How long do I keep this car? It is giving me no problems and I keep the maintenance up religiously. It has 244000 miles on it.
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As long as it runs and who knows how long that will be . But you should start pretending to make a car payment now. Just move 3 or 4 hundred each month to savings . That way you will have enough to make a good down payment or if this one runs long enough to buy outright.
24000 miles a year , long commute ?
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These cars are now favorites for urban taxi use. Talk to some taxi drivers!! The Prius is head and shoulders above any other hybrid car on the market, so expect it to have typical Toyota life expectancy which I have witnessed can be up to a million miles under the right circumstances.
Budget for a new battery every 10 years at $3000 or so.
As others say, just keep driving it and do the prescribed maintenance and you may be surprised how long that car will give reliable service.
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There are maintenance items that the manufacturer tends not to mention, as they only need the car to last past the warrantee period. So if these are not on your list, add them:
Change transmission fluid and filter, every 30-50k miles
Change brake fluid whenever brake pads are changed.
(others here may add other items)
I’m a fan of synthetic oil. I change both of our Prii’s oil twice a year. I’ve never changed the transmission fluid in either car. I doubt it’s necessary.
Over at the Prius Club on FB we have members who post 300K mile markers in that gen pretty regularly. Here’s my thinking on your specific case: Your car is already “Fully depreciated.” It has only nominal value at this point as a trade or private sale and the depreciation curve now is very flat, meaning it is not dropping fast, if at all. If it works for you, set a target date in the future to move to a new car. If you reach it, either donate the car, sell it for short money to a person in need of a car, or get what you can as a trade and move to a new or newer car of your liking. Then tell everyone you know how awesome your Prius treated you. You are not ar real risk of losing any money by keeping it another 6 to 12 months. Here’s one last tip; If the battery starts to give you any issues, rememebr that it can be repaired for short money. There are shops all over American now that will replace a bad cell.
I think it was a decade ago that a taxi driver here in Vancouver racked up over a million kilometres on his Prius. I don’t know if the maintenance included battery replacement or not. I don’t think he had any major engine problems. Toyota bought it back from him to tear it down and understand how they built such a good car.
Had a friend whose '08 died at about 200k. Mostly battery. They said the car was worth far less than the $3k the battery would cost (see other comments). He bought a new '18.
My friend drives for Uber; he bought a salvage title Prius a few yrs ago, drove it to 400K miles, sold it for a few thousands and now has bought another salvage Prius.
a relative of one of my friends drove prior-gen prius past 200K miles before it broke on him, but that guy refused to do ANY maintenance on the car other than oil changes… so, predictably, his timing belt snapped
We have a 2008 Prius with 130K. The catalytic converter needs to be replaced (which means o2 sensors too), brakes, and there’s some cooling system associated with the batteries that needs to be replaced too. In California, in all that’s like $5K of work. But we’re about to move to Georgia, where the price should go down by about $2K because we can get an aftermarket catalytic converter there. The car burns oil, which apparently means that it’ll probably kill another catalytic converter in the future.
If we wanted to move on from the car, what the heck could we do with a car that needs so much work? Especially out of California? Do y’all reckon it’d be work doing the repairs to try to get another 100K out of it?
One thing to consider is what part of Georgia you are moving to as a lot of place’s in Georgia does not have inspection’s.
How do you know it needs a cat, instead of just O2 sensors?
How much oil do you use? mile/quart
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That’s very unlikely. Oil burning also very unlikely unless engine was severe neglected. What more can you tell us about the car’s history?
Catalytic converter: the check engine light came on over the summer and the message from the ODB was a catalytic converter problem. I was initially concerned that it’d be stolen–that’s a big problem out here. But it’s still there. I took it to a local shop to get the car inspected, and they reported all of the aforementioned issues. I doubt they’re bs’ing me, because they would know that I’d be hesitant to pay the $2K for the Toyota brand catalytic converter, which is the only one legally allowed on the car here. Hence why I mentioned the move to Georgia.
If we keep the car, I’d like to get that repair done because we’re down to 30 MPG because of the emissions issues.
Oil burning: if you look around at various discussions about 2008 Prii, a lot of them burn oil. This is actually our second one. The first met an unfortunate demise. Both cars absolutely burn(ed) oil. I don’t know the answer to how much, but I do know that several times we’ve accidentally let it get down to no detectable oil with the dipstick.
To your question about the history, we purchased this car used. It’d had one owner previously. But our first 2008 Prius was bought new by my wife and she was religious about getting it serviced at Toyota. Still, burned oil.
A dude at an oil changing shop out in Flagstaff told me that Prii have these tubes that are supposed to be where oil exits from around the pistons that get clogged.
That OBD code can be (and often is) caused by bad O2 sensor(s), the computer depends on their signal. There is no separate signal from the cat.
That is not an accident - that is negligence .
After you move just trade this thing off and keep better track of fluids and such on the next vehicle. And those 'Dudes ’ at oil change places are not to be listened to for vehicle advice.
Wow, you’re a friendly individual! So, are you saying that YOU check your oil every couple hundred miles? We’ve gotten the oil changed at max 3K through the lives of both Prii we’ve owned. So we’re not negligent. However, the car has burned allllll the way through the oil well before that next 3K. With the first Prius, it happened twice before I realized that it even COULD happen in that car. For those who don’t want to be “negligent,” it happened to occur after crossing multiple mountain passes. So now I make certain to check the oil soon after we make trips through elevation or across longer highway distances.
The dude at the oil change place offered no vehicle advice, just an interesting tidbit of information that he happened to have because he owned a 2008 Prius himself. And it’s not like this was Jiffy Lube. It was a locally owned and operated spot with some older more experienced employees.
No I do not check the oil level every couple of hundred miles . I check it every Saturday before I start the vehicle and check the tire pressure on the 1st and 15th of each month . If you look in your owners manual it advises to check oil level at every fuel fill up.