Should I purchase a 2001 Prius?

My wife and I spent a wonderful vacation in Nova Scotia and that would be great country for an NHW11 Prius. What I would suggest is taking it to a Toyota dealer who can read out the voltages of the 19 module pairs. We find one bad thing is for an NHW11 to left unrun for a couple of months or more. This tends to self-discharge the main traction battery and allows any latent defects, electrolyte leakage, to unbalance the modules.

Was this car always in northern climates? Relatively flat areas? If so, it is likely to be in better shape than one that spent a lot of time in hotter climates and hilly areas.

Bob Wilson

 

Voltage at rest tells you very little. Let's not waste the OP's money.

 

80K km, hmm that's about 50K miles for us 'Mericans...

dividing that out by 10 (years of service on road) yields an impressive low 5K miles or 8K km per year.

Do you know somebody with a lift? In northern climates, the main concern for any car is rust, I believe.

Test drove the car? Of course, this may not help if you've never been or driven a hybrid car before...

Any ominous warning lights on the car's dashboard?

Body damage?

Why is owner trying to sell car, or is it at a dealer?

If at a dealer, is it a reputable dealership?

Will seller let you take it to get checked out before you purchase?

Cold weather affects all sorts of things, even on regular cars.

Are you looking at other cars besides the prius?

If so, I made a spreadsheet that figures the yearly cost of vehicles that you may be looking at. Included of course, mileage figures (based on U.S. e.p.a revised figures) insurance premiums, costs of licensing and titling vehicle, cost of gas, average daily commute in terms of city and highway driving...

I'd be somewhat intrigued at converting MPG to km/L, the math sounds interesting enough.

 

Welcome Miss Magoo. It would not be a waste of money to have this car inspected by a Toyota shop before purchase. They should also be able to provide its service and maintenance history; details of which may be worth discussing here.

 

OK,

I'm back armed with information derived from our friend bc -l

80000 km is 52000 m (of course, on the car itself, you can switch back and forth between "English" and metric.

52 miles per gallon equivalents out to about 18.54487809513817278816 km per Liter.

Or, for the military types that's about 18 and half klicks per liter

 

Well, being that it is a 2001, my recommendation would be not to buy it if you aren't willing to possibly be replacing the traction battery within a year. If the price is right, and you think you can afford a traction battery if/when needed then go for it.

 

The traction battery is just one of several possible hybrid-specific failures that might happen, including the:

- electric steering gear
- transaxle
- inverter

I wouldn't recommend buying that car. Although Prius reliability is good, if one of those failures happens the cost of dealer service is quite high. I would guess that there are relatively few (or no) independent Toyota hybrid service outlets in most areas of Canada.

 

Patrick and I may disagree on the wisdom of purchasing an older Prius, but I'm sure we would agree that skilled and reasonably priced hybrid service establishments are probably uncommon in Newfie. So there is a point against.

Thinking about this case in particular, the thing that concerns me most is the fact that a vehicle with such a low odometer is for sale. Prius owners that like them tend to cling pretty tightly to the car (and often drive them a lot). Therefore I repeat that looking over the service history of this vehicle would be essential.

 

Maybe these components also fail, but with the low mileage, I'd not be worried about it. When I sold my Gen-1 a few months ago it had 167,000 miles with the original inverter, steering gear, and transaxle. But like most, the battery had to be replaced at 162,000 miles. The battery is the only component that tends to fail due to age, rather than amount of usage.

 

@ Adric22, what year was your car? About how much did it cost to replace the main battery?