Honestly, thought about it first. But wanted to save money on catalytic converters. My daily commute is less than 50 miles a day. This EV is the right fit. Carvana has a lot of them in stock. Wanna save money on oil changes too. Only expense will be windshield wipers, windshield washer fluid, and tires. I hear most old EVs still have their original brake pads because the regenerative braking is mostly doing all the work.
Discussion
Bought mine new in 13.
The oem brakes on mine lasted 125k.
Got 218k on car now.
No real issues yet.
Oil changes "aren’t that bad" every 10k.
I’m super leery about full EV as grid power is becoming increasingly unreliable in price.
Have you found out it’s actually more expensive to charge your car everyday rather then it is to fill it up once a week or not?
My mother has a 2012 civic with a conventional drivetrain that she bought in 2014 or so. She has put ~150k on the car. I do all the work on it. Regular oil changes are pretty cheap if you do them yourself. Have done a "drain & fill" change on the trans fluid a few times & replaced the external transmission filter each time. Have replaced brakes once. Tires at least once. Updated the GPS. It hasn't needed anything else. It gets 40mpg, it cost far less than an EV or hybrid, & it is fully capable of driving 800+ miles in a day without long stops if anyone needs to make a long trip.
My girlfriend's diesel BMW gets like 50mpg & diesels are theoretically easier to fuel & to store fuel for in more dystopian scenarios.
I don't think the cost & complexity & closed/proprietary nature of the basic functionality, the unremovable spyware & centralized control, among other limitations of EVs or hybrids really make a lot of sense. If I was going to spend more I'd get the diesel.
It’s also possible to make biodiesel from any animal or vegetable lipid base with a few cheap and readily accessible ingredients in a dystopian scenario. I don’t usually promote products, and I am not a dealer, I have no stake in the company, but if you haven’t looked at Amsoil I recommend it. The oil originated in aerospace and is vastly superior, and I have vetted it for double change intervals with independent lab oil analysis, change the filters at the normal interval of course. Regarding diesels, the mechanical injection diesels are the best, no automobile with a diesel made in the last twenty years is free of electronics though, so it’s a swap it in yourself deal. Hatz and Deutz both make mechanical air cooled diesels suitable for automotive applications, not cheap but insanely reliable.
Electronic injection has some major advantages, my hope is that we continue to see the growth of things like the speeduino project that make open source fuel injection cheap & easy to adapt & modify for all sorts of things.
In diesels the overhead cam driven common rail injection at exceedingly high pressures paired with variable geometry turbochargers has vastly improved efficiency in the last few years. I’m of the opinion that the systems would be more reliable if fewer electronics and sensors were used though. In my thirty years I’ve seen engines go from the 2 million mile no problems CAT 3406B to the 1 million mile no problem Detroit Series 60 to the modern $40k rebuild at 500,000 mile, thousands per month in diagnostic bullshit we have today. I have no problem with emissions controls, modern emissions systems are solid, but the electronics are a constant, expensive problem. I’m excited about the development of single stroke combustion engines, they look promising, this “liquid” piston engine looks like a rendition of the old oil burning, compression losing rotary engines from the 1970’s though. All that having been said though, the key to transportation efficiency is energy scavenging. It’s physics, potential energy to kinetic energy and back again with as little heat as possible. Whether you use a battery or a pressure vessel or a spinning mass in a vacuum to recover and store energy, as long as any vehicle has friction brakes that are engaged outside of an emergency we’re not doing as well as we could. I get what you’re saying though, maybe a relatively simple car getting 40 mpg and lasting a long time is good enough for now.
The government has fucked FUBAR diesels. My 2004 Jetta TDI is still going strong I think has over 300,000 miles on it. (the lady I sold it to still buys from me)
Diesels went through a rough patch, but the SCR diesels are the best engines ever conceived of. The problem was meeting the NOx emissions requirements. The first iterations lowered combustion temperatures to reduce NOx, increasing soot. Fuel economy was terrible and the DPF units clogged. The introduction of urea catalyst allowed all time high combustion temperatures without soot or NOx. I have an SCR diesel with 700k on it, no issues whatsoever. I run synthetic diesel, renewable. The EGR valve is as clean as it was when new. #diesel #engines #renewablefuel #engineering
Double intervals? Try 3-5 times. #AMSOIL top of the line is good for 25,000 miles or one year. I had an 05 Nissan frontier with 200k on less than 10 oil changes.
As a dealer I have to prove to myself before I can confidently sell something.
Hit me up with your #AMSOIL questions!
I’m a believer. I have run 225k on a commercial diesel changing only filters at the 75k interval. Oil analysis through two labs confirmed adequate oil specs at 3x intervals, and the oil was probably serviceable for another 75k, but at $40,000 for a new engine I change the oil as soon as specs slip at all. Amsoil is an amazing product. #amsoil
Totally agree. If I hadn’t blown up 2 engines b2b in my 02 cavalier I’d still be driving that shitbox. Loved it, got 40mpg. But that was the 4th one to get blown up had to move on.
Generally I get around 80mpg local driving only and 50ish driving wherever. I’ve driven from Chicago to St. Louis no problem on a single tank.
Still not sure why we can’t get a diesel Prius?
7.3 IDI master race. Got all my components together just yesterday to start filtering waste oil as a fuel additive cause ULSD ain’t shit.
Any room for solar?
My Prius has the solar panel w/moon roof? I think that’s what it’s called? It powers the ac/fan when the car is off & the cabin reach’s a high tem
Lol temperature*
Ours too! Here in the south it gets hot, if you use sunshade reflectors with that and tinted windows, amazing.
Nice.
Was your Prius considered a Prius+ or persona?
I’m not sure. I know it’s not the V model, we bought it used with 87k. It doesn’t plug in, trim level three or four?
Does it have any silver trim on the doors?
It does not.
Ok so yeah it’s probably a 3/4.
I have a gen3 Prius 3+ (2013) just turned 225k
No real issues.
Had a hiccup with the battery system still not sure what really happened with that cost me $1k fixing shit not getting any answers?
Battery testing showed the batteries cells were still in great shape?
Idk it kinda eats oil but I hear that "normal" for the age/model of engine will know of any real issue with engine @ 250k which is coming up quickly lol.