Question about a hybrid car

[mahina]

28. I have a Prius with 160,000 miles on it, it's 19 years old. Here's what I've learned.

My mechanic who with his brother created the Toyota hybrid repair team in Honolulu before they went independant tells me you have to completely cycle the battery at least two or three times a week if you wanted to last. I personally have replaced this battery three times- that’s not terrible for how many miles it has. It’s the best car I’ve ever had and if the paint wasn’t going, I wouldn’t even be thinking about changing over, but it cost a fortune to paint a car and I don’t love driving around in a shabby looking car. I might just paint it and keep it, still deciding.

Anyway, the bottom line is if you’re a low mileage driver for a while it will be fine, but you’re going be replacing that hybrid battery sooner than you expect and it costs @3k. Also stay away from 3rd gen Priii. Also, don’t buy anything until they’ve made a million of them.

The next thing that goes as the brake actuator and that cost several thousand dollars too. If I remember correctly. For this reason, and because of not needing to do oil changes and because of the reduced CO2 footprint, once I get solar on the roof, I do plan to get a plug-in. The only difficulty with that is that in Hawaii the power goes out semi regularly, sometimes for a long time after bad storms.

My .02 fwiw.