Between getting guidance and instructions on Priuschat online and autobeyours.com I was able to save a lot of money- I am remembering now I had two or 3 repairs between the two Priuses we had. On the first one, the MFD (multi-function display) went out and had to be replaced. Dealer quoted something like $1,200 for it, and Steve at AutoBeYours sent me one with a 30 day guarantee for $300 or $350, if you send yours back to him, for him to salvage. First one I put in worked, then stopped working a week later, and he sent me a 2nd one, no questions asked, and that one worked until my wife got in an accident and the insurance company totaled the car. On one of the cars, the headlight leveling sensor went out- it adjusts the headlights to be level in case you put 3 big adults and 400 pounds of fertilizer or sandbags in the back -an almost useless feature, since if the sensor goes out, the default is for the headlights to aim down 10 feet in front of the bumper. Dealer repair would have been $300, and for like $25 Steve sent me instructions with pictures on how to bypass the sensor and adjust the headlights with a screwdriver like almost every other car. And when I had to replace the High Intensity Discharge headlights, dealer cost is like $700 because they have to take the bumper off, and replace the bulbs at like $100 each- might as well do both as long as the bumper is off. But guys on the Prius chat had pics/instructions to show how to do it without taking the bumper off, and why cheap Chinese lights were actually a better match for the circuitry than what Toyota engineered- replaced headlights for like $25 in the end, and they lasted till we got rid of the car.
No, I see on Priuschat where people go 250K and 300K miles with theirs, but we just were ready to go all electric, and my wife has a long commute and was ready for a new car. Plus she has free charging at her school- hard to beat. I could have gotten a reconditioned Prius battery with a guarantee from AutoBeYours for $1,300 or $1,700, I forget, but then we got the new car bug and a federal tax credit and didn’t look back.