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- Jan 29, 2010
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- 2000
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- Ford
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They sold 16k 1st gen Priuses annually for 4 model years. You probably don't see many because there weren't very many to begin with, and they're now pushing 20 years old. Many BMW's from that era had rod bearing issues that can financially total the cars too, so the issue is any expensive repair on a vehicle that's not worth very much. Expensive repairs that don't make financial sense on old vehicles are not hybrid or EV specific. Hail damage can do the same thing to an otherwise perfect vehicle with high miles or a few years under the belt. A timing chain failure on a 4.0 SOHC, or cam synchro on a 3.0 would do the same thing to a Ranger.How many original priuses do you see running around anymore? None cause they cost to much to fix now...
If you look at most of the taxis in major cities, they're Priuses or Escape hybrids, etc and they wrack up tons of miles in brutal use. The batteries and electrical hardware that moves the vehicle aren't really what people need to worry about long term. That stuff is simple, reliable, and relatively easy to repair or replace. Stuff like software becoming obsolete and failures of poorly designed systems that can lead to immobilized vehicles (like Tesla's MCU failure) should be more of a concern for long term ownership. Seems like mature OEMs have more rigorous design and testing methods than the less traditional Tesla style, so maybe that concern is a bit overblown as long as you avoid a Tesla?
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