Theoretically how long will the Prius last?

So, it's my wifes car. I have driven the old one maybe 4K miles on trips and in town. Nothing wrong with it, I'm a V8 guy! (2K Trans Am, 17 Camaro SS).

We have a 2018 Prius 4, loaded.

She likes the new card minus a few things.
1. The dealer would not turn off the incessant beeping when you back up. It sucks, I can attest to that.
2. Pulling into a parking garage, the side warnings go off and drive you nuts when you are trying to get the ticket out of the machine. See #1.
3. The hatch opens to high for someone who is 5ft tall.
4. The nav needs a turn off function! It's always on, but I did not RTFM so I don't know if it's possible.
5. The lack of storage is kind of a bummer for her. I just told her to keep less S*** in her car! I am used to no storage so it's no big deal to me.

She got 47 MPG her first tank in crappy weather so no complaints.
Having a new car and not worn out seats is wonderful.
You can go much farther in EV mode which is a bonus!
It rides so much nicer than the old car but you have a 133K mile difference. I won't say it rivals my Touring mode in my SS but it's close.
Love the multi color screen on the dash, though with the HUD you don't care as much. for me a HUD is a make or break deal, one of the reasons we got the 4.
The JBL system was worth the package upgrade, sounds great.

Overall she likes it and has no regrets but the beeping just sucks. She's got about 500 miles so far. She has not really had any other complaints. She's kid of like a social worker so she travels a bit for work. It's a big combo of in town, highway, back roads etc. I think in the old car the year round average was about 46. We also run snows in the winter and that keeps mileage down but safety up.

I have not driven it so I can't comment!

We now have 3 blue cars and one red and I can't really deal with it so I am trying to get myself into a Vette in place of my 17 Camaro...I am on the new every 2 or 3 lease plan.

 

I believe you can turn off the proximity sensors? Download the pdf of the Owner's Manual from Toyota Tech Info and search, it tends to be easy than flipping through the paper one.

 

That makes me feel good. Just got a used 2016 Prius 3 Tour with 18k miles. It replaced a 2007 that had 185k and got totaled last week by a rear end collision. Wife and I did the whole air bags thing. She's got a sore side but I just have some chest muscle twinges from the seat belt and airbag.

 

congrats and welcome!

sorry to hear about your accident. ouch! glad you're both pretty much okay.

 

A very, very good point. As for the battery, the original traction batt in my 04 died at 13 years and around 175k miles. I say "about" since the whole gauge cluster had been dead for several months before the battery transplant (and got fixed at the same time, but that's another story).

The BATTERY, however, was not the death of my car. Two weeks ago, this otherwise solid servant (it didn't burn oil, original AC produced instant, arctic cold any time of year, etc) got sent to the yard when a severe brake overheat resulted in a repair bill of more than 3x the value of the car. That's subjective, not pure math. I could have fixed the car, it was physically possible, but for reasons beyond the scope here, mine went to the parts yard, with a perfectly healthy battery.

EDIT: Duh, I forgot to add that at this point, it had a bit over 200k miles the last time I drove it, and it was an early 04, so fifteen years. That's my single datum point.

 

ekpolk, don't feel bad about losing a new battery. Nobody can foresee future events. In 2009, my '97 Camry V-6 was totaled in a sandwich wreck (I'm "Bruce T" on BITOG). A few months prior, I had sunk $6,000 into the car for body and mechanical repairs.

 

Good to see you Bruce. An excellent point. Still, these sorts of situations are among the most powerful in their ability to induce "would have/should have" lamentations... Those, of course, are worthless except to the extent that they teach better decision making in the future.

The whole concept of a car being "totaled" is pretty slippery. Many think only in terms of physical damage, but it's really complex blend of physical damage/malfunction AND the cost to repair. I bought a bare-bones 4cyl 5-spd man Camry new. At less than a year, I was in a substantial accident, and the cost to repair was within a couple hundred of the "total" threshold (I forget the customary %-of value at the time). I begged the ins co to just total it, but they insisted upon fixing it. When the shop tried to deliver it, we discovered that the airbag ECU had also fried, adding almost $3k more to the repair bill -- and rendering the car "totaled." So the ins co paid once to fix the car, AND then got to pay me its value. Duh...

The interesting part: if my car had been a loaded ES-300, just a dressed-up super-loaded Camry V-6, vs a bare-bones Camry, the outcome would have been different. Even with the extra "supplemental" repair to the airbag system, the car would have been below the legal "total" threshold, and I still would have ended up with the fixed car.

Back to this thread, the hybrids -- all of them -- add the twist of late-life TB failure to the "how long will it last" calculation. Very fortunately, market forces have taken us far, far from the "ten gazillion dollar" bill that the Chicken Littles confidently predicted back when hybrids first hit the market. My TB replacement turned out to be very reasonable (~$1700 for the batt, plus labor at a good independent shop with ex-Toyota techs). I was still well ahead in fuel savings compared to a similar conventional.

So for all that we gain driving a Prius, and it's plenty, we probably do face a more complicated decision in most cases, as the car reaches deep into its golden years and expensive things start happening.

How long will it last? As long as you're willing -- or able -- to put up the money to keep it going!

 

Nicely put. Yes, it's a slippery slope when to total a car. Ultimately, we take our best guess. In the old days, it was worth keeping a car as long as the engine and transmission were good, but today other parts have gotten so expensive they can tip the scales (and that's without a hybrid system). Totaling a vehicle in a severe accident is upsetting, but it's hard to complain when we can walk away.

