We just planned a 7 hour (each way) vacation trip - (first serious outing since the pandemic began) but now I'm wondering if it's safe to take our car.
I've just read a few stories of the hybrid inverter in the 2006 Highlander Hybrid dying with a dramatic "pop" noise and shutting down the motor, leaving you to coast to a risky stop wherever you are. The commenters were saying that this inverter could fail as it reached higher miles. As bad as that is I also read that it costs $9,000 to repair it! - certainly more than the car is worth.
In a related question, We lost power overnight due to tropical storm Isaias. I was thinking the hybrid car would be great to power an external pure sine wave inverter so that we could run a line to our refrigerator and let the hybrid motor turn on as needed to recharge the battery. Even though this would attach to the 12V battery now I'm wondering if this could be also be bad for the main hybrid inverter attached to the traction battery. Should we be thinking about trading it in for something else?