Quick price check

always attached garage, no block heater, hyper miler.

 

Call Toyota Customer Care to get certainty. They are the ones who deal w/ this and grant exceptions, and they are the ones who ultimately cut the servicing dealer the warranty check. Many stories of dealers here giving misinformation or not even knowing they were under CARB.

 

FWIW, Texas is NOT a CARB state. If the car was "originally" purchased AND registered in the state of Texas, the vehicle would not be subject to CARB and the hybrid warranty would have to be 8yr./100K.

 

Look at the Nissan Leaf for your daily. Rent a roomier vehicle for your summer trips.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Not sure I agree with this.

It's all still relative.
I have a short daily commute to work and back, probably very similar to the OP's. I've found that the the vehicle warms up, and is designed to warm up, amazingly quickly. And while it is true shorter trips are NOT where the Prius or HSD shines, I still get better gas mileage with that short commute than I believe I could get with any other ICE only vehicle.

Even with short trips, I still enjoy 400+ mile tanks easily and routinely. If I add, road trips on weekends? I can get my average up to the Golden Snitch of 50 miles per gallon.

So while I agree that shorter trips, lessen the efficiency of Hybrid Synergy Drive, I wouldn't necessarily tell someone that wanted a Prius that it makes ownership a bad idea.
On my short commutes? I can average 30-35 miles per gallon...which is only considered "bad" by optimal Prius Hybrid Standards. For any other vehicle that would be amazing gas mileage...PERIOD.

There's still potential value, and worth in considering a Prius even if most of your drives are short commutes. The only warning and caveat would be NOT to drive exclusively short trips and expect 50 mpg returns.

With a work week of short commutes, and a weekend that often adds more miles and longer drives? I enjoy mid-40's MPG easily, and I'm happy with that.

 

Uh oh, that's us. Well not quite. We try to consolidate trips, and we do have longer runs. The car'll sit a day or three between uses. And we use a block heater, year 'round, to hasten warm up.

Speaking of needing full warm up: I finally got the dreaded engine knock at start up, the other day. Typically if I need to shuffle the car in and out of the garage, I'll manage to avoid engine start up. Toyota in it's wisdom provides a massive 10~15 seconds of EV at start up on the third gen, no more.

So what I resort to is short dashes, shut down, repeat as needed till I get the car where it needs to go, say out of the garage and onto the street, or adjacent in the driveway. This can take up to 3 starts and stops.

Expressly pushing the EV button invariably DOESN'T work, for me. Pretty much the only time it does work is when the car is warmed up, which defeats the purpose, well my purpose.

Anyway, the other day, moving the car around, I pushed it too far, had the engine kick in, for a second or two. And sure enough, the following day, cold start: clank-clank-clank. Shut down and restart, it's fine.

(Sorry, rambling, way off-topic.)

 

congrats! all the best.

 

Perform a drain & fill of the transaxle. See post #473: ATF fluid changes ARE Required. | Page 24 | PriusChat

Engine Block Heater for 2010-2015 Toyota Prius - PriusChat Shop
Assuming you garage this car, maybe put a 15A/20A timing mechanism, so you only use a few hours of electricity to just warm the engine block. Otherwise, if you plug in when you get into the garage, and unplug when you leave, many hours of unnecessary electricity might be used.

 

That's my main issue with a relatively dumb block heater. A timer would solve it, there are few people willing to wake up 3-4 hours before their commute to plug in the block heater. Everyone will plug it in once they return, and unplug in the morning.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

If you only have 22,000 miles, you don't need to replace the transaxle fluid. If you want the vehicle to last as long as possible, replace the fluid at 30,000 mi and every 60,000 after that.

Also, at 30,000 you'll replace the engine air cabin air filters, which require no tools.

 

stick with oem, they are reasonable on line, and high quality. usually the filters are pretty clean and only need to be tapped out and returned.

 

I buy the Toyota filters, they're about $20 or $30 and the dealer always has them in stock.

Here's the best news: You can find very clear videos of this and every other Gen III Prius maintenance procedure here:

Nutz About Bolts Prius Maintenance Videos | PriusChat

Bookmark that page. It's awesome.

 

Click on the blue hyperlink that is containted in post 29, 30, and 31. It will take to you the PriusChat thread where I posted the info. Goto post #473, which is in the middle. Within this post, is a blue hyperlink to the transaxle oil analysis that Professor Denenberg and Bob Wilson performed.