rev up your engines this is a car that I would never buy used but I would buy new
Toyota Prius now they've been making Toyota Priuses
for 23 years now they've sold over 6 point 1 million of these Prius hybrid so
far and if you know anything about Toyota they generally try to perfect
things over time they don't throw the baby away with the bathwater they see a
problem they tend to fix it over time at the heart of the prius we look under the good
it's different than most car it's got a Hybrid Synergy Drive
it's got a gasoline engine in conjunction with electric batteries and
a generator and it's just system that makes it a good new car to buy but a bad
car to buy used with higher mileage not as naughty as it sounds think you better
gas mileage in stop and go traffic and in town that you do on the highway
they regenerate power when the car is slowing down it uses generators in the
braking system to recharge the battery and then when you take off it uses the
battery to help boost the power of the vehicle now if you drive like a real
snail you can go a little distance here and there by just having it in an
electric mode but as soon as you really step on the gas to take off the gasoline
engine up turn on not the exception to this is the Prius prime it was a plug-in
hybrid you could run on electricity alone or use the engine but really the
electricity max it would gonna be about 25 miles so it really was still just a
hybrid gasoline-electric but in order to get this phenomenal gas mileage in town
the gasoline engine has to sync with the computers and the battery and the
electric motor inside to make it run right you can see on a dash here it
tells you what's happening how it's charging there's various levels that you
can check out on the displays you can see here there's all kinds of
information that you can get it's kind of wild if you're really a tech person
you know you're gonna have fun playing around with stuff here we go here it's showing how
it's charging what it's working on it needless to say
it's a very complex computer on operation but in a case of this 2011 hey
it said over a hundred thousand miles are pretty much trouble-free operation
so far but with a disclaimer here up to today now it's got a problem with the
regenerative braking system that can end up costing a small fortune to fix aren't
you seeing a use one has over a hundred thousand miles on it that can often be a
big mistake that's one reason they're so cheap to
buy used I had a customer a couple of years ago
buy used one with one hundred and forty thousand miles on it for fifteen hundred
dollars they thought what a deal until the generator went out now on a normal
car my old Celica the alternator charges the
battery I can replace an alternator on one of these things for less than a
couple hundred bucks but not so on this Prius because it doesn't have an
alternator it's got a generator it's a generator motor it generates electricity
and it run stuff and to make things even more complicated these priuses are
combination of alternating electricity and direct electricity they're very very
very complex machines they're not something a do-it-yourselfer or
corner guy to gas stations gonna be able to figure out when they have a serious
problem with the drivetrain system in the case of my customer the generator
which is hidden why inside here on the transmission transactional assembly went
bad and it was going to cost over fifty nine hundred bucks to replace it because
of this cramped design the engine and the transmission assembly has to be
removed as a unit and then you have to replace the generator assembly transaxle
put it all back in 59 er bucks for car that the guy paid $1,500 for needless to
say he ended up junk in the car he didn't bother fixing but on a positive
side he had 150,000 miles on it or so too so it lasted a long time for the
original owner that's why if you're gonna buy one of these things you buy it
brand new you don't buy a used one with higher mileage now being a hybrid car
it's got a huge battery pack you take all this crap out here
then you can see the battery pack that's the side of it here you notice this
orange when you see orange on this that's the high voltage electricity
normal cars have 12 volt batteries now you can stick your tongue on them touch them and
nothing's gonna happen but these are over 200 volts they can kill you that is
a particular turn off when you pull on that switch you can shut the power of
the battery off so somebody's working on a car they don't like refute themselves
as orange wires here same thing it's warning you that's the super-high power
you don't mess with that stuff you need serious electricians equipment
for that stuff you gotta have inner gloves and then you have to have outer
gloves that are sealed young blow them up before you test and see if they have
leaks if they have leaks you throw them away by another set and you have to have
very expensive analytical gauges to work on these things and if you were planning
on testing these systems and working on them yourself you'd have to buy all of
that equipment the gloves and everything but you'd also have to buy some very
expensive gauges you need very low testing equipment to test some of the
circuits and also very high for the 200-plus of all parts of the system so
you'd be spending thousands and thousands on tools really it's
