I'm curious about the durability and repair costs of owning a hybrid. Do they break down more often than a gas car? The regenerative braking and other features sound kind of complicated. How long will they last? Since the technology is new I'm sure there will be great improvement in reliability as time goes on, but I wonder which type of car has greater "inherent" reliability in the long run. A Corolla will go 300k, what about a Prius?
3 years 3 prii (a 2004, a 2002 traded up to a 2005), no service and/or repair issues (other than the gas tank bladder controvery and sceduled maintenance visits).
First (2001) Prius has about 80000 miles, bought in February, 2001 -- no service required in over 4 years, other than a set of new tires, several oil changes and one new set of wiper blades. We also took it in to the dealer to have the HV battery terminals checked for corrosion (or whatever that recall was about) -- in and out in a couple of hours, no work needed.
Second (2005) Prius has had one blow-out (I blame it on east Texas roads) and a couple of oil changes so far.
That sounds promising, the real test is when it hits 200k. What I'm really wondering is whether a small gas engine combined with an electric motor is inherently longer lasting than just a plain gas engine. How long do they expect the electric motor to last?
One Prius used as a taxi in Canada went to 200,000 miles a year or two ago, at which time Toyota bought it back to tear it down.
But don't rely on anecdotes here. Consumer Reports, for one, reports that Prius has a much better than average reliability record. This is intuitively reasonable as much of the complexity is in electronics, which should not wear out, rather than in mechanics (no clutch, no fluid transmission valves or bands, no variable diameter pulleys, etc.).
Toyota's manager of alternative fuels and specialized vehicles, Vic Johnstone, concedes the batteries, like the car itself, are built to last less than a decade. "The life of the car and the battery are supposed to be the same... around 8 to 10 years," he said. "We're not expecting to replace them [the batteries]. In fact we only hold one [replacement] battery in stock nationally."
Okay a 2 year old article what also states that the prices for the batteries were alreaday coming down back then. In 3, 5, or 10 years who's to say that, given the success of these cars, they won't have resolved the issue that are keeping currently high? Mass production had been proven to make costs go down dramatically. So has neccessity.
Besides, most early adopters knew/know the risks. And just how many car makers are making cars that they intend to last longer than 10 years anyway?
The gas engine in a Prius runs in a gas engine's best power band. The electric motors provide the low end torque, freeing the gas engine to run where it performs the best. Also, the startup cycle on the gas engine is far easier on the engine than usual, according to Toyota. And, the Anderson (sp?) cycle probably is more friendly on the engine than the typical Otto cycle. Add to this that the Prius transmission has no gear changing (it is a fixed ring, planetary, and sun gear system with optimal ratios for the electric and gas engines) and you should get a system that lasts longer than your normal gas - manual or automatic - automobile.
Also, regenerative braking, having no friction generating parts, will cut down on brake wear.
It will be interesting to see, several years down the road, what parts actually wore out the fastest.
My hope is that over time hybrids will be at least as low cost to maintain as gas. I just bought a new Nissan Sentra so I won't be needing a new car for at least 5 years. By that time we'll know more about the hybrid's durability. I hope they start making hybrids without all the bells and whistles. I just want basic cheap transportation.
Yea, that's really what I'm interested in, which car from an engineering standpoint should last longer. I'm sure the new ones will have problems but they'll fix that. I've always felt that big gas engines were inherently difficult to maintain. Like you said, it will be interesting to see how they hold up, especially now that some of them have been around a few years.
I'm saving $100/month in gas costs (based on 1500 miles a month) compared to the 2001 Acura TL I owned before the Prius. That's 1/3 of the car payment on the Prius.
Very true, my experience has been that almost all my non-standard maintenance costs have been if four areas: transmissions, starters, POWER DOORS/WINDOWS, and air conditioning. And almost all of it occurred from 5 years on. So starting next year I expect to see more problems with the 2001 Prius (it hits 5 years in service in February).
On the good side, as someone has mentioned, it has no starter or transmission to speak of, so those problems won't happen. It does have two motor/generators that should be a lot more durable than most of the rest of the car, but we'll see (as someone else mentioned, the car seems to have no trouble running 200,000 miles, but 10 years is a slightly different question).
And of course the electric accessorires and A/C are pretty much the same as in any other similar price range car and should fail at about the same rate, alas. The 2004+ Prius does have an electric A/C rather than a typical car A/C unit, so it should also, based on a mechanical analysis, last as much as twice as long as the A/C in the older Prius and in most (all?) other cars.
Looking at the reliability chart for a 1992 Corolla
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92&make=Toyota&model=Corolla)shows engine, heating/AC, starting/charging and accessories problemsare to be expected. 200K miles would be 15,000 miles a year for 13 years. There are cases where a Prius was used for Taxi and delivery. In both cases the reports were that they did fine and needed no repairs.
It does make sense. The engine is coddled, and is usually running about
1/2 of the time. The engine is spun up to speed before gasoline is injected, so the wear is minimized. The engine is under full electronic control, so it is managed better, I.E no lugging.
The regenerative braking is as simple as engine braking, and accomplished in much the same way. The brakes are used less than in a conventional car, so the wheel bearings heat up less and should last longer, just like the brakes lasting longer.
You already know by now that the prius transmission has fewer moving parts than a conventional tranny. It also has fewer parts that mesh, so less wear.
In short, you won't get to 300K in a Corolla without some repairs. There's no indication that you'll need any repairs in the first 100 to 200K with the Prius.
This excludes, of course, the normal wear and tear items like tires, auxilliary 12 volt battery, etc.
I think that is a good reason to expect better engine life. The engine is entirely under computer control: throttle, load (and therefore rpm and rate of change of the throttle), mixture, ignition timing, valve timing, even whether or not it runs. The engine gets a carefully controlled warm-up cycle every time it is needed.
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