New Hybrid Owner (Long post)

Just wanted to say hello and welcome. I am new enough (and have a Gen 3) that I can't answer your questions. But, I will say that I know the person that traded in my Prius traded it for a newer Prius. After reading this forum a little bit that seems to be a common thing to do.

It sounds like you are off to a great start on ownership and have already found the elusive search button on the forum. That should make most of the old timers happy

Happy Driving,
rp

 

welcome and congrats!

you're driving a ticking time bomb. perhaps the former owner just didn't want to deal with the possibilities of a car that is now beyond its design life.
may you have many uneventful miles ahead of you, all the best!

 

Welcome and congratulations! Sounds like the car is doing well for its age. If it really does have a new traction battery then that should be good for another 100,000-200,000 miles or more. Probably the most expensive things after that are things common to all cars like air conditioning and stuff. The brake accumulator is about $2,100 installed if that goes out. Transmissions are really dependable. Next might be oil related engine problems or the water pump. All regular car issues. It may just be that the previous owners got tired of driving the same car for 12 years, or the battery was giving out and they didn't want to spend that much on a car that old. I'd suggest taking the money you're saving on gas and sock it away against future repairs or even a newer car if nothing happens to this one.

Enjoy your ride and save your shekels for whatever comes up. By the way, those battery indicators you mentioned sound like you have a healthy battery. If it gets in the green (full bars), no need to burn it off with the A/C. The car's computer will deal with it by applying more electricity and less gas to moving you down the road. If it's full and you're going down a long mountain descent, then it might need some engine braking, but that's pretty unusual if you don't live in the mountains. And "full" on the indicator means it's really about 80% full. The Prius is meticulous about protecting its battery.

 

While 180,000 is high mileage, the Prius is typically a higher mileage-tolerant vehicle. While there are definitely some very expensive things that could break down, regular maintenance is pretty cheap. And the overall chances of needing an expensive (over $1000) repair for a 2007 Prius are roughly 3-4% according to True Delta numbers. Of course, since you have a higher-mileage car, you'll likely have a correspondingly higher risk, but Prii are generally pretty reliable.

The MPG that's fluctuating all the time on the screen is supposed to be "instantaneous" MPG - in other words, the miles per gallon you're getting at that precise moment. It routinely bounces up and down, especially in city traffic. On the highway, it will generally be more consistent. While it's nice to have the instantaneous estimate, the 5-minute bar graph gives you more accurate MPG results for each 5 minute period, and the the average MPG number on the bottom of the screen is the most accurate over longer distances or multiple tanks of gasoline. It tends to be optimistic by around 1 MPG compared to measuring based on how much gasoline you're filling at the pump, but it's still close.

I made that gas cap mistake with a Corolla before. The check engine light came on and I started to panic, but tightening the gas cap fixed it. It happened a few months later in the same car, which did require a repair, but the repair was $300, so not overly expensive.

As to why the previous owner got rid of it, the most likely reason was just high mileage. It had probably been sitting around on the dealership lot for as long as it had because Prii aren't in very high demand right now due to low gas prices and newer electric vehicles being available. I got my car in December and it had been sitting on the lot for 20 days. It's still in great condition.

Enjoy your new car!

 

did he mean he replaced the 12 volt battery with a new one, or the hybrid battery. if it is the hybrid battery, you would be wise to get the receipt from toyota from him. if it's not from toyota, it is not new, and is rebuilt which could last a few weeks or a few years, depending on who did the rebuilding.

 

Welcome to PriusChat!
Your Prius has two batteries, a small AGM 12 volt battery in the cargo area, and the larger traction battery behind or under the rear seat. The larger traction battery is the expensive one. Did they say which one they replaced?
The 12 volt battery powers the computerized systems and accessories. The engine starts and the drive motor runs off the larger traction battery that also charges the smaller one.

EDIT: I missed bisco's post. Welcome & enjoy your car.

 

That could be a bit skewed to the pessimistic side. Better to break it down a bit....

"all the things the diagnostic test comes up with" ... staying on top of your maintenance is the key here. You can easily get a code reader to query your own car for diagnostic codes so you don't have to pay others to do that. You can query for the codes as often as you like, and here's the thing: when the car is in normal, unimpaired working condition, the number of "things the diagnostic test comes up with" will be zero.

Then, generally, if something does go wrong with the car, it's going to be one thing at a time. That one thing may cause one diagnostic code, or it may trigger several related codes, which can seem scarier, but you look in the repair manual, narrow down the set of causes that all those codes would be related to, and then you fix that. All the repair manuals and other tech training literature are available to you online (two days for $15, which isn't a lot of money).

"if problems happen and you take it into a Toyota dealership" ... as you gathered from above, everything's better if you stay enough on top of maintenance that whenever one thing (at a time) goes wrong, you just identify it and fix it (or get it fixed) ... and then you're back to having zero things wrong and zero diagnostic codes, and the next thing will just be one thing, and a sensible set of codes.

If you start letting things slide, so one day you drive into a dealership and they pull a set of diagnostic codes reflecting the thing that was wrong six months ago that you've been ignoring, combined with new codes for one or more other things since then that you didn't even notice going wrong because the lights were already on, well, yes, that can be a troubleshooting nightmare, and if the troubleshooting happens on the dealer's clock, it won't be cheap.

So don't do that. Work on keeping the number of problems at zero. If you see it go from zero to one ... get it back to zero.

It's really pretty easy to do, as you'll infer if you look at the used car reliability ratings showing the Prius to be at or near the very top for lowest total cost of ownership. It does have some expensive things to break, they just don't, much. If you just bank the amount every month that you haven't spent on a less reliable car, you should be pretty well prepared even if an 'expensive' item fails later on, and the average cost over time will still be in your favor.

The only slightly more anxious time, of course, is in your first months of ownership, when you haven't saved much yet, so if the luck of the draw serves you an expensive issue early on, it's hard to just breathe deeply and take the long view.

But the longer you keep the car and stash your savings from it, the easier it gets.

-Chap

 

Although I generally agree with this, some of the hybrid-specific diagnostic codes can only be read by the Techstream software that Toyota only officially licenses to dealers. Many people are selling versions that appear to work, but it really a case of living with your own ethics and "Buyer Beware". The software you generally find available was designed to run on Windows XP which is also no longer sold or licensed.

 

Anybody who wants can subscribe at techinfo.toyota.com. The 'standard' subscription (starting at $15 for two days) includes all the service literature, but no license to use Techstream. At the 'professional diagnostic' level, starting at $55 for two days, the Techstream license is included.

It's true that a lot of the vehicle-interface clone products being sold for cheap are coming with unofficial Techstream copies included. But even if you prefer being completely official, and even if that means shelling out $55 every time you have a need to pull codes on your car, that can still be less money and hassle than getting to a dealer appointment and paying them to do it.

-Chap

 

True, but I thought a caution was warranted.