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The Gen 3 Prius runs like a clock to 100K miles minimum, with some rare head gasket failures from 100K to 150K miles, and failures becoming more common near 200K, with some taxis/couriers going 300k-400+K before head gasket issues. Considering that most new car buyers don't keep their cars past 100K, that leaves it plenty of room to slot in at 5th.
I purchased my Gen 3 Prius (2010, first model year of Gen 3) used with 150K miles already on it. It had some misfires starting at 160K that would have lead to head gasket failure if ignored. Toyota provided an updated EGR valve (less likely to stick) under extended warranty for free, while I did a complete DIY EGR circuit cleaning and added an oil catch can. With care, I had good confidence that I could run the car to 300K miles, and was confident enough in the high mileage car that I drove it cross Canada/US five times, including my last trip this past January (included car camping in -40 temperatures). Unfortunately, I collided with caribou on that last trip, and the Prius was totaled out after limping it home another 700 miles, thus I'm cross shopping Fits as a replacement.
Carcomplaints.com lists the 2015 Prius and 2009 Prius (last of 3rd Gen and last of 2nd Gen, respectively) as one of the most reliable cars in their list. The 2015 Prius has updated pistons and rings that addresses oil consumption issues that some high mileage Priuses had (mine didn't).
Last edited by Lightning Racer; 02-27-2019 at 08:57 PM.
Thanks for the carcomplaints.com source. Another site bookmarked.
For reference it lists the 2015 Fit as having the most complaints - mostly for seats being uncomfortable. Not sure if my '16 has the exact seats, but I have no issues with my seats. Everyone is different.
http://www.carcomplaints.com/Honda/Fit
Last edited by Action Jackson; 02-28-2019 at 03:18 AM.
dont want to de rail the thread too much, so ill make the next words brief
-most DIY'ers would more than likely shy away from the egr cleaning, its involved, period
-alot of users on prius chat seem to agree taht the issue is known by toyota, just swept under the rug (ie, not exactly "rare")
-oil consumption was another fate of my lexus ct, per the prius chat guys, they said "welcome to the oil burners club, and this phase you just accept it and keep adding oil"
-those are are lucky enough to get covered by warranty, are in great shape. the rest (esp lexus ct owners, as its technically not a "toyota" get turned away by both lexus and toyota dealers
TL;DR = 3rd gen prius engines have alot of flaws and alot of unscheduled maintenance (software updates, intake mani replacements, egr cooler/egr pipe cleaning, and installation of an occ is pretty much a must), and IMO is not worth the trouble (hence why I dumped mine like a bad habit)
I am one of those Priuschat regulars since late 2015, and have read every single one of those threads. Pulling up a search result list doesn't mean it's a common problem for typical first owners (Consumer Reports isn't taking about the used market, and like I said, most people would have sold their Priuses before that point). For example, the first thread that you pull up (Absalom) is a guy that just bought a 233+K, crappy running car that was sold to him already screwed up (someone else's problem), as he discovered evidence that the head had already been off, and not repaired properly. Hope he got it for a good price. There's inherent bias on message boards. People with problems go there to discuss them. People without issues usually have no reason to go there unless they are car nerds like me. Do you know how many 3rd Gen Priuses have been sold? I passed through San Francisco one time, and there were a dozen on every block...
There are Priuschat regulars that call it "turd gen". There are also Priuschat regulars, like Rayeagle, that are near 200K miles, and fully expect and intend their cars to go indefinitely.
EGR cleaning doesn't have to be DIY. You could purchase an EGR cooler and intake manifold and have someone else do it. Better than a blown engine, and probably only needed once if you want to keep a car 200K miles.
Yes, oil burning is sometimes a problem for high mileage Gen 3 Priuses 2010-2013. The 2014s had a new piston design to address this, and as I said earlier, the 2015 had both that new piston and new rings to address it. Oil burning on high mileage Gen 3s is not universal, there have been polls on this on Priuschat. One big related factor seems to be oil change interval, old oil having content that clogs the rings. Oil burning obviously contributes to EGR clogging, so that probably why your CT200h went down.
The Gen 4 Prius, 2016+ has both the oil burning solved, as well as an EGR system that gets the exhaust from after the cat. There are no reports of EGR clogging, head gasket problems, oil burning, or blown engines for the 4th Gen that I have come across, should be super solid. Do you think Consumer Reports would talking about 5+ year old Priuses when providing advice on reliability of new cars?
Like I said before, I'm cross shopping the Fit as a replacement for my Prius. But I am leaning towards another Gen 3 Prius. For the same cost on the used market, they are one and a half to two steps up on the Fit in class (Fit:Yaris, Civic:Corolla, Prius half to one up on Corolla). The 2015s are solid, and I'd have more confidence in a 2015 used Prius with less than 100,000 miles than a 2015+ Fit with 50,000 miles. Admittedly, a lot of that confidence is my knowledge about the Gen 3 (and Gen 4) Prius. My 2010 Prius was fully loaded (leather, heated seats, nav, solar roof, moonroof, 3 door smartkey, Homelink, etc), originally a $30K car in 2010, unadjusted for inflation, and I got it for $7200 3 years ago. The Fits have a ridiculous resale value/slow depreciation which makes buying new make sense, if you have the money. My top prospect in Fits currently is a stripper 2017 LX manual, oil changes every 4K miles, 37K miles, asking $12.5K, about book value. Makes much better equipped 2015 Priuses for the same price/higher miles more attractive, so I'm still shopping. On the plus side for the Fit, it's a sportier ride. I haven't driven one yet, but I imagine it would still be Honda similar in ways to the Acura Integra 5 door MT that I drove in the '90s.
