<p>With the battery, the material is the expense, not so much the actual manufacture. The cost of the material will not go down in the foreseeable future. That is why GM is exploring new battery options for their electric hybrid. They can make the car work but the cost of the battery would be too high. The average length of the battery life won’t be determined until you have more hybrids come of age.</p>
<p>Right now, hybrids are only cost effective if the gas price with more than $3-$4 per galloon with the tax credit. The extra $5000 for them still pays for a lot of gas. The tax credit is not a permanent one; it does have an expiration date.</p>
If you buy a 2-3 year old vehicle and live in a state where the warranty on the hybrid powertrain is 150K miles, then it seems that you shouldn’t have too many battery problems since it’d be covered under warranty for another 7-8 years and 120K miles. If you don’t live in one of the high-warranty states, you’d still have about 5-6 years and 70K miles to drive with the battery under warranty.</p>
<p>Actually, the battery technology is what’s holding back vehicles (including Prius) from using more electric energy. The lighter-weight higher-energy batteries, such as Lithium Ion (what’s used in most laptops and cell phones) still have an issue with lifetime of the battery as well as excessive heat when shorted internally which they occasionally do (exploding cell phones/laptops). There are a lot of resources working on the issues, however, and I think there’ll be a lot of gains over the next 5-10 years.</p>
<p>The Toyota Prius deserves a lot of credit for demonstrating that an economicall viable hybrid vehicle can be built and sold in significant quantities.</p>
<p>Now, I don’t mean to call anyone’s baby ugly, and I know a lot of you think it’s ‘cute’, but why the heck did they make the Prius so ugly? It’s one of the clunkiest styles I’ve seen - almost, but not quite, as bad as a Honda Insight. I know it’s distinctive which helps owners so inclined to veritably shout ‘hey, look at me, I’m green!’, but man, it ugly! At least the Civic, Highlander, Escape and others have reasonable styling.</p>
<p>Thanks for the above advice. I’m glad to hear batteries are lasting over 150,000 miles. Somehow I thought the life was less than 100,000. I did have an extended warranty on the current vehicle, though lost the bet-have had very few unexpected repairs on my Voyager mini van. At a certain point, renewing the warranty is not cost effective. I know that with my limited driving, the payback would be years off in terms of money saved, though that’s another bet, depending on gas prices. Will check out the priuschat at some point, and continue to mull this over.</p>
<p>Cross posted while I went out to chop ice…joys of the recent snowfall/icefall. Again, didn’t know the warranties varied with the state. I sort of like how they look, though as I live in a rather ‘green’ town, there is a certain uniformity in the fleet of matching blue priuses (priuie?) on the streets here. </p>
<p>Was rather impressed when renting a car in Arizona recently, to hear that they are available as part of the Enterprise rental fleet. For a cost, but if running around a large state like that, might be a cost effective alternative.</p>
<p>ucsd dad–I don’t have anything against the looks of the Prius, but I do kind of like getting as good miliage without my Civic making a big deal about it–I know it’s a hybrid, and I believe in the concept totally, but I actually like the fact that it’s matter-of-fact; I can follow my principles without signaling: “member of a club”. (not that there’s anything wrong with that; it’s just not my style.)</p>
<p>We have 2 Prius’es. (What’s the plural of Prius? “Prii”, as in 2 octopi? or Priuses, as in walruses?) One has 125,000 miles. No problems, battery or otherwise. Love the car!</p>