Should I be concerned with putting a lot of Miles on my Prius

As has been said, the Prius is meant to be driven. If you're making lots of long trips, you're better off with a Prius than just about anything else on the road.

 

if you add up the $200. or so spent every time you rent, since the rental company is making a profit, it is likely less expensive to drive your own car, and retire it however much time sooner for a newer one.

but if your goal is to preserve your car at all costs, leave it home and get another one for driving.

or the answer could be somewhere in the middle.

 

We're doing a bit of alternate vehicle, skytraining to downtown events. Also, we rarely if ever use the car for short errands in the neighbourhood, say a sushi pickup two-three blocks distant; just hoof it.

 

highway driving is the easiest thing on a car. at least, that's what i've always heard.

 

Off-topic, just to share:

The silver lining to my gaff, I learned how to cross out text. I've noticed others do that, thought it a good idea: leaving the text but putting a cross-out line through it, gives the reader a clear understanding of the edit history.



Example:

The quick brown fox jumped over the the lazy dog.

Highlight the text you want to cross out, then select strike-through.

 

What is a sky train?

 

I have read that also but how does it make sense with a Prius? A Prius charges and discharges many times in a trip. It’s only small amounts but there a working battery’s out there with hundreds of thousands of miles.

 

Conjours up heady images. It's a magnet-impelled, driverless train system, sometimes at grade, or in tunnel, or elevated.

SkyTrain (Vancouver) - Wikipedia

Yeah I was doing the math this morning, thinking with daily driving, 365 trips a year, assuming at one full discharge per trip (thinking all the partials equal one whole), the battery would be toast in 3~4 years.

Which is not typically the case. Maybe that definition of charge/discharge needs more clarification. Anyway, the message seems to be that usage wears down the battery. Maybe in particular if you have to haul the car up and down a steep hill daily.

That's our grandkids transportation scenario btw: city planners of that community in their wisdom put the middle and high schools waaay up this hill. Pretty much as high as they could go. So everybody and their uncle are hauling tons of steel up/down this blinking torture track twice daily.

Luckily it's rare event we need to go up there.

 

Nice! And it appears to be inexpensive to ride also. To take a train from Sacramento to Davis is 16 dollars, it’s only 1 stop.

 

Spoiler: OFFTOPIC

I didnt even know that there is button for that on this forum software.
I always code stuff straight away to the text while writing, like

Code:

[S]striked out text[/S] and normal text

 

On weekends/evenings it's a lot cheaper, no extra charges depending on number of zones, just one base rate. And for me, being over 65, I pay the same as kids, around $2 now I think. Handy too, you can get a card, just swipe it getting on/off. And can be set up to auto replenish from your credit card.

Also tracks your usage, so if you're a contract killer on the job, for example, you'd want to leave the card at home, use cash. Sorry, watching too much Behzat C.

I'm likely to be arrested for off-topic crime.

 

The first one was replaced in the recall so technically only one failure (2nd) a couple of months ago.

FWIW

 

Ah ha!! I hadn't checked on the cross hairs to see what's behind them. Thanks.

Yup! I've read that taxis get hundreds of thousands of miles on the original traction battery.

 

No offense intended to Gen 3 and Gen 2 Prius owners. You should drive the hell out of a 2009 Prius while you can before the battery on it dies. It seems that once people get to 10 years old or more. That is when the Prius battery approaches the coffin's corner.

 

Fortunately a new battery is only 1714.48.
Battery - 2004-2009 Toyota Prius (G9510-47031) | Tracy Toyota
And not that hard to replace.

 

Do you want an old Prius going to the crusher with a few miles on it, or an old Prius going to the crusher with a whole bunch of miles on it?

That's the real question. Age hits these cars harder than miles. No sense in saving it for later, use it or lose it.

 

2005 battery still going just fine here.

 

Our 2010 is about to hit 200k miles .

And in the original pack performing like new.

I just hope the engine lasts as long as the battery does.

 

IMO 71,000 miles on a 2009 Prius isn't bad.
I'm going to make the assumption that the worry isn't about the miles currently on the vehicle but adding miles with long road trips. I guess my question is, do you expect your driving habits to change or adjust?
If after a few of these road trips, your driving pattern is going to adjust I wouldn't worry about it. If you foresee one long road trip after another?
Then whether you want to rent a vehicle to take the mileage off your Prius is up to you. Personally, I felt the Prius was THE best road trip vehicle I ever owned. So I would lean towards using it.