Last edited by Lightning Racer; 02-28-2019 at 11:30 PM.
test drive one ... you will notice the fit is more sporty, if I may go as far as saying.... even more sporty than an F sport CT200H (WITH f sport springs and f sport sway bars and middle under brace)
the fit engines are no more harder to work on than the 2ZR-FXE's you're used to. and without a hybrid synergy electric motor ... and the hybrid battery ... thats 2 less major components to worry about
mpg will be less for the fit of course, may want to run some mpg calculators and see how much savings you'd save in a 50 mpg car vs a 40 mpg car over the course of X amt of miles driven by yourself annually, over the course of X amt of yrs of ownership
while running those numbers, you may want to factor in a hypothetical scenario of "how much would it have cost me, if i had to buy a new intake mani + egr cooler and have it all installed" ... and pretend for a sec that you had no means of doing the intake manifold cleaning or egr cleaning yourself ... and add that to the over all cost of ownership of that car .... for me, savings in mpg of owning a hybrid went down the drain when I had to pay for the head gaskets repair, and thankfully the intake mani cleaning, and egr cleaning costed nothing more than the price of oem gaskets and parts cleaner, but was still a huge pita and a waste of a day ... and led to my eventual resentment in the brand ... and I found my way to honda
(prev cars = 88 toyota pickup, 95 tacoma, 92 sc400, 95 sc300 5 spd, 96 sc300, 2013 ct200h .... nothing but toyota pink slips, minus 1 subaru wrx .... I was a huge fan of the brand ... up until last year)
I'm and engineer/scientist and very analytical. I ran the approximate cost numbers before I bought my 150K Prius in 2010, and also did a full cost of ownership review afterwards my ownership ended (detailed in a Priuschat post). My total cost of ownership was peanuts compared to a new car buyer, such as the original owner of my car. It would have remained very low even if I had to deal with a blown engine, and the anticipated new HV battery in a keep-it-near-forever scenario.
You might be aware of a CT owner (Raidin) who is a courier. His CT is up to 457K miles now. He thought it cost effective to spend $5400 after his head gasket blew at 375K miles to fix that plus some other preventative things, seeing the whole picture of cost. Like him, I see the main cost of a car being it's initial depreciation, which I avoided by buying high mileage used. He's doing so much mileage, depreciation averages out to a small amount per mile.
The original owner of my Prius lost $23K in depreciation in 5.5 years, over $4K per year. That can pay for an awful lot of even full engine swaps (almost new Gen4 engine into a Gen 3 Prius can be done for around $2.5K installed). My depreciation cost over my 3 years of ownership was essentially nil. $7.2K purchase, $7.1K insurance settlement after animal collision, though you could say $2-3k was needed to fix it after my purchase. I bought it in crappy condition, brought it up to great condition right away.
Toyota is just releasing a Corolla Hybrid too. Nearly gets as good mileage as Prius, without looking like a Prius lol
Wish they would bring over the Corolla Wagon!
I'm with you on the wagon wish. I only like wagons and hatchbacks/liftbacks though, and actually prefer the look of the Prius to the new Corolla. I like the 2019 Prius update, especially in limited trim, though I'd want the AWD-e version that doesn't come in limited. Thinking back to when I was kid and drawing cars, maybe early '80s, my ideal dream car drawings looked just like Priuses, lol. Love the aero shape. I don't like the new Corolla's J headlights and the sedan trunk looks weak to me because it slopes downwards, reminding me of the bar-of-soap era Tauruses.
Last edited by Lightning Racer; 03-01-2019 at 01:37 PM.
I know Raidin well, we interacted a lot on club lexus and on the ct200h forums. I did see that he spent well over 5k, imo a little too much ... but it is what it is and he is more than likely going to get another 300k out of that car
Food for thought... someone reached 500k, w/o the need for a $5000 repair bill
Interesting the only Honda on the list is Fit. In my experience and based on data regarding engineering and how good Toyota is at building reliably, you have to give the node in 2019 to the Toyota Brand. It still ranks best, and it has bloodied the nose of the Little 3 of the USA more than any other competitor.
Amazing Company, Toyota, nice to see that Ford in its Continental actually made the list. Sad part is less than 10,000 units of Continental were built in 2018 MY.
The rest were yielding from Japan. One Kia-Korea!! Not a single European build.
I remember when the Civic and the Fit were tops in reliability. I think they'll be able to coast along on that previous good reputation till the public learns that Hondas aren't as good as they used to be.
mpg will be less for the fit of course, may want to run some mpg calculators and see how much savings you'd save in a 50 mpg car vs a 40 mpg car over the course of X amt of miles...
That's why we bought three Fits, rather than three Prius cars. Over the course of 100,000 miles, we'd save about $1,250 on gasoline, not nearly enough to make up for the price difference.Let's look at the added cost of electricity to charge the batteries for 100,000 miles on a plug-in Prius.
"Hymotion estimates that its plug-in for the Prius will cost even less, about 50 cents per 40-mile recharge." I've found that estimates of the cost of electricity for anything are very low compared to the rates we pay here - about $0.17/kWh. If I figure a conservative cost of $0.75 for forty miles of driving a Prius, it would cost me $1,875 in electricity to drive 100,000 miles. Even using their figure of 50 cents per charge, it would cost $1,250. Owning a Fit would be less expensive than owning a Prius.
02-25-2019, 12:21 PM
