new car search, looking into gen 3

Hello!
Newly in the market for a new to us car, and I was hoping I could get some advice from the pros!
I was driving a 2012 maxda3 hatchback and loved her, but unfortunately she was totaled last week. We are looking for a new car and have narrowed our options down to three: finding another 2012/13 maxda3 hatchback, a 2012/23 Volkswagen Jetta sportwagen TDI, or a Gen 3 Prius.
My husband drives 40-50k miles/year for work. Although this will be my car (and I drive very short distances) he will most likely end up driving it a lot, depending on how his car is doing (currently rebuilding the engine on his super old Vibe). My last car ended up with 80k miles in 3 years.
Our budget is $12k max, would like to spend closer to $10k, and ideally finding a car with less than 80k miles on it as we will be adding plenty.
Is this reasonable? Or if we find a higher mileage car, will the Prius last long enough with our high yearly mileage to make it through a 4-5 year loan?
My husband likes to be do all vehicle maintenance himself if at all possible, and is a little bit leery of the Prius because he’s not sure if that’s something that will be possible - is it? Or do you always take to a dealer?
It seems like there aren’t a ton of used Prius in our area that fit the bill, so we may need to travel for one (same goes if we replace with another mazda3). We’ve test drove gen 3s with 100k miles locally, so I know we like this gen. Not sure about trim levels, but we can worry about that if we decide to go this route. The biggest thing is a dark interior (husband is in industrial sales and that tan interior that I see on 90% of the Prius for sale locally would get ruined in a day!), but that’s something I can figure out!
Would love feedback, or if I’m looking for something that isn’t a good fit please let me know! We aren’t that familiar with hybrids in general, and have always had older cars. If anyone has experience/comparison to the other cars we are looking at that would be super helpful too, but I know that’s asking a lot!
I’m getting very overwhelmed with car shopping - my husband is also 6’7” and all legs and doesn’t really fit in most hatchbacks, and I’m super picky, so our options are limited. Happy with the three we’ve narrowed down to, but I don’t know enough about diesel or hybrids to make an informed decision yet.
Thank you in advance for ANY advice/feedback!!!

 

Thank you so much!
My husband is very comfortable working on cars / watching you tube vids to figure things out (he just removed his engine, and has replaced his clutch, so I’d say competence level is high). I’ll show him the EGR and battery replacement info to see if he feels comfortable with it.
We did test drive one and surprisingly he fits! That plus he gas mileage are why it’s in our top three. The backseat would only be used in storage capacity 95% of the time, so no worries there. He looked at the Impreza too, there aren’t many available used in our area/low mileage/price range, but it’s on the short list for when he replaces his car.

We’re in SW MO, Springfield - but drive a lot in the Ozarks/AR/up to KCMO, so although snow isn’t as big of a concern, hills definitely are!
We haven’t had a chance to test drive on hillier areas - we live in town and the dealer here is a “let me ride with you and take this route I want you to drive on” type so we will definitely be dining other places to test drive before purchasing anything.

Can anyone shed light on how well a Prius handles very hilly/curvy drives?