Consumer Reports: Best cars for making it to 200,000 miles - Top 10 all Toyota & Honda, Prius #1

I think they use their recommendations on costs and number of vehicles reaching 200k point.

Prius maintenance "king of the hill" no brake job/no timing belt replacements needed in this timeframe and many Prius buyers buy one b/c they drive alot. Prius annual mileage must be well north of 15k national average.

What surprises me many Honda have expensive belt replacements as they need new water pump at that point.

THat still wouldn't be helpful. For example model X may be more reliable and more likely to hit 300k, but it is more expensive and/or liked by old ladies and soccer moms who don't drive much. Y is a small cheap set of wheels liked by young people. Y has good MPG, access to HOV lanes and makes good commuter.

 

I also own a 03 Honda Acc V6 with over 280,000 miles on it - original transmission and all. Really. It needs new timing belts every 100k, but is still on its original water pump, which is electrically driven. Many dealers try to upsell the new pump at belt change time because (profit..., and) people are under the impression that it is belt driven, plus it is easy to access at that time.

Also, the posters saying that drivers who self-select Prius because of fuel economy and maintenance costs are absolutely correct. It absolutely skews the numbers, but it doesn't change the fundamental fact that the Prius is the car with the lowest average cost of ownership to get to 200k, along with the highest reliability ratings for years on CR and TrueDelta.

 

It might be useful to survey used Prius and gassers in the same class and plot the odometer miles versus model year. I did that using Ebay listings and found the Hummer had half the annual miles as the Prius. Here is an example:

The bi-modal peak suggests ordinary car drivers and road-warrior Prius owners.

Bob Wilson

 

Replacing the water pump with the timing belt is a 'preventive' maintenance action recommended by many.

 

I would assume that those 12 prius drivers and 10 cr-v drivers were driving much more than the average driver. Bob has a gragh later in the thread has a graph showing a skew of prii buyers to high mileage drivers.

A reliable model would be on how many are on the road after X years. Of the old cars I tyipcally see old civics, and camries, and f-series pick up. The prius may be ultra-reliable but its too early to see. I mean I have never seen a 30 year prius, because they simply haven't been made that long. Forbes picked the rav4 and 4runner as the toyota's most likely to make it to 250,000 miles but it wil take them more years to get there than a prius.

My gen III prius does indeed look like a low maintenance machine. It is higher than I anticipated, as I have been to the dealer twice over recalled brake software issues both at no cost. I have replaced the 12V battery twice, once underwaranty. I assue I just won the bad battery lottery from my original one, and 1 the dealer put in. I went with a non-toyota battery with my paid for replacement. I'm more confident in this part. My last car, lexus gs 400 needed brake service by now. It had sun roof noises just past warranty that the dealer fixed for free. Later I needed belts (not needed in prius) and engine mounts. These were routine maintenance items 1 Time I had gremlins in the air-conditionaing system which took 3 hours of disassembly and diagnostics to replace a $30 part. Car was totaled in a car accident at 150,000 miles (fixing cost more than the parts were worth to the insurance company. I'm sure it would have made it to 250,000 miles .

 

Honda pre-electric water pumps were timing belt driven and it takes at least 4-5hr by Chilton to replace a belt on FWD. At that point another $90 for new pump are small peanuts comparing to what it costs to get to it. I had an OEM pump leak once at 225k, 20k after timing belt change, so I'd say it is not a bad idea to do it every other time?

Irregardless, as maintenance goes I have no prob with simple things like oil and changing brake pads, but timing chain was one of the Prius positive points when we were getting one.

 

A timing chain was one of the reasons for me to upgrade to the 1.4 turbo on the Sonic. I don't think any of the cars I've owned had a timing belt. I was surprised to learn my parents' 2004 TL had one, and a friend's 2005 V6 Camry had one too.

 

Prius drivers are (probably) more likely to have the recommended service done on their cars because "hybrid" drive trains are newer and unknown. This assumes that bringing your car in (especially to the dealer rather than someone else) causes a car to last longer. Thus who would need to correct the raw data to normalize based on the maintenance records for all cars sold in a given year.

Mike

 

There are a host of possible or likely differences between Prius and other model owner groups in so far as demographics, behavior, locale, and use may be concerned. Failure to normalize the group size is just the glaring tip of the iceberg.

merged

That was one idiotic assumption.

