I'm thinking of buying a 2009 NAH off a rental company. The car has 50K miles so the standard warranty is gone. I'll have it inspected before buying but I wanted to get some input on the major maintenance concerns since this is my first hybrid.

Any red flags that I should watch for? The price is very attractive and the car is in very good shape... $13350 is about the same price as the non-hybrids so I'm willing to put my foot in the green car category as long as I'm not buying a maintenance nightmare.

 

I have 60K on my 2007 NAH and have had zero problems with it. One thing to check is to get it out on the freeway and while you're doing that punch it hard. Some NAH that have been driven around town a lot might have carbon buildup in the cylinder heads. They need to be blown out by long drives or heavy acceleration periodically.
What part of the country are you in?
Your mileage will vary, but I have gotten an average of almost 36 mpg for the life of the vehicle.
They can be modded also.
https://www.greenhybrid.com/discuss/...rst-one-26667/

 

I'm in Washington and Nissan didn't sell them here originally. That is my concern... going to a dealer and not having someone who actually can work on the vehicle.

I'm going to drive it for work and have no interest in performance tricks. I just want a low-cost car that is easy to maintain and is efficient. With the miles I drive monthly I estimate the hybrid will save me $40-$50/month in fuel but I'm cautious about the extra headache of needing to take it to the dealer for work and even then if they actually have a technician that can work on it. It wouldn't take long for a maintenance headache to quickly erase any fuel savings I had.

 

Even when my vehicle was new, I did get a solid 36mpg. Most of this was commuter time and on the freeway. If you really put your foot in it, you'll easily pull the mileage down to what would be the standard 2.5 of around 32mpg.
As I said earlier, I've had no problems with mine and have found no quirks in how the car drives.

 

I drive like an old lady. In all my cars I manage to get higher than average MPG. I'm doing all my calculations based upon averaging 33MPG in the hybrid, and 27MPG with a non-hybrid. Best estimate for me is that the hybrid will buy 5MPG improvement over the non-hybrid, with more savings based upon more city miles vs. highway and as fuel cost increase the hybrid comes out better. If I did all highway miles it looks very nearly a wash. The standard Altima gets 32mpg on the highway which is within spitting distance of the NAH.

 

Good, I think your estimates are very realistic.

 

At 63k in min 2007 NAH and I bought mine 2nd hand with 24k, No maintenance issues at all. Standard oil changes and fluid checks. Absolutely no real issues with the Hybrid system (only on was when a stick my son collected managed to get into the cooling fan under the rear deck but that was not a maintenance issue) Given the pricing, its sounds like a great deal. But so far as reliablity, so far so good.

 

Hi I am also thinking of buying a NAH from a rental company. I became concerned after reading about the specifics of breaking in a new hybrid. Wouldn't that all be ruined in a former rental? Can I still expect the good MPGs?

 

I don't believe that there's any real difference between breaking in a hybrid compared to a non-hybrid.
I think it's more learning how to drive it differently to take advantage of the hybrid functionality.
The longer I drive mine, the more I understand how to drive it for mileage.
Everyone's commute is different and you need to learn how to drive your commute.
e.g. On my old commute, I could get anywhere between 50 - 73 mpg for a trip average after I'd converted my NAH to PHEV, which was 20 miles each way under 40 mph. Now on my mostly freeway only commute I get anywhere between 42 -47 mpg. Some of this is dependent on what the commute traffic does, but a large part of it is how I drive it. There is a sweet spot at about 62 mph that gives the best mileage. You can't rely on cruize control to do this as it maintains a higher throttle usage than I do to maintain the same speed.
My best tank is 46.5 mpg and 1033 miles on a single tank of gas after conversion, before conversion was 880 miles and 39 mpg.