Generation III reliability concerns

Nice psycho-analysis (babble). But no, I'm hardly insecure. Quality rant, though.

Your lead-off was about Toyota reliability slipping, followed by your supposition that the G3 reliability might (also) be slipping.

My point was - Without facts/data, your supposition/question is purely speculative. IMO, that puts it into the category of more of the same hysteria that the media has tried to whip up. Do you have data that shows the Prius is less reliable? If so, please post it. real simple.

Trying to paint the Prius with a broad Toyota brush is meaningless. You can look at any manufactuer, and I guarentee you will find models within the same brand that are good, and other that are not. Again, rather than trying to generalize, try focusing on the car that this forum is about - the Prius.

If you have data that says the Prius is less relaible, then I think most of us would love to see it. I know I would.

But let me ask you the question (again) - Just suppose it turns out that after all the data has been collected and sorted, that the G3 Prius is not as reliable as prior generations? Then what? Certainly within your right to post what you want, and to be concerned about whatever you want. But it's also my right to ask the question - What's the point? As my parents always told me - Why worry about things you have no control over? It seems to me that the time to "be concerned" is prior to buying the car, and not after. That is, unless you are just one of those people that has to worry about everything? And speaking of psycho-babble...they have a name for those types of people.

 

Although I agree with your point and have had no problems with out Gen III Prius, I am reminded that some bombs tick too.

We plan on keeping our Prius until she turns to dust.

 

Among many other issues. Yes I also think the front light is aimed too low, thinking about adjusting that this weekend.
Sorry to hear about your rattle, havn't you taken your prius in to get some fix?
I had some place foamed up but new one just keep poping up but going to put more when I take it into the dealers this weekend to replace my rear end lights (condensation in them).
If they get all these things right it is a great car. Shame.

 

OK, some Toyotas have slipped, so say some sources.

Big picture -- Toyotas (especially the Prius) are still higher in quality than just about every other make out there. If you want to go model vs. model, the Prius wins hands-down.

You have to wonder what the influence of public perception has had on so-called quantitative reports. Public perception is really the only thing that has changed recently.

So, are you really concerned about your 2010 Prius, compared to all the other alternatives out there that you could be driving?

You shouldn't be.

It's all relative.

FWIW - I rented a 2010 Ford Fusion (non-hybrid) recently for a week. It had only a couple hundred miles on it. It was a piece of **&^*!! Various body parts were coming loose. The interior looked amazingly fake, like all those TV's you see in a furniture store!

 

Lessee, they put an EGR valve and a "muffler bearing" back into
the system. Let's see what happens to those after two or three
years.
.
_H*

 

I raised my head lights shortly after I purchasd the vehicle. It was a very easy procedure. The only problem I had was a lost wrench .... and with the bottom shroud, I was never able to find it. So, I tied a string onto the next wrench so if I dropped it. Anyway, the lights are aimed to my total satisfaction, and I do not get on-comung motorist blinking their lights at me. Good luck.

 

As Felt noted the lights are easy to adjust, turn the toothed ring or the bolt in the center anti-clockwise to raise. Cruise control/brake light switch also easy to adjust.

The dealer offered to try and fix the rattles but I prefer to do it myself if I can, I trust myself more. The hard part is finding them, the fix is usually quick and easy. If I can't locate them pretty soon I may take the dealer's service department up on their offer. But I have found some of them.

 

Reliable? Yeah no doubt I belive Toyota are Reliable mechincally. I am not worried that I will be bombarded with a lot of cost due to breakdown repairs etc.

But shoddy material and quality control? Yes. Bad.

Otherwise I would have ranked Prius 3 one of the best car in the world.

Please Toyota I am asking nicely. Fix the raido, rattle, back lighting, and brake sqeuaking then you have a winnier. Don't force us to take action in the future because media is not on your side at the moment.

 

The "software issue with brakes" on the 2010 Prius is a quirk that's been known since the 1st gen Prius. Some say the behavior feels worse on the 3rd gen than on previous gens. I don't know since I don't have a 3rd gen but can definitely repro it on my 2nd gen. Regardless, Toyota I guess out of caution and to avoid more bad publicity in the midst of the recalls decided to make it a recall vs. the worse behavior on the Fusion Hybrid (Consumer Reports Cars Blog: Ford issues prompt fix for Fusion Hybrid brakes) that Ford quietly fixed in October 09 w/o telling anyone until many months later.

Back to this, is this a sign that Toyota has slipped in "quality"?

From one of your own links "Of the 48 models with top reliability scores, 36 were Asian. Toyota accounted for 18; Honda, eight; Nissan, four; and Hyundai/Kia and Subaru, three each." and "Toyota, with its Lexus and Scion brands providing a broader product range, had just one vehicle that was below average in reliability, the Lexus GS AWD".

