2013 Prius C, only blowing hot air ?

The first one you mentioned. I'd write that VIN down, maybe run to a dealer and check the service history. See if that High Voltage battery has already been replaced. Prius C's HV battery is smaller than a regular Prius, and while the vehicle itself is one of the most reliable on the road (even amongst the regular Prius) their HV battery does seem to fail earlier. If it hasn't, I wouldn't go the Prolong route. Would it extend the battery life? Yes probably, but it would be easier to just take the extra money you would have spent for the lower mileage one and just have a new (Toyota) battery installed. (Don't ever go the "reconditioned" route for a replacement HV Battery. Literally hundreds of threads here on those.

The lower mileage one.... The hvac system, if problems exist, is typically quite expensive to have repaired. But that of course depends on what is wrong. Hard to say without knowing for sure what the problem is.

Or if you want to drive to Indiana, Take my 2016 Prius C off my hands for payoff with Toyota Motor Credit, your welcome to do that.

Prius C 2, tangerine pearl, 42k.

 

Toyota puts an 8-year warranty on the c traction battery. This is a little shorter than the warranty for the battery in the big Prius.

Age affects traction batteries more than mileage. These cars are going to start needing batteries in growing numbers. My own unscientific personal estimate is that most cs will give 8 years of useful service before needing a new battery; half of them will make it to 10 years and none of them will make it past 16 years. Look at the age of the ones you are considering and think about how long you want to keep them.

I would not bother with the Prolong system. I like them and I think they have a good product, but I don't think it's economical in a c with its smaller, cheaper battery. Maybe in a hybrid Camry or Highlander with 2x as much battery to protect? For a c, just spend the money on a new battery more often. It's simpler and gives a surer positive result.

The air conditioning issue you named is probably a stuck blend vane. They can be notoriously labor-intensive, meaning insanely expensive to fix if the labor is not your own. The car normally mixes hot and cold air to achieve the setpoint selected on the thermostat. The ratio of blending is done by a moving mixer vane in the air duct. The servo motor that moves the vane has become jammed. So now hot air is being mixed in whenever it is available (i.e. engine running) whether or not it is actually demanded.

 

While I can't speak for the 20-module Prius C directly... I've had chronic concerns about my '07 battery pack w/28 modules ever since I go it in 2012. Sudden drop in the number of bars on the screen down from all green down to one bar in less than 2 miles was the biggest concern...

But a year ago, I replaced the corroded nuts and bus bars, built a spreadsheet of load and discharge test numbers and then reconditioned with three rounds of increasingly deeper discharges and recharge and now a year later, I'm still very, very pleased.

All concerns with battery pack have not returned, I have way more power climbing up over mountains, still have several bars on the steepest climbs unlike one bar before... Essentially, I restored my battery capacity from 50% up to 96%... And you can do this the hard way with each individual module, or the easy way with Prolong system. At 1/4 million miles on the orginal battery pack, I'm confident that reconditioning is the #1 reason things are still running so well.

 

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