Re: Life of Prius
I see no reason why the car won't last much longer than ordinary gasoline engine cars, as long as maintenance is done. The gas engine is stressed much less, having a lower rev limit, and no direct connection to the output and completely computer controlled means long lifespan. AC electric motors have few moving parts, so as long as the transmission fluid is changed regularly they shouldn't give any trouble, probably outlasting anything else. The battery is the only part that will eventually fail at some given moment, but this is still an unknown at the time because there isn't enough data yet, which is a good thing as that means there haven't been enough failures to calculate an average time to failure. Toyota's testing suggests 15 years may be the average, but again that's just an educated guess at this point. After 15 years a $1000-2000 component replacement seems reasonable.
|