Prius Costs vs Jetta TDI Costs?

You pretty much need a lemon law lawyer in NJ, there's a lot of hoops to jump through. It was easier just to trade it in.

 

Lemon Law was written for the automotive industry's benefit. not the consumer's.

now, we are told that it was written for us to soothe our digestive juices but ask a lawyer, they will tell you who it benefits.

i had a friend who got a car (long time ago so make and model is unimportant. what ever issues they had then has been resolved?)

brand new. was driving to work one day and the car died...in the middle of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (only had one back then) besides greatly impeding 200,000+ people from getting to work, it is embarrassing.

so, its towed to dealer, they have it one afternoon, says nothing wrong with it, "user error"... whatever that means. likes its not a smartphone, you turn it on, push gas it goes, right?


well, skip to end. its 2 years later, the car has sit for most of the past 8 months, it is for sale. user is still trying evoke lemon law which states that car should not have same required repair more than twice in first 6 months of ownership.

problem we have is that during first 6 months car in shop for 4 months. (2nd time car died was in shop 4-5 weeks, they replace nearly entire fuel system, 3rd time it in shop, it sits for 2 weeks while waiting for mechanic Ace from corporate to fly in to look at car)


anyway... finally he takes to independent shop who states some computer chip bad (this was back in the single core days...we were co-workers at Intel. working on Sony VAIO intro project. it launched with 233/266 mhz MMX processors...ya dinosaurs)

chip $3000 to replace. he goes to dealer says chip bad. dealer says impossible, chip does not go bad. all solid state, no moving parts, nothing to break.

finally he go back to independent, pays $3000 to replace module, car runs perfect from then on (after all, all the guts were replaced so why should it not?)

so we skip back to original paragraph. he is suing dealership for ineptitude, frustration, venting etc. lawyer advises selling car might make it tougher to get settlement, so now he back to driving it (he had ended up buying a used car "for reliability"

anyway, he finds buyer who leases it from him while waiting for court (another co-worker) anyway, 18 months later we part ways when our department is disbanded.

one guy still has leased vehicle, zero trouble, the other guy still waiting for benefits of lemon law.

now, the sale did eventually go thru. he did eventually get a settlement that essentially offered him a large discount on another vehicle purchase from the company...

he declined

 

On my daily commute to work (70 mile round trip, 90% highway, 65mph) I would average 47 mpg on my TDI. Driving my Prius III the same way, I average 53 mpg. You can hypermile a TDI, but not as easily as a Prius. Like with the Prius, the TDI mpg is temperature and speed influenced, even more so than the Prius (diesels like heat).The TDI is a highway car, terrible in the city on mpg. Biggest advantage for the TDI is power. The Prius is ~ 5 mpg better on the highway, and ~ 15 mpg better in the city - assuming similarly driven.

I never had a big mechanical issue with the TDI, but know those that did. I always felt like an issue was lurking around the corner, started worrying about taking it on long trips. It had an extremely complex exhaust system, with an unknown lifespan. I would often hear "diesels last forever". Unfortunately, only the engine core is diesel, all else the same as any other small German car.

 

Besides the problems with the DSG trans, every few thousand miles I would open the intercooler hoses and clean out the accumulated condensation and goop, so I wouldn't have a problem starting the engine or hydrolocking it. Also on my every few thousand mile check list, I would pop open the top of the fuel filter canister to see if there were any signs of the badly designed high pressure fuel pump disintegrating and taking out the very expensive fuel system. To prevent or slow the shredding of metal, I had to pour lubricity fuel additives into the tank at every fill up, which added to the cost of the diesel fuel. And then there was squirting penetrating oil on the shaft of a flap in the exhaust system so it wouldn't seize and cause an emissions problem.