2010 prius taxi blew its transmision

Whatever,,,,, it still feels 'lost in translation' to me.

When pictures and fault codes and simple facts about this mysterious 'Lost' transaxle are posted here,,,,,

Until then,,,, This is not Fun anymore.....

This is a Greek Tragedy without a Beginning, Middle, just an unexplained End.

 

There you go. If the fluid was "good as new" that tells me the fluid was recently changed probably chasing an issue. Or it was the first time it saw new fluid and well into big miles.

 

Gen III trans fluid looks much worse than Gen II after very little miles apparently which may make it a poor choice for Taxi service unless there is hyper maintenance on the trans. The pictures of Gen III fluid is disturbing.
Fluid looks like diff fluid. Milkshake.

Toyota probably changed to a different metal in gears maybe to save weight and ended up with worse metal wear.

 

Hi Grumpy,

Chassis No. JTDKN36UX0504XXXX. I did look it up. It was one of the smaller Japanese factories. I can't remember the name.

 

Working in Asia doesn't necessarily mean same as Japan. How ever a lot of Toyota and Honda cars are made in Thailand.

 

It's different to the Euro style numbers I think Feri. I do wonder if there's a connection with the less reliable gen3 and the fact that Toyota reduced the warranty from 100,000 miles on the gen 2 to 60,000 miles when the gen3 came out. I think they knew something then!

Hindsight is great eh?

 

I Hear what you're saying but I have difficulty understanding why a business would deliberately undermine it's interests in or treat a market like Europe with contempt. (??)

 

I don't think they're treating it with contempt. Most European cars cover less miles than the American average and are kept for less time. The US market also has a 150,000 mile warranty in many top selling States and thus the parts must be made to last accordingly. It would make sense to use cheaper, less durable parts in a market where cars cover an average of 12,000 miles (20,000 km) per year. I'm not saying all parts are cheaper or different. It might even be that a number of different suppliers are used for the same part and one batch are used on the Euro model and the others on other markets.

The other thing I regret to have found with this forum is that if you criticize the Prius in any way whatsoever, then you're making it all up and have an agenda. I have been pleased with my fuel economy but it has not been a reliable car and the replacement parts are much much more expensive than the same for a Ford Mondeo or Vauxhall Insignia.

 

I sympathize with you. This is an exclusive club, some member will defense the Prius like their own child, just like the mother of the Boston Bomber.

 

5,000 euro's is no fun, i'll go along with that. i've never kept a car for that long, so i'm not sure how i would feel, but i probably spend the equivalent by buying a new car every 4-5 years. i don't think most people are unsympathetic, but we're not all going to start bashing toyota because some small number of cars fail after the warranty is up. when it's your car, it's personal!

 

OK, let's look at it this way. There are 2 European taxi drivers on this forum who own a gen3 and both have had significant issues with their car. There are a number of US and Aussie taxi gen3 taxi drivers and they have not had an issue. I know this isn't scientific, but equally a 100% negative European experience is not a great advert for Toyota. There has to be a weakness or an issue with the gen3 Prius. There are reports of the gen2 Prius running upto 500,000 miles without issue in Canada. One would expect the gen3 to get to at least 250,000 miles without some issue, but European cabbies getting less than half that before expensive problem raise their heads is not a good sign.

I am on my THIRD steering motor at 74,000 miles! They cost £1,500 plus fitting. That works out about the same in US$'s if you deduct our 20% sales tax. That is NOT cheap. You tell me how much a steering pump costs on a Ford Crown Victoria and it'll probably be the same as the European Ford Mondeo equivalent. It will be about £200 plus fitting. That is a BIG difference. Three Prius steering motors at £1,500 is £4,500! That is about a third the cost of a new Ford Mondeo taxi. Even assuming I changed 3 Mondeo motors at £200, it's only £600 or £3,900 less than the Prius! And that's just the steering motor costs. Then there's the replacement inverter I had to replace too as well as a HV battery ECU. My car has been half rebuilt at 74,000 miles.

The Prius, or at least the gen3 Prius just does not cut it as a European taxi. The fuel economy is great, the tax benefits are great too, but they don't make up for the expensive replacement part costs.

So if you wonder why the streets of New York are buzzing with Prii, yet the streets of European cities aren't, then you might want to wonder why. Socrates and I know the reason. The Ostrich members on here might want to stick their heads in the sand, but that's their decision. I regret to say that the European Prius doesn't cut European taxi work.

 

That's one way to look at it, but because of the sample set, it is flawed. Similar to if you did a land line poll survey asking people what their favourite type of Object-X (anything, commodity or even political member) you will get different results than if you did an online poll. Those that have land lines and pick up unmarked calls are not the same people taking Facebook polls.

I don't doubt your story (or socrates'), but the conclusions drawn cannot be drawn. They just cannot be. There are 13 for sale on eBay.co.uk right now with 70K miles or more. All of them look great, have no issues in their description, and are offered with warranties. 1 says it drives perfectly with the same mileage as yours, another is a company lease vehicle that says it has "ultra low running costs" at 87.5K miles.

Add in just one of these and your percentage drops to 66%. Add in all of these and now you are at 2/15 or 13%.

The point is that you two obviously have problems with the car. But you cannot make blanket sweeping statements about the entire model because of your two failures. There are lemons with every vehicle, it sounds like you both got one if there is no difference between them and how you drive.

 

I agree that the sample of gen3 European taxi drivers is a little on the low side, but both of them have significant issues. Funny that we both just happened to get lemons. I guess it's just an unlucky coincidence and one to bear in mind if you're a taxi driver considering a Prius.

 

I actually spent a lot of time going through posted Prius transaxle UOA results (including yours) and after correcting for length of OCI, there is no difference in wear metals (expressed in ppm Fe per 1000 mile) between gen 2 and gen 3. Gen 1 is actually lower, probably due to larger volume of ATF. This was posted on PC if you bother to search.

I also changed mine at 20000 miles and it did NOT look like milkshake or diff fluid. Only slightly darker.