My Gen 3 Prius wasn't too expensive to put right when I accidentally separated some body panels. My brother popped them back together with a dead blow hammer. Good as new. Different story with my Gen 5. I hit the ditch a few weeks back; slipped into the ditch and couldn't back out. The tow truck hooked onto my rear tire, and the expected alignment job was almost $200. But the real damage was the fender liner getting separated off the fender. No popping it back this time; in fact, the system kept shutting down because the proximity sensor in the bumper needed to be recalibrated. I can't use cruise control in that error state. The body shop has quoted me over $900 to repair it.
If you lived near me I'd buy a new fender liner online for $30 and charge you one hour at $48 per hour to install it and in the process I'd get everything bent back into place, even replace fasteners if I have to and figure out how to use Autel to recalibrate proximity sensor. As in less than $100 rather than $900 from a shop that cares more about their boat, RV and house payments than providing an honest price.
So, you own or rent a building, pay taxes, pay payroll, pay payroll taxes, buy nice equipment to make sure you can repair hundreds of vehicle models, carry specialized insurance just in case you make a bad mistake, maintain all the shop equipment and vehicles, etc etc etc. That is not everyone trying to rip off everyone else, that's usually called overhead. You are way too caught up in believing everything is a scam or conspiracy. Sure, there's times abuses happen, but not EVERY time, like you seem to believe. Do you have insurance to cover his wreck if you just happen to forget to tighten some lugnuts? What about if you have his car on a lift and the lift fails and drops his car? What if someone steals the car while on your property? What if a tree falls on it? There's a lot of shyt that can happen and a professional business keeps themselves safe, keeps themselves updated with modern equipment and hopefully keeps themselves up to date on training and development. That stuff doesn't come free. You keep living out of your car or hut or whatever and working under a tree. DIY is great, but don't compare yourself to a professional shop.
"I can't use cruise control in that error state." I assume you mean you can't use adaptive cruise control? I feel like normal CC wouldn't rely on sensors to work.
Once upon a time, bumpers could take, or dispense, a bump. Fenders fended. Proximity sensors had not occurred to anyone.
Did you actually try to switch over to standard cruise control, or are you assuming/don't know how? I've had periods where the car sensed a fault with something and disabled adaptive cruise. I was able to switch over to regular cruise and it worked. I think the process was to shut off the cruise system with the button on the right side of the steering wheel(top left button), press the cruise mode button to switch over to regular cruise(the button marked 'MODE'), then re-enable cruise with the top left button which also sets the cruise speed. You don't get Lane Tracing Assist in regular cruise mode, but it's better than nothing. In my cases, I was eventually able to switch back to adaptive cruise either by waiting and switching back or pulling over to shut off the car and restart it. I'd at least give it a try if you haven't yet.
Why even waste your time? Haven't you ever had a friend that's honest and doesn't charge much when you need help? Or maybe based on your posts its likely you don't really have any friends? My point is I've been on here almost every day helping people for more than 12 years and generosity free of charge is highly rewarding in a way a troll like you can't comprehend... What's more I pretty much only work for friends and friends of friends and I'm an honest person who passes the lack of overhead benefits and risks onto the customer in a way where they understand what they're getting into. The real scum are the ones who charge professional rates and don't pay the overhead professionals pay so when they run into a problem they get in a huge amount of trouble. I'm just the friendly neighborhood guy who mostly works for free and at some point they feel like they need to compensate me, which is often more than I'd ask for if they let me say how much.
My front sensors regularly stop working when it’s snowing just a little bit. Disabling features is not something you want to do while you’re driving in the snow. It does get rid of the nag screen though. I didn’t try regular cruise.
Speaking of overmaintaining old cars, been there, done that. I kept my light-blue 1985 Corolla LE from 1995 to 2019 until it got totaled. Someone said I was rebuilding my [whole] car, so I was way past the point of overmaintaining. That said, it is much better to drive the latest, newest cars out there, primarily for safety reasons, as long as you can afford. If you can’t afford it, that’s a different story. Cars are becoming safer every year, thanks to AI-driven self-driving technologies and a range of new safety features. Gen 3 and earlier Priuses lacked safety sensors, and the Gen 1 Prius even lacked the crucial electronic stability control. I still consider my Gen 4 Prius Prime PHEV to be brand-new at 50,000 miles. I will probably keep it for quite a while, depending on what I can afford and when.
If I were in your situation I'd spend time regularly practicing the disabling of those features so you can do it as quickly and safely as possible. I've been in situations where a pleasant highway drive turns into unexpected snow that turns into near white out conditions and when it gets stressful like that you gotta keep with the flow of traffic and there's not much chance to pull over. Learn how to make that job as unconscious as brushing your teeth.
Impossible with the Gen5 setup. I just ignore the nag screens now. It limits the functionality of the split dashboard though and is annoying as hell. It's like: "Oh, your exit safely system (or whatever the heck it's called) is not working, please be careful", along with a slew of others. Then if the radar gets covered, fuggedabouit.