 

Amen to that! I would probably not be alive but for that car -- which was the first I owned with side-curtain airbags -- which deployed next to me when I got T-boned by a speeding Tahoe! Talk about getting slapped upside the head! They deploy harder and much faster (believe it or not) than frontal bags, since they have so little time and space in which to do their magic. Brief but unpleasant -- yet far better than eating the Tahoe's radiator would have been...

I'm not complaining, since the system likely saved my life, but it's still amazing that an airbag ECU, roughly the size of an old VCR casette can cost thousands of dollars!

 

Parts are even more expensive on the 2018 Prius.


From Composite Headlamp - Toyota (81070-47711) | Toyota Parts

 

^^^ Please stop! I'm starting to feel the compulsion to go cocoon my car in bubble wrap before I drive it again. Then how will I be able to check my battery which might be failing... Help...

 

On the plus side, bubble wrap will cushion that Prius-hunting Tahoe.

 

Geez, 30~40 years on, the sealed beams are still $20, lol:

Sealed Beams | Canadian Tire

You can go high falutin': there's some in the $30's.

Interesting story, from Jalopnik. Please don't kill me if this link explodes...:

Any vehicles still have sealed beams?

Whew: it's ok.

Wranglers for example, "look" like they have sealed beams, but no?

Addendum: Nope, they look like sealed beams, but just the bulb is replaced. Maybe relatively cheap to replace the whole thing, say if they start to haze?

Addendum #2: Not too bad, around $120 for the bare headlamp assembly, $20 for a bulb:

Headlamp Components for 2018 Jeep Wrangler | Mopar Parts

 

^^^ How nostalgic! In the late 70s, when I was learning to drive (first DL in 77), the rectangular sealed beams appeared on all the new police cruisers. That immediately became how paranoid high school drivers ID-ed cops at night! It usually went like this, "slow down, slow down, square lights!..."

 

Yes, that can be a detriment of a prestige, luxury or fully loaded car.

Back 20 years ago, I had a good friend who was a mechanic for a prestige brand. I was looking for a 3-4yr old prestige car at the time, and lined one up. I mentioned it to him. He said "yes, I'll check it for you - you have to be careful."

He explained that he knew another like it - it was near totalled when near new, but because it was worth so much, they fixed it - and it hasn't been quite right ever since. (It was a different car, but didn't buy it on his advice for other reasons.)

 

Alan: I have zero knowledge of the legalities of car titling in Australia. In the states, a car like my fixed-but-totaled Camry receives what is known as a "salvage title," which is required under certain circumstances (details vary among the 50 states), esp when the ins co pays off the owner. Cars can and are sold with salvage titles, but their value is diminished to next-to-nothing. Anyway, the ins co in my case really shot themselves in the foot on my deal, since they were left with a very pretty (lots of fresh paint and detailing...) but almost worthless 2002 Camry, for which they had essentially paid twice.

Some people make a sport of finding "nice" salvage title cars and getting as much use from them as they can. Often they become choice parts cars. But we also have a dark shadowy underground industry of fraudsters looking to either "launder" salvage titles (transfers to and from states with lenient salvage title rules), or perhaps worse, finding ways to get non-salvaged VIN#s on salvaged cars.

Again, I don't know how it works down under, but human nature being what it is I assume you have your fair share of crooks... You were right to be wary, whatever the legal nicities may have been.

 

Yes, there have been crooks playing with cars - re-titling etc down here. They've made it a lot tougher. I'm not sure about current laws in all states, but in Queensland ... "A statutory write-off is a vehicle that's been assessed as a total loss with damage too severe to be repaired and returned to the road [the car's VIN is cancelled, so can't be re-used] ... OR ... a repairable write-off is a vehicle that's been assessed as a total loss but doesn't meet the criteria for a statutory write-off". The 2nd category needs to pass a routine inspection before re-registered.

But in the case of, say a Rolls or Bentley, even relatively minor damage could be relatively expensive - but, in relation to the "value", it's still able to be fixed. If it were a baby Nissan/TOYOTA, it's gone to the wreckers with much more minor damage.

 

When it comes to expensive parts and being that the 4th generation Prii are new one could say the prices are jacked up to make money off insurance companies. I wouldn't be surprised if automakers determine the maximum amount they can charge for a part by estimating the value of the car, the parts likely to be needed in the event of a wreck but not ask so much that the insurance companies total the vehicle but can get the maximum amount they can. Suppose there were no insurance companies and Toyota was selling the parts directly to you and me, i'd bet that the headlight would be much less than $740.

If you were able to find every part from Toyota the car would cost as much as a Rolls Royce. I would also suspect that in 10 years parts for the 4th generation Prius will be a good bit less, but probably still pricey. Ten years ago the big concern about hybrids was the cost of the battery pack being thousands and now there's aftermarket parts making a battery pack replacement much more affordable.

As far as how long will these cars last, being the 4th generation Prius, I think most cars can last over 200k with proper maintenance....however, a lot of cars don't get proper service once the warranty runs out and even more once it goes to a 2nd and 3rd owner.

 

The only viable after market battery pack I know of is @2k1Toaster new cell kit. There is another inferior kit with CEBA cells.
All others are just putting used, tired modules used, failed battery packs.

i currently know of nothing aftermarket for the Li-Ion packs used since 2012 in the PiP and overseas.