Will there be many Prius Gen 2 on the road in 10-15 years?

If you talk to a long-time Gen2 owner they'll proudly tell you how great their car is and how they're going to keep it forever and how it's never had any problems. But truth is these folks have no idea how damaging it is in the long run to fail to clean and thoroughly inspect and repair all the little things regularly so when an expensive repair comes along its worth the cost to keep the car going.

In others words there's lots of skilled mechanics who will be driving Gen2 for decades to come, but right now all the people who don't know how to keep their Gen2 healthy and depend on others who charge a lot of money are being heartbroken and moving on to something newer.

 

They'll be really old then. Sooner or later the ownership has to shift more and more to the kind of car enthusiasts who love an old car and don't mind that the parts are all NLA from the dealer and every repair is a creativity test.

 

14 years old car with 140k miles. If I don't get to keep it for next ten years, it will be my fault for not caring and loving enough. I am aiming to join 300K club. lol

 

The year I bought my first Prius, the vehicle I was driving was 24 years old. For several years, there had already been a lot of parts for it that were NLA at the dealer. For the ones that were still available, there was only one guy at the local dealer's parts counter who knew how to research and find them. He worked nights. (They actually had a parts counter open to midnight then!) I made a lot of late-night runs to buy parts. Any of the other guys would just say "we can't get that."

For other parts, it was aftermarket if they existed, or trips to salvage yards, or mail orders from specialty restorer catalogs. I was able to get a replacement clock, for the original one that no longer kept time, after being put in touch with someone who had worked in that clock division before the manufacturer spun it off, and had hung on to a stash of old clocks just to send to people in my situation. That was kind of neat.

All in all, though, taking care of that thing was getting pretty exhausting. Each simple repair was a parts-sourcing project.

 

Caring for it is key... I interact with so many people who say they love their Prius and never want any other car but the one they have and then they pretend like all the wear and tear and accidental damage can be easily ignored with no consequence. Drives me crazy! It's so irrational.

 

I have been speeding tons of time reading posts here and doing my own reserch in order for me to keep my Gen 2 in a top notch shape. I have a cople of local shops I use when/if thtings are bit out of my comfort level but gaining knowledges/understanding of this car's trait will help to prevent a major problem down the road. With help from Prius veterans like you in this forum, I should be able to keep this car as long as possible.

 

The biggest weakness is when people start dismissing cosmetic flaws... Like a scratch or a dent or a broken part on the interior or exterior that doesn't effect the cars mechanical performance. People think, I can just live with that.

But as the years go buy and the damage starts to add up and suddenly you need a new battery pack and you look at your car and consider spending another $2K on it and if you didn't fix all those little things, it makes it way harder to want to invest heavily in the future of your beat up old car.

But if you are monitoring all the used Prius going to the local junk yards and you're out their regularly pulling off parts to improve the condition of your own Prius, then spending big on a brand new battery pack makes your car like new again and is worth it.

 

That makes a perfect sense! It was not in a great cosmetic shape when I took over. I started cleaning up inside first(watched you-tube video of how to clean seats/interior etc) and move to an engine compartment then exterior. I still have a long way to go(need more polishing/waxing..). Suddendly, it started looking like a brand new(not quite lol)! It gives me back what I gave! I will continue to address any issues inside and outside to keep this "feeling" I have for this car.

 

How many 20-25 year old cars of any make do you see in your area?

 

how many is many?

still plenty of gen 1 on the road, but don't know if it's many

 

And as you know well, Prius are so reliable sometimes it's hard stuff to find stuff to fix. And I like cleaning and caring for my Gen2 so much I have a whole group of people with Gen2 that I care for too. Same with my gardens... Of course there's times when all my friend Prius and friend's gardens look better than my own and then I get a little sad and take some time for my own stuff.

 

Knew someone who sold a 2003 for $1700 last Fall. I never worked on the battery pack because everyone warned me away from Gen1 packs and she didn't have much money. Also out here in the PNW I regularly see one or two Gen 1 on craigslist as high as $3900 range which is remarkable for a first edition design that's 18 years old.

 

That varies strongly with how much winter salt is used by area highway departments. Absent salt, cars can last a long time.

This region didn't used to use much salt. But that changed, with a vengeance, a bit more than a decade ago after an event that contributed to bringing down a Seattle mayor:

"In December 2008, Nickels was criticized after an unusual snowstorm blanketed the city with the greatest snowfalls it had seen since 1996. The Seattle "snowpack," which began accumulating on December 13, did not melt until December 27, the longest period of time snow had remained on the ground in Seattle since the mid-1980s. Seattle did not use salt to clear its roads, citing environmental concerns, which led to severe problems with the city's public transit system.[3]"

[3] Emily Heffter (January 1, 2009). "After storm of criticism, Seattle mayor reverses no-salt policy for snow". The Seattle Times. Retrieved January 5, 2009.

When Seattle flipped to being salt lovers, so did numerous other jurisdictions.

Hint for mayors: Don't hire a Dept. of Transportation Chief from a completely different climate zone, unfamiliar winter transportation issues, who goes out of his way to make sure the mayor's commute route between home and office is perfectly groomed, leaving said mayor nearly clueless from lack of first-hand experience about how bad road conditions are in the rest of the city.

 

I think we will still see some Gen2. I don’t think we’ll see very many Gen3 since they have an actual handful of weak points.

seems like 2016+ they fixed a lot of the weak points. Maybe gen4 is the next Gen2 tank?! Let’s hope so!

Also keep in mind, in the next 5-10 years aftermarket lithium packs coming a relatively low prices, could be the key to keeping these old hybrids on our roads.

 

In the PNW in that age range mostly I see Toyotas and to a lesser extent Hondas. In cars greater than 25 years they're mostly classic American cars that show up in surprising numbers when our chronic rainy weather finally turns sunny... What's most notably missing is all the old Subaru's that were once the most popular cars on the road in numbers equivalent to the amount of Prius you see on the west coast today. But those problematic aluminum heads for their boxer engine were never a part aftermarket parts makers would manufacture. That's why I ended up in a Prius...

 

you haven't been following the thread then...

 

Without hearing your definition of “many” it is difficult to give a good answer.

I can tell you there will be fewer than there are now. I can also tell you there will be more than 3.
As such, yes, there will be ‘many’ out there.

 

/thread