Just purchased a 2024 Prius Prime Plug-in Hybrid. The salesman is strongly encouraging me to buy the extended warranty, which, instead of just the 3-years or 60,000km, would give me 7 years or 120,000km.
His reasoning is not for the engine and drivetrain, but for all the electrical components. He states that if the back up camera or the digital display for the speedometer & guages & warnings goes, it is extremely costly. He added that the digital screen for the speedometer (etc.) went on his wife’s Lexus and it cost $9800 to replace.
I thought that Toyota would have a enough quality to last 7 years without something like that going,
Anyone know of issues like this with the Prius Prime? Has it not been around enough to know?
@Mikey53 The Ask Someone feature is not what you think it is . It does not direct you to just 2024 Prius owners. You have been sent to the Car Talk Community Forum. The chance of another Prius Prime owner seeing your question is low.
That extended warranty does not do anything until the intial factory warranty is over. Many extended warranties have large loop holes. If this is an actual Toyota warranty and the price is reasonable than you just have to decide if the peace of mind is worth it. Also make sure that you can use at other places besides your selling dealer.
You might want to post your question on a web forum that is Prius Prime specific.
ALL vehicles have issues, some just more than others, Toyota/Lexus vehicles overall are one of the, if not the most reliable vehicles on the road for many many years now, but that does not mean that things don’t/can’t break sooner or later… Not counting recalls or TSB stuff, all vehicles have at least a small % of issues anywhere from the front bumper to the rear bumper… That being said it is a crap shoot if an extended warranty will be needed or not… And warranty company’s are for profit businesses and count on having a lower % of claims than higher or they would simply go out of business…
That being said, if you have the budget and or able to pull funds to cover expensive repairs then I would be like the warranty company and hope nothing breaks, but if not and it is easier for you to speed X amount of $$ every month over the life of the car payments then the warranty may be better for you… Me or my daughter while in college and paying for her own car, a $5K + repair would be hard to handle with a car payment as well, so I added the Toyota extended warranty to her car, that being said the TPMS sensor (covered under the warranty) went out 800ish miles out of warranty, so basically never had a warranty claim… lol… But for her, it was better to have the warranty and not need it then to need it and not have it… Kinda like a seat belt… Although I have never needed it, I always wear it…
Again the warranty is a crap shoot, but I have also, for customers, used the warranty on 100’s if not 1000’s of vehicles over the years…
I’ve never bought an extended warranty and never will. Vehicles are least reliable right after purchase due manufacturing defects AND after 150k miles due to wear-n-tear. Extended warranties cover the time period when the vehicle is MOST reliable. Sure, things can happen, but the chances of it happening during the extended warranty period are very rare. Extended warranties are just an insurance policy (a very expensive insurance policy). Extended warranty companies are either directly owned by insurance companies or underwritten by insurance companies. It’s a very very very lucrative and profitable business for insurance companies. Changes are you’d be far better off not purchasing.
I also would not buy it, I recently bought a RX350H, and previously had a ES300 (14 years with no major problems). Even if you want one, don’t buy it now, wait and see as @GorehamJ suggests. Extended warranties are one of the dealer’s biggest profit centers, which means they’re typically not a great deal for you.
I only bought an extended warranty once in my life, and it turned-out to be a great decision. The car in question was a Chevy Citation–one of GM’s notoriously bad X cars. That extended warranty saved my bacon, due to the incredibly-frequent repairs that the car needed.
At the time, nobody really knew how bad those cars were, but my decision was based on my really bad experience with the Volvo that I traded-in on the Chevy. Because I regretted not having better warranty coverage on that POS Volvo, I decided to buy the extended warranty on the Chevy, and it paid-off for me.
All of that being said, I wouldn’t buy an extended warranty for a Toyota, but as Goreham pointed-out, you can decide to do it in a few years if the car proves to be problematic.
Chances are if anything is bad from the outset, it’s going to fail within the 3 year factory warranty period.
If you have the cash (not a loan) for the warranty…keep the cash in the bank, in case you ever need it. That way you still have the cash.
If you buy the warranty…all you know for sure is…they have your money.
I agree. Don’t buy the insurance. When we bought our Honda Odyssey in 2019, the finance manager tried the same stuff on us. I asked him why I should buy the van if Hondas were so unreliable that I needed an extended warranty. He shut up fast.
Did @GorehamJ post something in this thread?I don’t see it.
He did, now it’s gone. Odd.
I thought I saw something also, but I have seen a lot of post being flagged for one member, maybe something was said about his post and then he deleted it…