Prius finally dead after 349,531 miles. But not from natural causes.

Some of you probably know about Jesse, the 2002 Prius owner with well over 300K on his car. For some time now, John1701a has chronicled Jesse's ever-increasing and mostly trouble-free mileage. I don't know if Jesse ever joined here, but he checks in from time to time at CleanMPG.com.

Well, Jesse's car is now dead. Through no fault of its own. It had help in the form of a 17 year-old who failed to yield the right-of-way. Fortunately, both occupants were unhurt. Jesse doesn't say whether the car stands a chance of being resuscitated, but he calls his odometer reading "final." See this CleanMPG thread for a description of Jesse's car and travels; fast forward to post #47 for the discussion about the collision.

Thanks for the link JimboK. It would be nice if they can save the car but I doubt it. So sad.

Such a pitty, and under 500 miles shy of 350K miles!

i just PMed him asking if i could buy it from him, i would love to bring it back to life if the insurance wouldnt cover it.

i brought this back to life.

A PM through CleanMPG should work.

Maybe we should get Toyota to finance shipping it and putting it up on a plinth next to on Top Gear.

Not just Prius, the only way to kill a 'well-maintained' car is ALWAYS by someone else running into it or natural disaster.

I really hope it can be rebuilt to run on the original ICE and battery. Jesse's Prius was (and still is) an icon of Prius durability.

It is a shame that some old GM junk car put a possible stop to this.

If it can not be repaired, who will take the torch? Andrew Grant is in Canada with 04' Prius. Who has the second highest mileage in US (either 01'+ or 04'+)?

know that feeling, something of yours screwed up by an idiot

truly a shame to see it die in this way.

Don't think of it as "only" 349,531 miles....

...think of it as 562,516 kilometres! :lol:

Toyota's engineers and marketing people in Japan think in kilometres.

Perhaps Jesse could get support from Toyota like Irv Gordon got from Volvo for his 1966 P1800 with 2.6 million miles on it. The world wide publicity that Volvo have got from that car must be worth a mint.

350k miles!

Geez, he must have gone through about 5 batteries at $7,000 each. Ouch!

He was still running on original batteries. His batteries were never replaced.

It was a junk Mercury Sable (badge engineered version of the Ford Taurus).

Too bad! I too would've liked to have seen how far it'd have gone before the ICE or battery conked out.

Being the victim of someone running a red light was not how I expected his adventure to end.

Thankfully, Jesse walked away from this crushing accident without a scratch.

Photos are available on his webpage.
.

Thankyou. A good read, I'll go back and read more tomorrow.

Nasty damage!

wow what a bummer....

but expected... my 04 was also a victim of an accident... only 30,000 miles. i had hoped to 10 fold that amount...but now on Pri#2...pushing 21,000 and going strong... recently changed cabin and engine air filter... along with 4 oil changes... that is all so far.

It doesn't look too bad. Maybe it can be revived.

As a suggestion, could you add "Jesse walked away from this crushing accident" to the photo directory? The existing caption "tragic end" gave the wrong impression. I saw the photo and deployed air-bags but no indication how he came out.

Any follow-up from Jesse on his next plans?

Thanks,
Bob Wilson