator is a "water cooled" syncronous motor. The key is water cooled, the number one enemy to an electric motor is heat and Toyota has taken care of that. All anyone has to do is remember if the computer says you have a coolant problem, STOP and get a tow. major damage can be done to any car if you overheat the car. The prius could cost you even more if you did not stop when it overheated. I suspect the prius to be the most dependable car ever built. My wife and I love our prius and if I win the lotto all my family will have the chance to find out why we feel this way, hurry to order yours I'm feeling lucky today

 

Maybe the original poster has already found this, but here's what I posted in another thread regarding maintenance costs:

Based on what I've learned (partly through research, but mostly through people on this forum just giving me the answers ) the HV battery should last the life of the vehicle.

First of all, the battery is used for starting the engine (which doesn't discharge it much at all) and for supplemental power during normal driving. The gasoline engine is really underpowered by most standards, but the car supplements that weak engine power with battery power when needed.

In most driving scenarios this means you'll only use very short pulses of extra power from the battery. Holding the gas pedal down for too long has this way of making you go really fast. So you'll usually only discharge the battery a tiny amount, when getting up to speed on the Interstate (for example).

Exceptions to this rule would be climbing mountains (not hills, mountains -- something so steep and long you need to worry about brakes overheating on the way back down) or driving over 100 MPH on a racetrack. Both of those applications require lots of sustained power for a long time, so you need to remove a *lot* of power from the battery now, and then put a *lot* of power back in the battery later.

This is important, because one of the two ways a battery can fail is from gradual chemical breakdown caused by age and wear-and-tear. As this Prius battery product page shows, the battery still has around 85% of its capacity after 8000 *full* charge/discharge cycles, or many many more partial cycles. That takes well over a hundred thousand miles to accomplish (unless you're beating the battery up on purpose), probably closer to two or three hundred thousand miles. And even then, you don't need the battery replaced -- you just have less capacity. Since most people rarely see a full charge and rarely see an empty charge, this might not even affect people. (Until you take your quarter-million-mile Prius up Pikes Peak and you figure out your 20 year old battery can't keep up with those constant high power demands any more, lowering your climb speed. Does just fine in traffic, though.)

The second way a battery can fail is from just plain physical breakdown. A weld could come loose, a battery could be manufactured incorrectly and die, etc. If this happens, you only have to replace that single battery -- and they currently cost around $200 each. Old Mill Toyota's parts department quoted me $4823.41 for the entire 28-battery pack on March 10. That quote was for just some random guy coming in and buying the battery pack with no old pack to recycle, no vehicle to put it in, no warranty, just cash-and-carry. Your replacement cost will definitely vary.

This physical breakdown is a bit less likely in the 2004-2005 Prius anyway, because the battery doesn't get as hot. http://www.nrel.gov/vehiclesandfuels/energ...hive_prius.html

I guess another way to think of it is: it's another "major repair" item to worry about as the car approaches the end of its life. In most cars you have to worry about the engine, transmission, and suspension, and each of those could possibly develop expensive-to-repair defects. (At least these are the things I worry about with my current 1994 Mercury Sable, which will definitely be replaced with a new Prius as soon as I can afford it )

In the Prius, there's a fourth expensive item which can go wrong: the battery pack. But I think that's compensated for by the design of the other components.

The engine is less likely to fail. First, the engine never starts. Well, OK, one moment it's not turning and the next moment it's running, and something happens in between -- but it's not a normal engine start. In most cars, a weak battery and weak motor spin the engine at a low rate (say, 200 RPM), and then a "shock" of rich air/fuel mixture is added and combusted. This gets the engine up to normal running speed quickly, but it also causes more wear and tear by pushing parts against each-other pretty hard, especially at a time when there's very little oil pressure. By contrast, the Prius never starts its engine like that. Powerful batteries and motors spin the engine at full running speed under no stress -- no combustion at all. The oil pump is started, so the engine is fully lubricated already, with full oil pressure. Only after all that's done is a *normal* air/fuel charge added, starting one cylinder at a time. So in effect, the engine never gets started, it just ...well, you know what I mean. Also, since the car operates without its engine some fraction of the time, the engine will age a little more slowly than normal.

The transmission is *much* less likely to fail. This design is what really got me into the Prius -- there are no grabby friction surfaces to wear out in the Prius transmission. Everything is always in gear, always meshed. No clutch to wear out, like in manual transmissions, no clutch packs or bands to wear out, like in automatic transmissions. Graham's Toyota Prius page explains it pretty well.

I don't think the suspension is any different from a normal car, so normal wear and tear on that.