 

Why not pop to your dealers and ask them nicely. If you don't ask, you don't get! If they don't help then try another. I've found my dealer to be absolutely excellent and bend over backwards to help.

When my car was in for its service last month they introduced me to the mechanic who would be doing the work and I informed him of the minor issues for him to rectify. After the work he told me what he'd done and even showed me where he'd stopped the rattles, replaced the dodgy wiper etc.

It's service like that that I will continue to buy Toyotas. And the price was good too.

 

PikRok, I understand your concerns and it is OK to ask and share the doubts in the forum. After all the forum is a place to exchange ideas. If some don't like what a user write, they can read somewhere else - nobody is obliged to be OK with what is written and expressed here.
Back to topic.

My first car (that is, bought from me, not the first driven) was a VW Polo. I expected German quality, I practically got a Fiat. No, actually worse since it costed more to buy in the first place and more to repair. The person who bought it from me, has now a brand new car, considering all the repairs and parts that I had to change (90% mechanical). The only good thing of the Polo is that I was never left stranded.

Other cars I have driven before while still living with my parents were a Fiat 126, a Fiat 500 (the new version), a Renault Twingo, a Renault 19, a Rover 214. The worse car? the Fiat 500 - the Fiat 126 was never perfect, but so simple it could never get worse. The Renault Twingo was excellent. The Renault 19 very good. The Rover 214 died on us after 10 years and 200k kilometers. Before that, practically perfect.
But now, Rover does not exist anymore, and Fiat and Renault (apart from lacking completely any form of hybrid technology, like practically everybody else...) do not inspire me *at all* any confidence in terms of quality or reliability, due to accounts from several owners.

Since 3 years I work for a company selling and designing electronic components for automotive applications. We sell, hands down, the highest quality available on the market.

Unfortunately, based on what I see on the market and what the Tier1s (those who build the systems for the OEM, that is the car manufacturers) request from us, I would not have bought a car at all if I could.

Tier1 Purchasers give no value anymore at all to quality. They say they "give it for granted" but the truth is that the OEM pressure to reduce cost is so high, they are willing to cut corners buying components that instead of having reliable functioning for 10 years, they take ones that might fail after 4-5 years. So on paper they are "automotive" and AEC-Q100 qualified, but don't hold the test of time. Maybe not immediately but after "a while".

They don't do this necessarily for safety parts, but for everything else where they can cut corners. So, for example, the A/C controller does not work anymore after 2-3 years (after the warranty that is... what a coincidence) - you go and get it repaired, the answer is "we need to change the control unit" and there you go - 500-1000€ fly out of your pocket, or you die in hot air in summer...
And OEMs are offering more and more "in-house" service, towing service and repairs so that it does not show up in consumer reports and ADAC (Germany's Automobile Club) statistics. This is why, for example, several manufacturer's look really good in Germany - ADAC is never involved in saving people with brand new cars that left them stranded on the road.

I *had* to change car, and I thought that buying the Prius was a good idea for 3 reasons:
1) the Prius uses non-standard components - there is no competition from them and they have to be good; the Prius has a good track record and the technology behind it is at least 15 years old; the Prius is the flagship car of Toyota for them to show how "cool" and "environmental friendly" of a company they are - they cannot build a piece of crap - they just cannot (at least until now, it might get worse as their success on hybrid expands in numbers and models - how good will the Auris Hybrid built in EU be???);
2) Japanese OEM tend to use mostly Japanese Tier1s, that use mainly Japanese electronic suppliers; my company is one of the few "elected" ones that won the trust of Tier1s supplying Toyota and Toyota awarded us with quality awards for this (I still have to see this from a German, EU or US manufacturer...); because of the close circle and the quality recognition, there is a high chance that the overall quality of the car is higher than any other car built with several different countries components competing essentially on price to get in; in the Prius you get in because you have good quality (I am proud to say that some parts are from my company), you don't need to fight to get in based on price...they choose and select you, you are not taken because you stand out based on price
3) it is built in Japan; and in Japan, based on my experience on *many* other products, they don't build crap; I have been to Japan on vacation last July and by seeing how they live and work and their concept of customer service, that was the deciding factor of going "japanese".

I was well aware that buying a car less than 1 year old on the market could have been a "mistake"; the FM radio not working properly is, honestly speaking, pissing me off and quite astounding. On the positive side, apparently (and according to my dealer's technician) Toyota Germany, Europe and even Japan HQ are looking into the problem and looking for a fix. I hope; I am pinging them every month, until I will have to get a lawyer to make sure I get a defect free car. Which I would like to avoid.

