Planning my next Prius, plug-in or no?

If as you say your prius still going strong, I would wait to see what the Gen 4 brings. If you like it you can get the latest thing, or there will be some great deals on the Gen 3.

 

If your car isn't on the verge of dying, I'd recommend waiting a few months as well, until Toyota finally releases pictures and info on the Gen 4 prius. Which hopefully will only be a few more weeks away, perhaps at the Detroit Auto Show unless they delay it again.

They delayed it 6 months back in the summer, so what was supposed to be a Spring 2015 release date is now expected to be Fall 2015, so that they could do some more tweaking to wring out some more mpg from their designs. I think they said the Gen 2 PiP is about a year after the Gen 4 prius comes out if you're waiting on that.

This way, you can decide whether you'd rather wait to get a Gen 4 prius or gen 2 PiP. Or if the stats aren't very exciting to you, then you might be able to get a good deal on a Gen 3 from the dealers. And if you decide to wait, you can save up more money.

"Well, I'd rather wait for a Gen 4, but if you can give me a good deal on this Gen 3 here, I'll buy it today." will probably almost guarantee you will, especially if you do your research ahead of time (aka look at different dealerships and their prices), gas prices stay low, and the dealerships aren't moving hybrids very quickly.

Another thing you could do is go to one of those sites that has leases that people want to give up, and take one of them over. You can probably save a lot of money this way as the first person paid for that stuff up front, and many will give you a little cash as an incentive to take it off their hands. Just keep an eye out for how much mileage they have left, as if you drive 500 miles a month regularly and the remaining lease only allows 200 miles a month before hitting the mileage penalty, it won't do you much good.

If the lease isn't only a few months in, you can pay less for it than if you leased it yourself. I have to admit I was tempted to takeover a PiP advanced lease, especially one that had about a year to 18 months left on it, and then buy it at the end of the lease for probably less than what a used one would have cost. And if you end up not liking it after all, you can just turn the car back in when the lease expires, though make sure you check to see if they'll let you turn it into a local dealership first, and not the one that the first person leased it from.

 

There are no physical partitions for EV vs HV usage. The EV and HV "partitions" are just artifacts of how the the control unit software manages the charge in the battery.

 

yes, definitely read more, there seems to be some confusion. i think most of us are expecting 10 years, with little degradation.

 

+1

 

If you haven't noticed any battery degradation by now, I highly doubt you'll see much in the next 7 1/2 years. If it were anybody else but Toyota, I'd say maybe. They selected that chemistry and construction for a reason and it wasn't just for performance. I will go out on a limb and say if you don't race your car in the Baja at least once a month or perform weekend drag races the battery will probably show very little degradation in 10 years. And by that time who knows how good battery technology will be by then?

 

If I lived in a home with access to a garage?
Plus had an employer with charging stations available?

I'd EASILY choose a PiP.

The only reason I do NOT own one, is current "apartment" living with no real access to home charging.

 

That, and they're cheaper than they used to be. They're around 29k now? Mine was 32 :/