What's the best upgrade?

You've got it pretty good they're not much after 2010 is very well executed planned obsolescence Toyota and Chevrolet and these companies they can't afford you keeping a car 15 years they need it to be no more than five or six It seems like that's what it seems like the goal is they've been working hard to get people into new loans new cars around the 5 to 6-year mark people like me keeping cars 15 years that is out of the question but that's not my problem. Like I have buddies that have all these primes and plugins and so on they're okay if you're going right up the street and so on and if you can manage to live the life where you're 9 minutes from work and all that sort of thing great setup. But I wouldn't want to have to pay for it look what a Gen 5 cost you know very expensive. What I found to be another inexpensive car like a generation too is a Chevy volt I got one from my brother It's a 2012 I've had no problems out of it at all and it's 12 or so years old right nothing I just put a new 12 volt in it and it goes 30 mi like it did when it was new and then the generator kicks in and it gets about 42 mi to the gallon so pretty close to the Prius at 12 years old 42 to 45 is pretty normal so not a bad car and it's a Chevrolet and it's built like a tank and goes like stink and you can buy one pretty easily I see them I'm looking for one for my daughter right now $3,000 is not unheard of and it's a pretty solid vehicle green bean I think is even recycling batteries for them so it might be something to look into people are getting out of them and getting into electrics but I'm not in any hurry to do that so the volt seems cool it's a platform that they shouldn't have dropped because I would buy a fairly new one probably they should have put that in a small SUV It's a cool setup it's an extended range electric vehicle e r e v.

 

You don't say where you are your location with the car is a big influencer If you're in a no rust area Southeast United States middle of the state not at the beach things like that a generation two should last you a lifetime literally easily I mean if batteries and consumables are going to run you into the ground then probably any car is going to be problematic You don't really need to upgrade anything at some point you need a hybrid battery at some point the brake actuator fails If those two things are handles and the above conditions are met with the vehicle three of mine will outlast me course I'm old but still I'm taking them from a hundred something thousand to around 600 three of the four or maybe all four of them I might not make it that long I don't know I've done it with others. Usually you're coming out of a Prius because all your friends have new cars you've been driving this thing for 4 years now You've gotten a promotion all the planets are aligning well and all of that and then the break actuator goes bad after you put a battery in it and you throw your hands up like the money Gremlins are coming after you that car goes to a towing lot where I pick it up for $500 and now you have a car payment because you're entitled to it or however that works.

 

A new Prius is a great way to save money against the cost of fuel. If you drive it a lot, you can save a bunch of money.

But a used Prius is very different. All of that technical complexity equals risk, and the risks of failure rise with age.

Thus, a used Prius is not a guaranteed way to save money vs. the cost of other used cars, and sometimes they're a lot more expensive than other used car choices.

Everything is relative. Used isn't the end of the world. If you get a 4-year old used Prius it'll probably be fine for years. On the other hand a 14-year old is more likely to start throwing expensive problems the day you take it home.

 

Well if you get sucked into the Gen 3 and you wind up doing a head gasket or possibly two then you have also the hybrid battery at the age of the Gen 3 that it is and the two break actuator pieces that are well generally considered expensive and more costly to install on the generation 3 It seems like anyway The generation 2 you can throw all this stuff on the car pretty quickly it's built kind of like a tank and they hold up good unfortunately people that realize this keeps the car holding its value so you have to really do your due diligence to find one for near nothing I like to pay 700 to a thousand bucks for cars with faded exteriors and generally very clean leather interiors is what I'm looking for and I have generally not a lot of problem finding them and then I might have two grand fooling around with them and then they're on the road for hundreds of thousands of miles generally speaking I haven't had any of the outlier problems like transmissions and motor generators and all that going bad just the real normal stuff which is the normal things that go on with this model the outlier things that have happened to a few people tend to stay just that they haven't happened very often but in the generation 3 the stuff seems to be pretty standard and it happens to lots of folks The smart people that bought into that car got rid of them at $150,000 took the lost traded it in got a new payment whatever they did they were out of it so to them it was a great vehicle as it should be.

 

Depends on your budget and needs. If the old one is still running and not needing a lot of repairs start putting money into a money market and saving while you research. My daughter just bought a 22 RAV4, get the same MPG but has more power on the highway and is way more comfy. But it was north of $20K, so there is that. But after 5+ years of the old prius she had quite a bit saved up.