The Hidden Cost of Owning a Hybrid (ABS by Pine Hollow Diagnostics Video)

Goes to illustrate how much we still don't know about that claim. Even supposing, just for purposes of argument, that there is a distribution that has a peak somewhere around 150k, still nobody is doing much to work out what the standard deviation is; whether the distribution is very broad and flat, or tall and steep, or how skewed it is to one side or the other.

And likewise, there's not much of that information around for the proposed causes. There is the EGR flow test results thread collecting some data, but probably still fewer than a dozen samples reported there; hard to say much about a distribution from that.

Those are the kinds of things that would normally be worked out in some detail prior to making pronouncements about what's causing what.

 

The ridiculous thing in calculating hidden cost, is that all cars have hidden costs, just like all buyers have different purposes & needs & wants when they make their purchase.
.

 

Actually, there are NO hidden costs to any car. EVERY car will need something replaced sooner or later.
It doesn't matter what make or brand it is.
Do research and find out which is best for you.

 

i think people often have the job done at independent because of the cost. That makes things fuzzy even to Toyota, i’m afraid. H*ll, even my HG may have been replaced at some point, because it’s been serviced at independent for past 100kkm. I’ve done some checking and could not find traces of major repairs but still. At least EGR cooler has not been cleaned recently (was quite clogged) but IM was surprisingly clean (said the mechanic)

 

I'm not a big believer in the Gen 3 head gasket danger. I suspect that Prius owners, more than any other vehicle, are likely to report problems and seek advice online. We'd have 10,000 complaints on Prius Chat alone if there was an issue. I see them running well everywhere in my neck of the woods. And Gen 3's get absolutely thrashed, abused, and poorly maintained as the reliable workhorse's they are. If mine starts acting up, I'll admit I'm wrong.

 

A couple questions that might be answerable:

• How many Gen 3 Prii have been sold?
• How many Gen 3 head gasket failures, and their mileages, do we know of?

 

Even if, "just for purposes of argument," the engines were all manufactured with exactly equal propensity to head gasket troubles, that distribution ain't gonna be "tall and steep," because the ways they're operated vary so widely. For example, an engine that sees mostly steady moderate-speed, long-distance travel on levelish terrain isn't going to experience the thermal stresses of one that does lots of short trips, or one that constantly alternates between ascending and descending mountains.

 

I, also, would bet on broad and flat (and skew).

But even the two of us agreeing on what we think the distribution might look like isn't the same as somebody gathering enough data to see what it looks like.

 

One explanation may be ”weird” usage. Gen 3 owner may be focusing more to MPG than other hybrid drivers. Other hybrid drivers wont pay so much attention to MPG, they just drive and dont care if ICE is always on. But the idea of Prius is MPG efficiency and sustainability so no excuses for Toyota.

Honestly speaking, i am somewhat surprised they got these Hybrid designs last even this much. ICE doing on-off-on-off.. all the time is pretty bold

 

Every time I hear a Chevy, Ford, or Jeep pull up to a light with start stop technology, I think how bold it is for an owner to roll the dice on Detroit's version of this technology. Maybe leasing one of these with bumper to bumper warranty makes sense for some people. But I couldn't own one. I wasn't even willing to trust Toyota until Gen 3.