Stimuated by Bob W analysis of current eBay sales, I went back to ye olde data. I tracked eBay completed sales of 2001-2003 Prius from May 2004 through November 2004. Then I got bored, and stopped. For today's analysis, I assumed that each car was born on 15 April of its model year, and that could be done better perhaps because I also have most of the VINs. Here is a summary chart, to the nearest 100 miles:

Model year ... average miles/yr ... st dev miles/yr ... number of vehicles sold
2001 ............ 16800 ................... 7700 ................. 130
2002 ............ 14800 ................... 7900 ................. 165
2003 ............ 16400 ................... 9200 ................. 77

If one supposes that Prius sold on eBay are representative of the entire population in this metric, then 15000 or so miles per year seems a suitable estimate (for the first few years of life, at least).

Oh wait, this is one of those times when medians may be more appropriate. Those are 16200, 12900, and 13300. So let's say 14 or 15k per year and call it good.

All these data (and more more more) are available in a spreadsheet, if anyone wants to perform other analyses. One of the 03's is Bob's project car, BTW

My 2001 Prius averages 15700 miles per year. Run hard and put away wet (as the saying goes).

DAS