Repair costs associated with Hybrids

most of these are high mileage. prius is actually cheaper to own than most cars over the average lifetime.

 

The Prius has been very reliable, and the warranty is long, but most 'repairs' are module replacements.
While individual cells or pairs of cell fail, the dealer replaces the entire HV battery.
An owner jump starting their Prius incorrectly, can fry the 201v DC to 12v DC converter. until very recently that needed the entire $4000 inverter to be replaced.
Failure of either Motor/Generator 1 or M/G2 require a complete $5000 transaxle replacement.
It is this module replacement that makes repair costs high.

Keep your HV Battery cool, never jump start your Prius from another vehicle, and change the ATF every 60,000 miles, all are good preventatives to expensive repairs.

 

From the stories here, it is true that the dealers are making repair costs much higher across all types, not just hybrids. With forums like this one, and a bit of learning, some people will be able to side step the dealers. Places with good independents are lucky. However, as long as there are sufficient numbers of owners with deep pockets and no time, the dealers will make out well with their strategy.

 

Perhaps owners of used Prius expect to use used parts. they tend to 20% of the cost of new parts.

 

+1 on used parts.

Since most of these expensive parts are actually quite reliable in the course of use, there seem to be many available used, with little demand, resulting in relatively low prices.

 

...and that's why there's good value in finding an honest, capable independent car repair shop.

 

I get the feeling some want to repair their car cheaply, and some just want to bad mouth dealers.

 

All dealers have had high labor rates for years, this is nothing new. You are paying for the so called training, experience and knowledge from the factory.

Honestly, the cars built today are a lot higher quality than the cars built years ago. Today, it is normal for a car or light truck to get well over 100,000 miles of usage before a major repair needs to be made. It was not long ago that transmissions were failing at rates of 50,000 miles and many had reports of engine failure before reaching 75,000. When I was a young man, if a car had 100,000 miles on the odometer it was considered scrap and usually ended up in the scrap yard before it ever made 100,000. Those cars and trucks that did make it over 100K usually burned about as much oil as they did gas.

 

One way to reduce the potential dealer cost is to purchase inexpensive monitoring equipment such as SGII, Torque, Engine Link, mini-VCI to monitor your vehicle and get trend lines as to what is normal so that you know when something is abnormal. Also you can read the diagnostic codes and either troubleshoot yourself or post on here so others can help.

Another is to be able to DIY. As you state above the ICE water pump is a very simple replacement for DIY and can help save dollars.

If you are not DIY then find a reputable mechanic with hybrid experience.

 

If your question is, do I think it is an advantage to Toyota in so much as having a Hybrid really limits your service choices much more specifically to Toyota dealerships? I'd say yes.

There are independent shops...some with excellent reputations...but overall a lot of independent mechanics won't work on a Hybrid, or they are so lacking in knowledge I'd rather they don't work on MY hybrid.

But I'd say, it's actually becoming more and more that way with every and any new vehicle you buy.
When I read my Honda Fit owners manual...outside of perhaps the oil...every single replaceable fluid was presented as being one that HAD to be OEM Honda brand fluid. The warnings against using any other type were harsh and severe.

The specialization of a Hybrid makes it that much more difficult. I'd have no hesitation to use one of the independent shops with a great reputation. In fact, if they have built their reputation while servicing Hybrids I might even feel a lot more confident. But you have to live in an area where such a shop exists.

A few days ago I got into a debate about how complicated a Hybrid is in comparison to a regular ICE vehicle. And yes, as a hybrid ages and inevitably fails...(like any aging machine will)...there are a lot of potentially expensive components that can go bad.

Is this by specific and planned design of Toyota? I doubt it. They want Prius and all their cars to have the reputations of being reliable and inexpensive to own and operate.

Prius wouldn't of reached the point of mainstream popularity it enjoys today, if Prius were not reliable and affordable to own and operate. That being said, I think an aging Hybrid has the potential for more costly repair. But no, I don't think that is by design of Toyota...I think it's just the truth about owning a machine with HSD as it ages.

 

It could be, but I don't see it. None of the dealers we visited when we were shopping for our new v were pushing hybrids, I was actually surprised by how they we're lacking from the show room displays. Discounts were not 15-20% plus rebates in my experience. We got our v at year end, and worked pretty hard to get ~9% off on a remaining 2013 inclusive of all rebates. The deal did not seem unusual compared to the discounts they were offering on non-hybrids. Costs of individual repairs can be high, but frequency is also low. Sites like consumer reports and edmunds seem to have found the average repair cost to be similar to lower than non-hybrids over 8 years.

 

Agreed, we hear that. But I shopped the California dealers via email and couldn't get them to do any better than what I could get locally.

I'm not convinced that dealers/Toyota banking on potential repairs 8+ years down the road makes much sense. Failures do occur, but with millions of Prius on the road now I've yet to see any evidence to indicate failure rates are unusual or even comparable. It also seems like Toyota has been fairly willing to recall / replace components that have seemed to fail more frequently than one might expect, such as the inverter water pump on the Gen2s.