maintenance?

Utter rubbish. All of the normal preventive maintenance needed is listed in the Scheduled Maintenance Guide, or here:
http://smg.toyotapartsandservice.com/guides.php

One possible exception is a $90 ATF drain and fill (NOT a $300 "flush") at 50K-60K miles or so. Some owners have this done after analysis of the ATF; I did it without an analysis as a relatively cheap preventative.

If you have ATF, brake fluid, or AC refrigerant changed or replaced at an independent make certain that they use only Toyota material. Buy it yourself from a dealer and hand it to them to use.

 

I own a 2007 and I agree with the list of fluid changes given the 60k miles. I just don't agree with the price. But then again I do not live in Nor Cal. Its mighty expensive in thsoe parts. But lets look at local prices:

Trans Flush: Based on oil analysis we have seen on this forum change it every 30K if you plan on keeping the car a long trouble free life. Its pretty cheap and gives you very good transmission insurance.
LOTS of us do this here.
Locally prices range from $100 to $150.

Inverter Coolant: Thats pretty easy to do. You just have to get under the car and loosen the dump bolt. After that fill and use the top valve to bleed. No tools needed. There's a great tutorial here about ther. Search. Thats about $75. Best $75 you'll ever spend on this car as the INverter is the heart of this car and likes fresh coolant. Thats coolant is used in the trans and the Inverter btw. Do that every 50k miles. Lots of You Tubes on all these services btw.

Engine Coolant: Thats a pain to do. You need a vacuum tool to do properly and still have to do a relay manual turn on to bleed the coolant heat transfer thermos. You would not believe the complaints we have seen here with even the dealer doing this change. Most
complaints are gurlgling heard under the dash for an incomplete air beed. Have the dealer do this and then drive the car around the block a few times with the heat on after you pick it up. If you hear gurgling bring it right back. Thats about $150 too.

So were at around $400 here at 33765 so $600 is not that crazy 1300 miles away.

But I recomend you have this done. Then your good for another
50,000 miles of very trouble free driving.

Good Luck.

 

Don't let them sucker you into paying for unnecessary crap!

Facts:

- If you want to baby your Prius, its transmission only needs a simple drain-and-refill at 60K miles. It does NOT need flushing.

- DO NOT DO AN ENGINE COOLANT FLUSH AT JUST 60K MILES. The Prius uses Toyota's SLLC engine coolant, which is designed to last 8 years / 100K miles. Anyone who tells you your Prius engine coolant needs to be flushed at 60K miles is trying to scam you.

- As far as I know, SLLC is used for both engine coolant and inverter coolant in the Prius. I doubt you need an inverter coolant change at 60K as well.

What your Prius might need at 60K miles:

- Aforementioned transaxle fluid drain-and-refill, with Toyota WS fluid.

- Throttle body and MAF sensor cleaning.

- cabin and engine air filters (easy to change yourself).

 

Nope.

I noticed what looked like white dust on the Inverter Coolant cap at about 30K miles. What that was is aluminum salts. I changed the Inverter coolant at 35,000 miles and got an instant boost in mileage. I tracked Inverter temp to mileage and noticed that my mileage suffered when the Inverter got really hot in stop & go driving 100F temps.
I changed that coolant and have not seen the white dust re-appear. More importantly temps have dramatically drecreased also.
Contaminated coolant with alu salts will not absorb heat very well.

To see corrosion oif the coolant makes sense as the Inverter hfet heatsink would most likely be made out of pure aluminum for max cooling efficiency. The coolant flows through & around that sink and the sink is not coated. Its raw aluminum. For cooling.

Problem with that is pure aluminum is the most corrosive metal there is short of zinc.

Change the Inverter coolant. Its cheap, its really easy and gives you a very big bang for your buck.

Now having said that changing the ICE coolant....not so much.

 

Hi Bev,

At 60K miles, I would suggest that you have the transaxle ATF replaced and if the engine air filter and cabin air filter have not been changed in the last 30K miles, then both need to be replaced now.

It is not necessary to have the engine coolant or the inverter coolant replaced. The initial service interval is 100K miles. Further, if you had the inverter coolant pump recall performed then the inverter coolant was supposed to be replaced at that time. (OTOH, who knows whether it actually was replaced...)

 

Yeah, what Patrick Wong said. You will NEVER go wrong listening to Wong!!

We changed our coolant at 90k, but only because we were already at the shop having the recall inverter pump change, and decided to do it 10k early. It was about $115 extra.

Read your Maintenance Schedule that SHOULD have come with your Prius. It will tell you what you need - and, it seems to be a little 'extra' on some stuff, anyway. But, if you do it exactly like it says, you will be fine.