Considering a Plug-in 2012, opinions please.

Few points from my similar recent purchase:
Price is real high. I bought a PHV 2013 with 28000 miles on it very clean condition for $13.9K . This is a Toyota dealer maintained off lease vehicle from the Dealer. There are no HOV stickers(which is good for me, will tell you later why). Applied for them for $27 and got them. So, dont worry about HOV if the car is eligible.
If you have the HOV decal on it already, you may get it benefit till the end of this year ONLY. If you dont have it, you will be applying for them now and such new decals are eligible to reapply in 2019, which will be valid till 2022. So, I am lucky that my previous owner didnt apply for the decals and I did in 2017, I am eligible for the next 5 years HOV.
Also I got a $500 PG&E rebate as the previous owner didnt apply for it.
Overall, your price is high. For that car, I prefer to pay around $12K if I like other things.But existing HOV stickers makes me to back-off even for that price as thats the priority as per your posting.

 

2012 is great year, no issues. i'm at 55,000 miles. can't comment on price. ev range is based on driving style, speed weather and terrain. i get 15 summer and 10 winter, you could easily do worse, but not much better. (except your winters are different)
mpg's are a tad better, but no spare or under floor storage to speak of.
all the best!

 

@bisco thanks for adding missing points.. my EV range is 10.2, free charging at work.. I am happy with it. the E part mainly I like it for the HOV. I hit the gold as I am a 2017 HOV decal applicant.

@gugy see my age on this forum roughly counts my PiP age as well. I bought it in March 2017. Before buying, got its inspection done by my family mechanic. Charged the car for some time to check if the battery is holding OK etc.

 

EPA estimates 6 miles EV. If most people are getting a little under 10 miles, that’s a good thing. I get around 10 EV miles on my 140k mile 2012. I wouldn’t pay more than $13k on a 2012 PiP. I never installed a car charger as a regular wall plug charges in 2.5 hours to full, hence only 10 miles EV. It’s a small battery.

Most important thing to know about the PiP is that it is a PHEV as in it’s a hybrid EV. If you’re looking to drive long EV distances or you hate having the engine turn on, buy another car. If you’re looking for high efficiency that includes EV and HV driving, then the PiP fits the bill.

 

another thing is that people are getting close to 20k on prime plus.

 

Did everyone miss that @gugy said it was an advanced model? They command a considerably higher price than a base model. I don't check much, but here in FL, I usually see the advanced models for $16k or so and base for $12-13k. I think CA is a bit higher. When I bought my 54k mile 2013 Base for under $13k, they also had a 2012 Advanced with similar miles for over $17k, iirc.

That said, the battery is not going to be quite a strong as a new one, so there's that to consider. And, at almost $17k, you're getting pretty close to Prime prices.

 

Thats a good point @jerrymildred mine is base. I am sure that I have compared wrong in my original reply. Thanks for that insight.

 

Yeah, the Advanced model is really nice, but it was beyond my reach. sigh...

 

I just traded in a 2012 Adv for $11,750, 77k miles in San Diego. So $16,700 is a little high. While the mileage is low, my sense is that the amount of charge capacity left may no longer be optimal. For example, I was generally getting about 9 actual miles of EV range (from 15-16 actual miles originally). OTOH, you can see in my sig that after almost 6 years of about 20/80 (EV/Hybrid) driving, I was getting great mileage. I'd talk them down a thousand or so. Offer 15K and be prepared to go $15,700.

 

I'm also in the market for a pip. Any hybrid still seems to fetch more on the west coast. I test drove one the other day and heard sloshing in the back. When I popped the trunk I saw water had gotten in there. Is this common or is this one just a lemon?

 

I've spent a ton of time on this forum and have never heard that happening to any Prius. Would run the other way on this one fast.

 

i haven't heard of it in the pip, but it does happen on some gen 2's, cracks develop in the rain gutter, and more rarely the hatch hinge area.
don't recall gen 3, but i would keep looking for a dry one, then it shouldn't be a problem.

 

sorry, i meant prime pricing. someone posted $18,000 the other day after fed tax credit.

 

I checked around here for Advanced PiPs and there were 7 listed on Autotrader. 3 actually were Advanced models, 3 were advertised as such, but weren't and the last had no pics. The most expensive was $20,000 with 20,000 miles, the cheapest was $7,100 with 216,000 miles and wasn't an Advanced.

 

I think 17k is really high.

As far as my 2012 goes, the gas gauge still goes down, even when running on electric all week. I reset the 'trip' on dash and doesn't seem to make a difference on a tank of gas. Maybe mine is not working properly but I can't hear engine run on EV mode, it displays the 10-11 miles in EV mode, and charges as if functioning normally.

What is the mpg on the 2016 and up Priuses? Surely you can get a 2016 for $17,000.

Edit: ya, just checked dealer only site and for 17k you get (as dealer) a 2016 with 30k miles (located in Oceanside, California):