Review Car

Durability of the Toyta Prius

With gas prices still hovering around four dollars a gallon and a chance they may go up instead of down, drivers are looking for smaller cars with higher gas mileage. One of the best smaller cars on the market today is the hybrid Toyota Prius. It has an EPA rating of fifty miles per gallon, but the thing that has most new buyers a little concerned is the life of the battery pack and whether or not the electric components will work correctly after the newness wears off. 

In regard to the battery, the battery pack that comes in any new Toyota hybrid has a double sided warranty, which is one hundred fifty thousand miles or ten years in the states with California emission laws or one hundred thousand miles or eight years in every other state. If something happens to the battery during the warranty time, it will be replaced at no cost to the customer, but there is no pro-rating. 

The battery pack is one of the less frequent items that are replaced according to Toyota and this covers all Prius models. A good portion of the ones that were replaced were the ones that were damaged in an accident. If you have to replace a battery pack after the warranty has expired, the price will depend on the year of the car. If your Prius is from the years 2004-2009, you can expect to pay around twenty six hundred dollars. If the car is from 2001-2003 the replacement battery could cost around twenty three hundred dollars. Of course, you have to add in labor charges which could add another couple of hundred dollars onto the price. 

As far as the electrical components, there are some Toyota Prius on the road that has over two hundred thousand miles on them with no repairs at all so it is a safe bet to say that the electrical components hold up really well. Toyota Prius is also used as taxi cabs in major cities around the world.