Trying to get back into the Prius Family

The most important factor for high mileage cars is the maintenance and repairs that were done on them. If you find a car that's regularly been maintained, it's likely to last a lot longer than one that hasn't.

A few problems to look for: repeated headlight changes in repair history, low oil level, battery level graphic moving quickly between empty and full and back again, flickering of either the digital instrument display or the multi-function display, clogged battery fan, low voltage on 12v battery, sticky melted plastic on either the dashboard or the rear hatch handle, as well as basic things like rust

 

Depends what your long-term goals are....If you buy one with 175K miles you should hope to go 2 years and dump it....or just in the back of your mind hope to get 2 maintenance-free years out of it....But, if you are expecting it to go to 270K miles and last 10 years without problems...and you get mad when in 2 years something happens...then it won't be for you....All about how realistic your expectations are!

I bought a 2007 with 201,000 miles (now approaching 205,000 miles) and all I had to do was put a 12V battery in it. Love the thing and has zero issues but I can just tell reselling it will be tough...I got it at the dealers auction and they seem to obsess over these things...they usually start at $1000 and then the dealers bid them way up. It ended up going for around $2600 but it needed a $200 12V battery....So I have about $3000 into it and I feel like it would be hard just to get a little under $3000 back....I usually keep my cars for a little less than 1 year and then upgrade to a better car or lower mileage car but if I can't get close to $3000 then I'll just keep it!

Also, we must be reading different places on the 200K mile club because everytime I see a person post they not only say they are on original hybrid battery --- they usually say they are on original 12V and brakes as well. I rarely read about the hybrid battery going bad on this forum.

 

Bring along a digital multimeter. For a more in-depth assessment, Solar BA5 is good, entry-level battery tester. The multimeter you can connect at the under-hood jump point, for convenience. The Solar you want to directly to the battery posts.

 

Check Craigslist and find a one owner gen 2 with 125k or less for maybe $5k.

 

By the way replacing the HV battery is somewhat equivalent, pricewise to a transmission on most cars because of the cottage industry reconditioning or selling new for $1,000 to $2,500. Then resale becomes much easier for a high mileage model, or better yet, drive it for another 5 years. Those prices are maybe one to five car payments. The Houston company in this link will meet a customer almost anywhere in Texas and will swap it in one hour. Pricing | Hometown Hybrids

 

Time to do some more reading. For example, the battery repair thread is now 4 years old and nearly 100 pages/2,000 posts long.

Time can be more of a factor than miles. In fact, low mileage cars can see earlier failures. If you're looking at 05-06's, it's almost a guarantee you'll need one or its already be addressed with usually a rebuilt.

 

In the 200,000 & 299,999 mile threads, approximately 15% of respondents said they had replaced their traction batteries, if I remember correctly (I went through each one and compared to total respondents a month or two ago). So that's roughly a 1 in 7 chance the average Prius will need a traction battery replacement in 200,000 miles

 

Ahh, but look at the times of those postings. That thread is 8 years old. Not suggesting you do the leg work but one would need to find all those cars today (many have been sold long ago) to see the original batteries are still holding up. Most of those owners were highway bandits racking up incredible miles very quickly and are no longer active members here.

 

I've compared all data I could find on Prius battery failures from here, Consumer Reports, and user data from True Delta. Battery failure rates as an overall tendency seem to be at or around zero for roughly the first 10 years and/or 100,000 miles, and then increase to between 3-15%, with higher rates for 1st gen vehicles and higher failure rates here compared to True Delta statistics.

It's definitely an area where the people and companies that know most of the information (Toyota, their dealerships, and independent hybrid specialty shops) don't share that information with the general public and as a result, there is inherently going to be some guesswork involved. But with that said, I've gathered as much public-available information as I could find, and 3-15% battery failure rates for older or higher-mileage Prii seems to be an appropriate range based on everything I've seen.

I can also say that to the best of my knowledge the statistics I found represent failures of original traction batteries and not remanufactured replacements, which anecdotally from threads around this forum seem to fail at substantially higher rates and quite a bit faster.

Overall, I think Toyota is predominantly justified in saying the traction battery lasts "for the life of the vehicle," but they did not count on so many people wanting to keep their Prius longer than the average amount of time and number of miles.

 

Since Prius batteries very rarely fail before 10 years or 100,000 miles, "older or higher mileage" in this case means more than 10 years and/or more than 100,000 miles. I graphed out battery failures from True Delta data a few months ago. The top graph shows number of failed batteries on the left axis and mileage (x10,000) on the bottom axis. And the bottom chart shows failure rate percentage on the left axis and model year (+2000) on the bottom axis.

 

Sitting parked and idle is the killer of batteries, heat shortens their life as well, but you have a better chance with a higher mileage "daily driver" than a low mileage garage queen - really!

A really good Gen2 will run you $4k-$6k around here, that will be primo condition, leather, no HIDs and Touring with a supreme history. May have up to 200k on it as well. You can get "decent" cars with a clean history that were daily drivers for a family, but are not "clean" as in detailed or shiny, for like $2k. We did the ~$2k option and are prepared to fix or replace the pack if necessary. These truly are GREAT cars.

 

$2k? Jesus. I need to get out to Texas. It's a struggle in northern California...

 

Motivated sellers + minor defects + trained technician = Good $$