EV / BEV / PHEV Mechanic - Greater Boston?
Hello, my two years of free Toyota Care are almost up and I’m looking for a future shop to work on the EV components of my car, that isn’t the dealer. They are OK, but I’m not interested in only having one option.
Can anyone recommend as shop that can work on the PHEV/EV components of my car WITHOUT voiding any warranties?
Thanks,
Jason
One idea, stop by the “Good News” shop, and ask them for recommendations. Bring a box of donuts.
I say with it being an EV, I would stick with the dealer as long as it is still under warranty…
How much maintenance is there??? other then the normal…
You have roughy six years left on all the hybrid and EV parts of your vehicle. Why would you not let the dealer care for that stuff?
What I don’t like about my current dealer is that it is inconveniently located and when the idiot alarm on the car says it needs service, I call to make an appointment and wait 3-4 weeks for a time slot.
With our gas car, I call Arco Tire and Auto in Somerville and have an appointment within 1-2 days.
It looks like the closest two dealers to Somerville are Herb Gordon Toyota and Toyota of Watertown. If one of those is your dealer, try the other. This is a guess from the map and I’m over 600 miles away.
Doesn’t your idiot alarm give you a 500 miles (or something) warning before the alarm to get it done now goes off??
You also have 2 trip meters, I use one for gas fill ups and the other for oil changes, reset it after each and look at it at every fill up, easy to do while scrolling… You know how many miles you drive a month, so when you get about a month away, call and set the appointment…
Have your normal tire shop rotate your tires every 5K miles, that way you only have to go to the dealer once or twice a year…
Maybe pick a different dealer if possible…
BTW, I remember driving cars with out any maintenance warning light, what a PIA, I had to keep up with them, even before trip meters… Wait, I still own a few of those vehicles… lol
There is a shop near me that specialized in Toyota and Lexus vehicles, I’d trust them with my hybrid. Any shop near you like that?
And routine maintenance is pretty general, there are few hybrid-specific tasks (like cleaning the cooling system air filter). Go through your maintenance lists, write down all the hybrid-related tasks, and ask potential shops (not oil change places) if they can handle them. Use the nearest dealer for tasks the independent shop can’t handle, along with any warranty work or repairs to the hybrid system.
I didn’t even know they made a RAV4 EV.
The good news is, hybrids are very reliable, until they have 150K+ miles on them. That should give you enough time to look for a good shop.
But this is an EV. I’m going to assume its going to be just as reliable as the hybrids.
They don’t. I think that the OP is probably referring to the Rav-4 Prime, which is a PHEV.
That is correct. The pull down menu on tge website doesn’t have a field for tge Rav4 Prime. There is a field for the Rav4 EV…which doesn’t exist.
Actually, there were two different versions of the Rav4 EV, not that they made many of them:
Toyota RAV4 EV - Wikipedia
Then why not have them take over the service on your RAV? Routine maintenance does not have to be done by a dealer, and unless they actively mis-perform some operation your warranty will remain intact.
from <www.electricvehiclesnews.com>
" The RAV4 EV was an [all-electric] version of the popular RAV4 SUV produced by Toyota. It was sold from 1997 to 2003."
People who know me on this forum, no I never suggest going to the dealer, but instead find a good independent. However - This is one type of vehicle I’d say - stick with the dealer. Not a lot of independents are properly trained on EV’s yet.
What about hybrids?
You shouldn’t have to pay for PHEV repairs during the warranty period, there is no need to find a hybrid specialist.
Hybrid vehicle maintenance isn’t much different than non-hybrid vehicles; oil changes and tire rotations. The exceptions are cleaning the HV battery cooling filter during each oil change and changing the inverter coolant @ 150,000 miles.
Depends on what’s offered where you live but i’ve found a Worchester Mass based outfit that trains shops to work on Hybrid models. Locally there’s a summer program at Clover Park Technical in Tacoma that mainly covers Ford, Toyota, and Honda hybrid systems with the rest thrown in together. This is the Mass based outfit linked below.
Fix Hybrid – Automotive Career Developement Center
Our longtime Indy shop see’s Prius’s of all generations along with the other Toyota Hybrid’s on a regular basis so we’re confident if something does need repaired, they’ve done this before.
Dang those guys are definitely serious about hybrid repair work.
That program is one of the best in the country. I went through Prius training led by the founder of that organization and what I learned over 20 years ago is still invaluable to me today.
With the number of hybrids on the road today and the training available, there’s no excuse for any shop not to be familiar with them. Unfortunately, I often run into techs with 30 years experience who have little or no hybrid training.
That’s a damn shame, isn’t it? Some people are just stuck in the mud. Back when I was 22 years old, the lead mechanic where I worked said “You like all this computer stuff, huh?” I told him it was the future and he said he didn’t want anything to do with it. 10 years later his position was “brake and suspension tech”.