Is Gen2 Prius still a reliable purchase in 2026?

Own 4 with your budget for the one at 8K I don't mind faded paint . But must have leather interior air must work no exceptions . Don't care about heat . Inside must be clean it's wer I live . Hybrid batteries I keep here and plenty of parts here . Easily last forever . Keep em away from others . They will wreck them . I don't let anyone use em anymore wen I do they get wrecked. .now they so old no one asks anymore .

 

they were great cars, built like tanks. no one can guarantee reliability, especially on the one you buy vs the overall fleet

 

That's a bit unrealistic. Things break on old cars, often several things close together. Your odds of having no huge expenses for 50k miles will be better if you buy something like a Corolla or a Civic, old enough not to have either GDI or a CVT transmission (a manual would be best), and only if there is no significant corrosion. Even so, having the A/C evaporator fail is a significant risk in a car that old, and it will be a $3000 job unless you do it yourself, because the whole dash needs to come apart. In that distance a car will need tires, and if it is old, it may well need shocks or other suspension components. That could easily come to $3k too.

 

No.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

 

i'll say this much, it's only 3 years older than your v, and was built better in the engine and brake booster

 

I got my cheap shot humor out of the way, so I'll give a few more words.

Those 2nd generation Priuseses were fantastically reliable cars, but now they're all too old and used up. Old cars will eat your wallet no matter how reliable they used to be. And an old Prius is especially good at it due to its complexity.

For your budget? stick to a simple car that anyone can repair.

 

Just to add:

Across a 50,000 mile driving career, the difference in fuel costs between a typical compact gas burner @38 mpg and a Prius in top shape @48 mpg is maybe $1,000.

Basically any problem in the Prius is going to eat that difference and ask for seconds.

 

It does depend on where a person is driving. The above analysis uses MPG which is 100% highway. In pure city driving something like a 2005 Civic (excluding the hybrid, and Lord knows, one should definitely exclude that hybrid) will only return 25-26mpg. The Prius in pure city driving can still do over 40 mpg, let's say 42. Assume gas is $4/gal (for a round number) . That would be $4762 for the Prius and $8000 for the Civic. The $3238 difference favors the Prius and might be enough to cover repairs during that period, especially if the owner can do some or all of the work. Additionally, the Prius is unlikely to need brake pads in that 50K, while the Civic will need at least one set. (Pretty much a rounding error compared to replacing the gas tank on the Prius, for instance.)

But I don't disagree with your point.

There is some chance of coming out ahead in some circumstances with the Prius, but it is more likely to work out better with a conventional car, and much less likely for a catastrophically expensive set of mechanical failures. Going back to the gas tank, a failed gas pump in the Civic is a relatively cheap repair (if the owner changes it, anyway), in the Prius very expensive if the owner does it and outrageously expensive if a mechanic does. About the only thing which is the other way around is the steering rack, since the electric ones have turned out to be more reliable than the hydraulic ones.

 

Another point of consideration is the intended career for OP's next car.... From the other thread, I learned that they want to put 50k miles on it.

Ok great... but how quickly will that happen? 50k miles spread over two years isn't such a terrible risk in my mind- get those hits in before the car has time to age into more problems. Might even get through it without anything expensive happening.

50k miles spread over 10 years is another proposition entirely. The car absolutely will have time to develop more problems, and if it happens to be an old Prius they'll be expensive problems.

The underlying point to the whole thing is that the best way a Prius can save you money is if you drive a lot of miles, and you drive it for enough years that they really rack up.

If you start with an older Prius, you just don't get very many years before it starts throwing expensive problems at you, negating all of those savings.

If you aren't driving a lot of miles, or won't own the car long enough to rack them up, (or both) then what's the point? You might be saving gasoline, but you're clearly not in it to save money.

 

$1.77 gas in Colorado makes Prius gas savings less than $1500 even at far less than epa mpg.