There were many, many more. Spinella did not have a clue how to actually calculate the lifetime carbon emissions so he attempted to correlate costs with emissions. He decided that a dollar e.g. spent on R&D was worth X tons of carbon, and divided that amount into the numbers of Prius sold.

 

All true but Honda addressed this in mid-2004 IIRC - something to do with a bearing not getting enough oil. My 2004 Pilot has 130K with no major problems, still looks & drives as when new. But it does have a sagging motor mount, that will cost $150 for the part. This is a chronic known issue in Pilot/MDX vehicles.

 

yep. its one of those easy to see bad assumptions even when they wrote it.
CNW Marketing Research - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is a common tactic at fake studies. CNW projected a prius driver would only drive 7300 miles a year. The assumption of 15 years is not necessarily a bad one, but clearly Bob's, Consumer Reports, anecdotal evidence says the prius is driven more per year not less than a hummer.

merged

I replaced the engine mounts of my lexus gs, according to the mechanic they are designed to fail sometime after 100,000 miles. 130K miles is not bad for a mount if it is designed like my lexus's. It is tough to give isolation at a reasonable cost for these parts. In the prius, the ice gets shut off so often, I expect that the mounts last much longer even if they are designed the same way. I would call this maintenance practice, not a reliability problem like the not properly lubricated bearing.

 

Art 'corrected' his first report and brought the Prius up to the middle of the pack. So as I was looking in my historical records, I found this gem:

I took just the Toyota cars listed in Art's "Dust-to-Dust" report numbered 1-17 using his numbers. So his report claimed:

• hybrids did not last as long as SUVs - as if SUVs never go into the bush
• hybrids were driven "less" than their gas equivalent - so if you had both a Toyota Highlander and Highlander hybrid, the owner would 'choose' to drive the gasser over the fuel efficient hybrid
• declared Prius to be 'driveway art' making a statement

As for his claims of development, manufacturing, and operating costs, there are fingerprints from Michigan "think tank" that I suspect fed him the bogus numbers. Regardless, here is a letter I sent in June 2006:

Art Spinella
President
CNW Marketing, Inc.

Dear Art,

I just finished review of “Dust to Dust” and though I admire the effort, I find the consistently lower “Estimated Life in Miles” projected for hybrid electrics both disappointing and in the case of the Prius, in disagreement with fleet reports from the Dept. of Energy report “Hybrid Electric Vehicle Testing” by Jim Francfort, December 2005, INL/CON-05-00964. This fleet report of three, 2002 model year hybrids covered:

· Hybrid electric vehicle testing

o Baseline performance testing (new HEV models)
o 1.5 million miles of HEV fleet testing (160k miles per vehicle in 36 months)
o End-of-life HEV testing (rerun fuel economy & conduct battery testing @ 160k miles per vehicle)
o Benchmark data: vehicle & battery performance, fuel economy, maintenance & repairs, & life-cycle costs (pp. 3)

This report tested pairs of 2002 Insight, Civic, and Gen I Prius (the NHW11 model that predates the 2005 Prius, NHW20). Their results showed these first generation hybrids were still delivering strong, nearly new performance after 160,000 miles in fleet use in Arizona. In contrast, your report lists the “Estimated Life in Miles” of the more modern, NHW20 Prius, as only 109,000 miles versus 160,000 miles.

Your report states that “. . . the typical hybrid small vehicle such as the Prius is driven far fewer miles each year than a comparably sized budget car.” This leads to a paradox that if a family owned both the hybrid and gas version of the same car, say the Ford Escape or Camry, they would choose to drive the more expensive to operate, “gas version,” over the fuel efficient hybrid.

Granted that the members of GreenHybrid.com are likely the “. . . 2 percent removed as either unrealistically high . . .” (pp. 68) but we have voluntarily polled to find out if “. . . the percentage of Prius’s used as the household’s primary vehicle was about 16 percent. . .” for all hybrids, not just Prius.

