New owner's of used Prius C questions

Hi everyone, it's nice to start belonging to this active community. I've been reading this forum since I started thinking about purchasing a used 2012 Prius C (150k miles on it) several weeks ago and surely already learned a lot of things about them to be quite confident about my purchase which I concluded earlier this week.

But I haven't found answers to all my questions and with my car being my first own car on top of being my first Prius I hope I could get some answers to my own inquiry. I apologize if some things I ask about are readily available at the owners manual which I plan to read but think that some questions might be more urgent.

My first question relates to changing fluids in sealed units. Before completing the purchase I had the car inspected in a Toyota dealership. They didn't find any issues but warned me that some of the fluids (namely engine coolant, hybrid inverter coolant and transmission fluid) are in sealed units so they won't inspect them until they are due to be changed. According to the dealership these fluids are due at 100k miles first and every 50-60k miles afterwards. So my car being at 150k miles it's due soon. They quoted the services about 200$ each, bringing it to the total of 600$. I understand that since it's the dealership it's probably way overpriced but by how much? Would you say I should be fine with an independent mechanic changing these fluids or is there something about the Prius that should make me careful about going to local mechanics (or maybe for this particular service)?

Another question related to the previous one, as I mentioned in the dealership they said that these fluids should have been serviced at 100k miles. I have access to all the service records of the previous owner and though it seems that they were responsible about regular maintenance I found no records of these particular fluid services being ever performed. Would you say these services are a must do and it's strange that they were omitted? In that case should I be fine just replacing these fluids right away or there is something else I might need to check/do to make sure no harm was done? Or did the dealership provide a more cautious maintenance schedule than really required?

My third question is (of course) about the hybrid battery. The dealership refused to inspect it thoroughly with no error codes showing and said they typically last till 200k or more. Still, it being a costly repair, I wondered if I needed to do some extra hybrid battery maintenance to keep it alive as long as possible. I've already read the advice about cleaning the battery fan often. I also read about some battery life prolongation techniques but didn't quite get it. If you could elaborate on using these techniques and devices (maybe with some personal experience) I would be very grateful.

I would of course also greatly appreciate any other general advice you have for the new Prius C owner

Many thanks!
David.

 

Thank you for the advises! I'll make sure to only deal with mechanics who know their way around a Prius.

What's slightly strange to me about service records - almost every 5k service record is available, so I believe the previous owner actually kept every record they got. But yeah, I can't be sure about it.

 

Thank you for the advice! Maintenance schedule on the website indeed partially contradicts dealer's statement, but the aforementioned services are still required at this moment. I have access to the service records through Toyota owners and they match what I have on paper.

 

Thank you for outlining the difference between the services so I could get a feeling of where I should go to the dealer and where I don't need to.

By smaller size and easier access do you mean that both replacement battery and labor costs should be lower for the C than full-sized Prius?