Would my Prius make it across the country?

We do similar things for Tahoe up here. Only our beaches are a little cold.

We take an annual trip to Disneyland the week after thanksgiving when crowds are low and temps are ~70 F. Doing a side trip this year to Palm Desert for that weekend since we will be done in So Cal anyway.

Hard to beat the weather out here .

 

I am not so sure about that.....

I have experienced more strandings in the last three, less than 2 YO cars with under 60k on them than all of the "previously owned" 100k plus miles ones I have owned put together.... and that is a couple dozen! All of them were electrical in nature and not one Hybrid was involved

 

I've driven across the country multiple times in 4 vehicles, and of those, 3 were fine and one had its engine catastrophically fail about a quarter of the way. All cars were well maintained. I knew the one that failed was a model which had numerous complaints for abrupt engine failure, but certainly wasn't expecting it and had just gotten some expensive maintenance performed. There was no way I could have known or prevented what happened for the car whose engine died, and essentially I just got unlucky that it happened then.

I'll be driving my Prius across the country at the end of the year, and I'm sure it will be only one of many making that trek. Except for cars that have obvious things wrong with them or are beat up or damaged, any car should make it across the country just fine. And the Prius is a model with very high reliability, so it will hold up better than most cars under similar stress. So go for it and enjoy taking your Prius across the country!

 

I have also driven across the country multiple times and always make sure that my cars are filled with fresh fluids, new belts, and good tires.

I try to learn from other road warriors, so can you offer more details about the catastrophic engine failure? That's pretty much my worst nightmare as I drive on some pretty empty freeways. Was it due to a lack of oil? How many miles and can you say the year/make/model?

 

if I could predict the future Id buy a lottery, you have a 50/50 chance just like any other car, keep it full of gas and oil and cross your fingers

 

Making sure the car is well prepared for the trip is really key, as everyone else is pointing out. We have driven from CA to FL or NC or IN almost annually for 19 years. Vehicles ranged from a new 2007 Nissan Versa with less than 10k miles on it to a 1994 Honda Civic with 195k. Other vehicles were a 1994 Chevrolet K-Blazer with 125k and a 2002 Buick Rendezvous with 90k and the 2008 Prius in July of this year. Only problem we've ever had out there was a separated steel belt in a tire while passing through Beaumont, TX. America's Tire/Discount Tire cheerfully replaced it for free.

Friendlyx - Another thing on your long trip to consider. Carry along a quart of oil just in case the car starts burning some along the way. Depending on how your miles work out you also might scope out where you will get a 5,000 mile service done if you are far away from home when the time comes. We had ours done at Modern Toyota in Winston-Salem even though it was a little early for it. Their online reputation and reviews were excellent and our relatives in Winston-Salem had only good things to say about them. Deciding on that location was just another part of our pre-trip plan.

Just more stuff to make your trip less stressful.

 

It was a 2003 Chrysler Sebring that was 10 years old at the time, and I don't remember the exact mileage except it was in the neighborhood of 100,000 miles. Just before leaving, I had changed the oil and also replaced the struts, which was an expensive operation. I also don't remember exactly what they said was wrong with the engine, except it would cost $3000 to fix and probably wasn't worth it. My guess is it was some variant of the "engine oil sludge" problem noted on Car Complaints. 2003 Chrysler Sebring Engine Failure Due To Oil Sludge: 22 Complaints

 

Wow, those were some brutal posts in your attached link. Sucks extra for you because you invested in struts right before that. Did you see any indication that your engine was on it's last legs before you took your cross country trip?

 

Nope. It just spontaneously lost power and died while I was driving on the highway. The car had abruptly died in a similar way 2 times in the previous 3 years, and both those were caused by a faulty fuel pump (yes, I had to replace the fuel pump 2 times in 3 years), so I knew it wasn't the most reliable of cars, but its abrupt death was unexpected.

What happened with the Sebring was a big reason I made reliability a top factor when looking for my next car (a Corolla). And a few years later when I got in an accident with the Corolla, I decided to only get a car that had among the highest ratings on Car Complaints, Dashboard Light (then called the Long-Term Quality Index), True Delta, and Consumer Reports. And of those select cars, I picked the 2009 Prius for fuel economy.