We asked “Your hybrid(s) are for primary, average or special” usage. As of today, we have 30 responses:

	Count	Percent	Response
1	8	26.67%	Primary – our only vehicle
2	21	70.00%	Primary – 2/3 or more of all miles	versus our non-hybrid
3	1	3.3%	Average – 1/3 to 2/3 of all miles	versus our non-hybrid
4	0	0%	Special – 1/3 or less of all miles	versus our non-hybrid

We have not investigate whether the Primary users are “. . . driven in restricted or short range environments such as college campuses or retirement neighborhoods.” However, both environments are populated by folks who do not have the income, parking, or need for multiple vehicles. This comment seems somewhat gratuitous and could be fixed if college and retirement resident vehicle ownership showed a multi-car ownership of gas vehicles and not just single car ownership of hybrids.

I would offer one other about this quote:

“For example, the most efficient fuel-economy and emission-reducing speed for most hybrids is below 35 mph. To encourage their use in high-speed, high-occupancy lanes where speeds are typically over 55 mph and the hybrid is operating solely on its gasoline engine offering only modest (if any) mpg advantages over comparably sized ICE-only small cars is simply illogical.” (pp. 30)​

Our experience in GreenHybrid.com with claims of parity between hybrids and gas cars at highway speed invariably reveals the gas-only car is a manual transmission or automatic that has a manual transmission mode. We have yet to find an automatic small car that gets the same highway MPG as the automatic Prius and Civics. Although no longer offered, the manual transmission Honda Civics and Insights offer exceptionally better MPG than the gas-only vehicles.

I have been surprised at the lack of readily available, vehicle mileage by model. I’ve sent a request to Wards and the Dept. of Transportation to see if they have any model-mileage data. I’ll also see if some of the states with annual vehicle inspections might have some data. Hopefully, we can find additional data sources to help refine your “Estimated Life in Miles.”

Do you have plans to present this paper to a peer-reviewed forum, say SAE or others? I suspect that exposed to the critical eyes of automotive engineers, you’ll find an abundance of credible data to improve the accuracy of the model.
...​

When Art issued an update that was 'less bad,' well time to find more interesting problems. He had destroyed his credibility revealing the same bias shared by Bob Lutz and let it 'flavor' what he claimed were facts and data. The goal of his first "Dust-to-Dust" was a false but common belief that hybrid purchases were just a style statement. If "Dust-to-Dust" could just puncture that illusion, sales would collapse ... but it didn't quite work out that way.

We are an imperfect species and Art was just another in a long list of examples. It terrifies me that as a member of this species, I may (do) carry the same ability to 'believe' something not evident in a cold, dispassionate view of the facts and data. But math is a tool, an aid, that can help us (me) willow away that which distorts reality. For example, the practice/art of hypnosis shows we can be persuaded to live for some period of time in an alternate reality.

Art lived in his; got better; died and; time to move on.

Bob Wilson

 

Howcum my Mazda went over 600K with only 3 repairs over $100? My nephew's newer one hasn't been as good, though.

 

Mine (now son's) '96 Protege has 430K. Major repairs? timing belts, oil, brakes, batteries, tires. Out of "unexpected" repairs: water pump at 225k, new clutch at ~300k, new axles due to busted CVT joint boots. Replaced alternator ~350k with one from junk yard (that had 260k). Most of exhaust (muffler, mid-pipe, cracked manifold). Oxygen sensor me think? Had to shim A/C clutch with washer to compensate for wear. Last "big" repair new clutch master cylinder. Yeah and after 18 years rear brake lines rusted through and needed to be patched.

With exception of clutch and waterpump none of the repairs exceeded 1mo payment on new car.

 

The 30k service consists of oil change/tire rotation, and two air filters (engine and cabin).
The two filters cost about $25 each. All total around $100 or so.
What did that dealer charge you an extra $400+ for?

 

Technician time and things the Prius doesn't have?
My dealer wanted $80 just to put the car on a lift and visually inspect all the belts and rubber bits of the car.

 

i hope you showed it to corporate. should get a plaque or something.

 

About 40 specific checks of items with results documented. The service was also augmented by the dealer's service package adding alignment, balance, fuel induction cleaner, fuel injectors cleaner. To be honest, I didn't pay any attention to what the 30k was per Toyota and what they were adding on to get their profits up. I'll watch from now on.

 

Yikes. Ballance is fair. Alignment, well maybe they saw or felt something and it needed it.

Induction cleaner @30,000 miles on a prius? No way, I;d ask for money back, and if they didn't refund it find a new place to service your car. I don't think it is even recommended @100,000 miles unless you are having a problem.
Fuel Induction Service: Should You Get It & Will It Help?