The ABS re-programming, I find it a dumb "mistake" - I found it after only 1 week of driving - a couple of years of testing and Toyota did not find it? maybe a tester thought it would be disgraceful for the company to report a software bug a couple of months before ramping up production and kept quiet to avoid dishonour and shame? (this has to do with Japanese culture, I cannot imagine any another reason why such a simple bug did not get fixed immediately).

There might be other things coming up in the months/years to come. Time will tell. But I don't expect this car to be any worse than anything else out there. Quite the contrary. And because the ICE is so simple mechanically (including the transmission) expect to have way less problems and maintenance costs further down the road.

Th Prius is surely a project with a life of its own at Toyota, so I don't expect any of the current possible "Toyota quality" problems to affect the Prius. I would just relax and enjoy the ride.

For sure Toyota as a whole seems to have become a company like all others. A Japanese colleague told me he doesn't like Toyota because of their 80% approach, compared to the 100% approach of Honda. But recent recalls of Honda on the Odyssey and other models, makes me think that also Honda is now going around 90%...Not to mention that my father's Jazz (Fit elsewhere, I believe) was dead the other day due to a dead battery: service never checked it...it simply stopped working... And service from the dealers, is part of the company.

Another thing about Toyota: it seems quite clear that they have thought that being number one, was making them immune to being customer focused as they used to be, and made them quite presumptuous. As well as completely forgetting how quickly trust in a company can be destroyed, compared to the years needed to build the same trust.

Actually their behaviour recently made me think of the "we know better approach" that I find ever so often in german businesses. Customers are dumb people that don't understand what they buy and they don't want them to understand. So if I report that my radio does not work (because in 37 years I have never listened to an FM radio, right?) the first reaction was not "let's look into it"; obviously it was "the FM radio station is not good". I would have expected a different reaction from Toyota, but at least the answers eventually, after insisting, got more cooperative. Up to the point that I even had the technician recognise that their own Prius has the same defect!
On a positive note for Toyota, as many german friends tell me (I am italian and live here since 10 years), a german manufacturer would have dismissed me completely and would have probably said that I was "unlucky" to get a radio that does not work as expected (from me).

And regarding the world of cars, from what I see on my job, it is just going to get worse. A lot worse, nobody will be spared as long as purchasers and boards will still focus on profits only and think that car electronics can go down in price at the same pace as the laptop processors on which they are working (playing) each day...
(BTW: and although costs get pushed down, cars are not costing any cheaper and Navis still cost 1000€!!!!!).

 

Thanks for your insightful post from the auto industry side.

Going slightly OT, (unfortunately the article is gone/aged off their web site), many years ago (maybe 4+ years ago) Autoweek had a blurb that mentioned GM changed their testing procedures for parts. They used to only test parts until warranty mileage expiration. Hmmm... They changed to testing until part failure.

Also USATODAY.com - Carmaker follows 'Toyota Way' mentions "North American parts suppliers average 500 defects per million parts vs. 15 per million in Japan". This is likely partly responsible for lower reliability of vehicles from the Big 3 vs. at least Toyota and Honda.

I was unaware of some manufacturers doing "in-house" service, thus inflating (maybe intentionally) that maker's ADAC scores.

 

I am sorry, I did not explain myself correctly.
Actually they keep the scores down by not showing up at all - ADAC records the number of "pannen"/breakdowns that their tow service gets to serve. As well as voluntary reports from users or ADAC members. If a car is not serviced by ADAC (which can be used also from non-members), it will not show up in their statistics.

Toyota for example offers for the Prius its own on-road service. It is actually practically the same as the ADAC service. If I have a breakdown, I will call Toyota (now that I come to think about it, I need to stop my ADAC membership....), hence the Prius will never show up in ADAC statistics, unless I fill in one of their voluntary questionnaires... But, one must also say, that there are very few Priuses in Germany, and considering the overall quality of Toyota, it would be statistically very hard for it to pop-up in the ADAC lists in any case...

The 2008 statistic from ADAC is here.

 

I have 17K miles on my car (purchased in July, my serial # is <4000. I honestly haven't noticed any wear other than the seats and tires

 

Actually you did explain yourself correctly the 1st time. I might've made the wrong choice of words. By "inflate" I meant, making that particular maker's set of scores seem better.

 

All dealers should be like yours; mine isn't and has contributed to the negative image that Toyota needs to avoid.

 

The dealer backup was an important consideration for me and believe me, not all dealers are like the local Toyota dealer. I like Fords but wouldn't ever buy one until the local Ford dealer changes their arrogant, couldn't care less attitude. Other dealers in the area range from ok to p*ss poor. I would say that the Peugeot and Vauxhall (Opel/GM) dealers are good, but the local Toyota dealer are is the best. They're genuinely do care, the staff have been there for years and its a genuine first name only sort of place.

Toyota should see how they do it, learn from them and train some of their errant dealers from this.