elec motor life

no.... the windings never physically touch anything. there have been documented cases of electric motors running MILLIONS OF HOURS without failure

 

No, the whole concept of your post is wrong, not to put too sharp of a point on it. The windings in an electric motor don't wear down from use. You can burn them up from an overload, but not wear them down. Perhaps you are thinking of the mechanical commutator used on old DC and universal motors. These have brushes which wear down, and the friction from the brushes eventually wears out the commutator. The motors on the Prius are brushless.

Tom

 

Hi lIon,

Wow, $19250! The base price for the Prius is just a little under $21 K now. This car only cost about $23K when new. With 110K miles, there are sorts of standard car parts that could be wearing out. Wheel bearings, tie-rod ends, ball-joints, CV-joints are all wear items beyond 100 K miles that might go. Also, the 2004's and 5's have issues with the electronics manufacturing of the MFD, which can be expensive to replace, unless you are good with SMD electronics repair.

Based on these issues, I would think $15K would be more in-line with the service life left in the car, and the repair bills you will probably see. What is the book value of the car ?

 

that is spendy for a car with that kind of mileage...BUT

if you are in a hurry, it might not be as bad as it seems. several areas have used Priuses with 25-40,000 miles on them going for new car prices.

with a wait of 6-12 weeks for a new one (oil touched $100 a barrel, so that wait will probably double within a month) some people choose not to...

so before we tell him he is making a mistake, maybe we need more facts first

 

If it's in California with the no-longer-available HOV stickers, that price might be a bargain - there are reports here of buyers paying a $5k premium just for a set of those.

 

You may want to seek advice from the YahooGroup, "Prius-Europe." Which country?

Bob Wilson

 

if you think its a good deal, buy it. from all that i have seen and read, 100,000 miles in nowhere near the end of life for a Prius. its just well broken in.

with all used cars, basic maintenance issues will come up... brakes, fluids, lubes... a lot of stuff that would not be easy for a do-it-yourself kinda guy, but i think it will be lower or equal to any other car you might be looking at

 

Motors explained (maybe?)...

The Prius uses two brushless motors. They definately aren't subject to the brush motors that most people are used to.

Brush motors work by using an electro magnet in the rotor, which are powered by physical contacts called brushes. (In early designs they were metal brushes that made that electrical contact. Today brushes are eccentially copper bushings that slide with minimal friction while providing maximum electrical contact.) The brushes would power the rotor's electro magnets one way and they reverse direction when it rotated far enough. To provide something for the rotor electro magnets to push against, either a second set of electro magnets are placed in a stator (which can be in series: a "series" wound motor, or in parallel: "shunt" wound motor). But more common is to use permanent magnets to push against. Either way, not much in terms of circuitry is needed to make brush motors go... just power.

To make motors more efficient, brushless permanent magnet motors put the permanent magnets in the rotor and they make the electro magnets in the stator. They then use a sensor to figure out which set of electro magnets to turn on to make the motor turn. The electro magnets are turned on and off electronically, which is no simple task since the amount of current in bigger motors is usually enough to fry most common transistors. This makes brushless motors controllers expensive.

Also the torque of the motor is proportional to the strength of the permanent magnets. You can make the magnets bigger = bigger motor, or alternatively you can use stronger magnets = higher cost.

Bottom line is that while the prius' motors are expensive, they are not as prone to wear. Yes, the electro magnets can burn out if you over power them, but the controller was designed to prevent this. Now semi permanent magnets will wear out, but permanent magnets (which are not truely permanent) won't wear out very quickly. This leaves the only part of the motor likely to wear as the bearings. But unlike the wheel bearings, there is plenty of suspension to dampen shocks on the motor bearings.

I would think the motor controller would wear out before the motor.

 

You bet they are

If any salesperson made such a pitch to me - "Ten people are behind you waiting to buy etc" - I'd march out of there. There is being a jerk, and there is being a JERK

 

You'd be wise to worry about the ICE WAY before the electric motor "wearing out." In the many millions of miles of production EV studies, none of the electric motors ever showed any signs of giving up the ghost. That's the least of your worries! The typical assumed life of an EV motor is at least a million miles. And that is with zero maintenance.