dangerous stuff I don't advise so many messing around with it unless they have
a lot of knowledge of electricity now going back to the battery pack they have
a certain lifespan they generally last quite some time ten years or more is
not on uncommon on these things but when they do go bad then you're in a real
bizarre situation now the last time I priced the battery for a car like this a
real brand new one from Toyota was over three thousand dollars now of course
there's guys that refurbished them sometimes those cost as little as $1,100
a little there's still a lot of money but they're not all that dependable
realize it's better and this is actually a battery pack it's a bunch of smaller
batteries connected together so when they go bad some of those battery cells
go bad and there's all kinds of equipment and analyzed it would tell you
which battery cells are bad so which ones you'd have to take out and
replace and solder back in even if that's done correctly and that's a big
if right there but enough the bad ones are taken away you
still got half or more of the old ones in there that are old and wearing so
they never last as long as the original I've had customers get 12 13 14 years
out of the original Toyota battery I've seen people put in those refurbished
ones year and a half two years later they go bad and you're back to square
one another reason I tell people don't buy a high mileage used Prius you're
just gambling but in their defense for a new one and maybe small engines but man
combined with the electric motor they are very zippy little cars they get
up and go of course you have the image of the Eco people and since the main
driving force of this is the gasoline engine it's an it gets in cycle it's a
little differently regulated but it's got spark plugs and the air filter you
can maintain it yourself like any gasoline engine don't be scared away by
the idea that it's a different gasoline engine that's just a design
that started a long time ago and it was never popular because even though it was
more efficient and got better fuel mileage it also had less power so they
were never popular until now because when you add the gasoline engine with
the battery pack an electric motor running it because even though this
little engine only puts out 73 horsepower the electric motor
adds an additional 60 horsepower so it almost doubles the power and that's
plenty of power combined to make this thing zip along so in this case when you
want gas mileage on a highway it's only running let's see how many horsepower
engine but when you want to accelerate on a highway or accelerate and stop and
go traffic the electric motor adds an additional 60 so it almost doubles the
horsepower and if you know anything about electric motors they have instant
torque so they're actually better for acceleration in gasoline engines so when
you need to accelerate that electronic motor gives it a ton of boost
so there's zippy little cars get great gas mileage as you can see inside there
are comfy they have cool designs up there's no regular transmission so
there's a big hole there and you go to the back seat there's a decent amount of
room and then even a trunk that's good space because they put the
battery mid there so you still got a lot of room all around it for stuff you see
what their split rear window in the back they got top class and bottom glass so
there's no blind spots you can see quite well behind some of these cars man they
got blind spots everywhere but this is well made they even got little peek
holes in the left and the right so just like a Swiss watch these things hum
along quite well but exactly the same as a Swiss watch when they do break
you better start opening up your wallet because they are not cheap vehicles to
repair I've never had a single customer buy a brand new Prius and not be happy
with the vehicle but I've had a whole bunch that bought them used and
said I'm never buying another one of these things cost a fortune to repair
which is why I tell my own customers when they're looking for used cars you
buy two used car don't buy a hybrid version you want a
camry get one with just a regular gasoline don't get a hybrid there's just
so much complexity you get older it costs so much money to fix and there's
very few guys who actually know how to work on them correctly even more so than
normal cars batteries go bad over time even if they're just sitting there
sometimes it did you say yeah they go bad even faster maybe you find a 15 year
old Prius it's only got 60,000 miles on it still it's probably not a good idea
to buy one or pay much money for one because that battery is probably gonna
go out for any soon and if somebody tries to sell you used one and says well
I just replaced the battery last year hey I'm assuming they replaced therefore
one of these refurbished batteries and they generally go out after a year or
two or three they're not gonna last 10 years or more like the original one did
so if you are thinking about buying a used one the battery has been replaced
get the paperwork for it to see what type of battery was put in it was a brand
new toyota one perfectly fine but if it's a refurbished one yeah
I'd look elsewhere myself and I and all the truths about Toyota Priuses the good
the bad and the ugly so you can make a wise decision
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember
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