76K miles prius V is still good to buy?

When in doubt, try a Toyota dealer.

 

not bad at 75k, but you miss the best 75k on the car. what's that worth? start with the purchase price of a '13 or '14, subtract the % in dollars equivalent to 75k miles, add in a fudge factor because your going to get the second best 75k miles and there's your value. another way to do it is look around for other V's to compare it to and online book value's. if you're near san fran, try luscious garage or avi's. all the best!

 

Avi's is near LA.

 

i sit corrected, thank you.

 

A Honda Fit is nothing like the Prius. Have you even driven them yet? There are so many benefits to hybrid ownership apart from the great fuel economy, that once you go hybrid you won't go back. We have 4 hybrids in the family now, 3 of them Toyota systems.

I think it is reasonable for a car to start having worn out parts after 11 years... Having said that, if your Honda was 11 years old, then you were in the crappier Honda range where they had more problems than before and more problems than now. I love me some Hondas, but they cheaped out big time at the turn of the millennium. Mostly in transmission problems in both the auto's and manuals. The Prius and other hybrids will most often be the most reliable car you have owned.

If you consider 16 years "new to the game", then sure.

All new vehicles have lots of electric parts. A standard ECU in a non-hybrid vehicle is many hundreds of dollars just like in the Prius. The Prius has a high voltage traction battery and an inverter that "normal" cars do not. These are both high ticket items. Brand new at the dealership installed, you are looking at $3K and $4K to replace. However it does not have a standard transmission. That's a good $3K at a dealership to replace in a "normal" car. It doesn't have a starter motor, and also because of this it is never cold started. Brakes last a couple hundred thousand miles because they are rarely used. And of course this is for new dealership parts. A salvaged battery can be found for a few hundred bucks lying around, and you can buy the whole inverter for a couple hundred as well. There are a very few reported incidents of inverters failing and those that do are mostly due to user error. 5 million sold, and a handful of problems, that is pretty darn good and no other company can come close to that.

Have you driven the Insight either? Wretched car. It looks like a Prius, sort-of, but that's where the similarities end. It still has the horrible IMA system we have in our Honda Civic Hybrid. Want to creep ahead a little bit? The engine will have to come on for that. Want air conditioning? The engine will have to come on for that too. The transmission is standard, the whole car is standard except they piggy backed a tiny little motor onto the belts. There is a reason they are ditching this system after almost a decade of trying and failing to make it work.

The fact you are even comparing the Honda Fit and Insight to the Prius, tells me you have not actually driven any of them. So go do that. Drive them, and if possible rent one of each for at least a few days, maybe a week. You are going to spend many years following driving it (hopefully), so why not pick the one that suits you the best. And to find that out, you really need to test-live them. A short 20 minute drive with a salesman is not the same as taking the car home for a week. Driving it to school/office/fun. Grocery shopping, regular shopping. Getting stuck in traffic, having the open road, etc.

Good luck, but my vote is on the Prius.

 

The 3 civics we have had (2001 Civic EX, 2003 Civic EX, 2005 Civic Hybrid) all had their transmissions go out around 120K miles. The synchros for 1st and 2nd gear are the culprit, and a quick search on the internet will show this is a major problem with that vintage of Honda. You must have lucked out. Having said that, we still own quite a few Hondas and they are fun to drive.

That's very subjective. I test drove own when they first came out thinking that it was "just as good" as a Prius from the hype. I was ready to buy one, went for a test drive, barely went a mile and stopped the test drive. Went home and bought my red 2006 Prius. The transmission is horrid, constantly shifting and jerking. I don't know how people can drive those. It did feel better turning, but that's what Hondas do really well. Toyota's are meant to be sort of disconnected and squishy. This is taken to max in the Lexus. That's exactly why some people hate the Lexus brand. It is like riding on pillows driving a cloud. The exact opposite of a high end BMW where they believe the more expensive the car the stiffer the shocks and body should be, more into the "racing" side of high end rather than the plush cloud drive high end.

If the 12v battery is dead, the starter in the Honda will not turn over you will not get home. In the Prius, the relays will click down to about 9.5v which is a waaaaaaaaay dead battery that would never start a normal car, and it will boot up and you can drive home. If the traction battery is dead in the Prius, like removed, you aren't going anywhere since MG1 spins the engine up with the traction battery and it is a hybrid synergy drive, where you need both to operate. In the Honda, since the battery doesn't really do anything you can remove it. Our Honda Civic Hybrid has required 2 battery changes. 1 under warranty shortly before the transmission ate itself and the second closer to 150K. Honda was making the battery usage overly aggressive to get the EPA mileage to compare to the Prius at the expense of battery life cycles. This lead to a lot of battery failures, so they introduced a software fix that basically made the battery useless. Fuel economy dropped like a rock after the update but the batteries last longer now. No duh... Don't use it, it won't break. The IMA system is a dinosaur, stay away... Far far away... Look into the Ford systems if you can stomach buying a Ford because they are essentially the same as Toyota's design. Or the newer Honda Accord hybrid, or the Lexus models.

Why wouldn't it be good to buy? It is a car with 76K miles on it, and it should be treated like any other car with 76K miles on it. Expect to have a few repairs down the road. It could die on your way off the dealer lot, or it could outlive you. That's what you don't know with used cars.