I am now a prius owner

I hope you enjoy your Prius as much as I have enjoyed mine!

Welcome to PriusChat!

 

Hey Chris!

Welcome and congratulations! Ironically enough, I just got my 2004 a few weeks ago

 

Congratulations & welcome!

 

You clearly have great taste and make excellent decisions.

 

Hi Chris! Congrats, and welcome to the world of Prius.

You are a smart shopper. When it comes to car buying, we all know that nothing is "non-negotiable." I negotiated about $1500 off the price of my 2004 (53K on mine, my price was significantly higher), so I think you did very well to knock off about $1250.

Smart choice for a budget Prius. High mileage, but one owner and a good maintenance record. 2004 was a great year, and a rare one too! Less than 100,000 ever sold in the US. Best of luck with her.

 

Oh, and PS: one thing I've learned is to not let your head spin over all the people who post about their battery failures. Overall, it's EXTREMELY unlikely... very few Prius batts fail.

 

The reality is MANY have reported battery failures. If there really are that few failures, there wouldn't be so many businesses popping up rebuilding them. Just be prepared when the time does come, so it won't come as a shock.

 

There are more than a million priuses on the road. If 5% fail, that's 50,000 potential customers. And I'm exaggerating those figures.

 

The battery is designed to last the lifetime of the car, which Toyota puts the Prius at 180k miles. Average person will drive 15,000 miles a year, getting to 180k in 12 years.

So basically the battery is intended to last 12 years or 180k miles. Some more, some less. Many have reported failures well before the 12 year mark......and when the 12 year mark does arrive (already for most gen1), you'll be sure to see very happy faces on the owners of the battery rebuilding businesses.

 

Congrats, and enjoy the '04!

While it's true that there have been quite a number of HV batt failures (enough for businesses to cater to them), the failure percentage is still quite low...much lower than that of Honda Civic Hybrids.

This item from Consumer Reports, Feb, 2014 has figures for Prius HV pack failure rates:

2002 5%
2003 4%

2009-2010 <1%

In comparison, for the Honda Civic Hybrid:

2009 30%
2010 32%

Honda Civic Hybrid Battery Reliability | Hybrid Batteries - Consumer Reports News

I agree that the impression one gets from browsing the forums is greatly skewed. If even 1/4 of the Prius owners who have NOT experienced an HV pack failure joined and posted on the board, things would look much better (and the board would be very crowded).

 

I'm seeing more and more new members joining that are in the business of battery rebuilding. I think it would be wise to make a section with all the battery rebuilder members to list their services. Like a 1 stop shop, look up your city and a rebuilder will come up. The good ones will have good reviews, the bad ones will.....not be around for long.

 

Look, I think you all know what my point was... it certainly wasn't to spur an argument about the predictability of battery failures, rather to provide some solace in a whirlwind of horror stories on this site. Yes, it happens to some. It could happen to me, it could happen to you. But the statistics reflect a very good track record overall.

I too would love to see an online resource for battery replacers/refurbishers in each region. As I've said in another thread... if the approximate cost is $1500, I'd consider that a worthwhile financial risk in the event that the HV batt needed replacement.

 

For what it's worth I get where you're coming from. Generally you tend to focus more on the posts that say "my battery died and it's going to cost me $1500 to replace!" as opposed to "My battery is still running strong after 13 years!". In fact, I'm sure the latter is much harder to find, mind you I'm still new to this forum.

Either way, I think big repairs go hand in hand with driving older vehicles. I'm just thankful for the time I have left before I have to switch mine out (Betty is nearing her 12 year mark).

 

^^^^
Isn't that how everything goes in the world?

News programs never lead with "Hundreds of thousands of genuinely unfortunate people were helped by private and public organizations today."

They lead with "GOVERNMENT TEAT-SUCKING SEX SCANDAL ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER WAR DESTROYS LIFE OF FAMOUS CELEBRITY AND/OR GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL, THOUSANDS MAIMED AND KILLED!"

Horror stories always lead... even on PriusChat.

 

For the sake of full disclosure, those numbers are for the last 12 months and not cumulative.

 

Good catch! I didn't see the data table at the bottom at first either. I guess I didn't need to make my own table.

 

I added all the percentages in the CR table and came up with 17%. This is not accurate counting and spans over 3 generations of prius, but one could assume the cumulative rate of battery failure for 10-11 year old car is near 17%. Not bad.