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Old 08-22-2022, 05:37 PM   #79 (permalink)
Isaac Zachary
High Altitude Hybrid
 
Join Date: Dec 2020
Location: Gunnison, CO
Posts: 2,080

Avalon - '13 Toyota Avalon HV
90 day: 40.45 mpg (US)

Prius - '06 Toyota Prius
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JSH View Post
You bought a vehicle with more miles than 98.5% of the vehicle sold in 2021. That is what I keep coming back to. A vehicle that old or with that many miles has reached useful life. Actually past useful life as defined by regulations and industry (150,000 miles). It has almost no remaining value and anymore years of use is a bonus. Manufacturers could make light-duty vehicles with a useful life of 450,000 miles like a commercial Class 8 truck but none of the stake-holders have any reason to do so and cars would be much more expensive.
  1. Manufacturers care about their customers - the original owner. They also have no financial incentive to make cars that last decades past the original owner. They also have no incentive to make cars that last longer than customers really want to drive them. Sure some people are happy driving an air-cooled bug but most drivers want modern features.
  2. The initial buyer has no financial incentive to pay more for a car so that the 3,4, or 5th owner can drive more miles on the cheap.
  3. Regulators have no incentive to keep cars on the roads for decades. Regulators want to refresh the fleet periodically to get cleaner, more fuel efficient, and safer cars on the road.




There are lots of other expensive components on old cars that are known to fail at 15 years / 200K miles. That is why old cars have depreciated by 90 - 95%.

I sold my 2003 Jetta Wagon TDI when it was 10 years old with 245K miles for $3,000. Nothing wrong with it at the time but that was only 10.5% of the original purchase price. If it had been a Jetta with the gas engine and an automatic it would have been worth about $1500 with those miles.




You can change the fluid in a transmission all you want but you aren't going to replace the friction material in the clutches (a 10 speed has 6) If you are talking manual transmissions well those are about as rare as unicorns today. Manuals are down to 1% of new vehicle sales.



The biggest enemies of battery life are cycles, heat and time.

With cycles you want to keep them as small as possible. For example cycling a battery to 10% you can get 15,000 cycles mile cycling a battery 100% will drop that to 600 cycles. (For a LiPO4 battery) This is why the 2nd Gen Prius only allowed 40% of battery capacity to be used. You also want to stay away from the bottom of the discharge curve and the top - you want to use the capacity in the middle not the extremes.

This is why the EV button was mentioned as a battery killer - EV miles on a hybrid are much harder on the battery than hybrid miles. Want to kill a PHEV battery fast - cycle the battery fully twice every day. With an EV about the worst thing you can do to the battery is exactly what the cannonballers recommend to make time quickly an EV - only use the bottom 50 to 60% of the battery capacity and quick charge it every stop. For long EV battery life you want to use the middle capacity and slow charge every night.




As I mentioned - heat is the enemy of a battery so cooling is important. Some early hybrids took this to the extreme. The early Ford Escape hybrid only allowed the battery to use the 40 - 53% SOC and had an A/C circuit for the battery. It had rock-solid hybrid battery life. Later models ditched the A/C circuit and relied on a fan to pull cabin air through the battery. Not as much air flow and most owners never changed the battery air filter so it clogged up and blocked off airflow. 2nd Gen Prius batteries also relied on fans and cabin air to cool them. They were also know to have clogged vents. Don't let the vent get clogged.

Of course ambient temps matter too. Don't let the car sit outside in Arizona in an uncovered asphalt parking lot so the car heat soaks to 140 / 150 degrees all day. Park in the shade, in a parking garage, in a garage at home. If you have to park outside vent the car and use sunshades. Some hybrids have powered sunroofs to keep the car interior cooler. Once you are in the car and driving use the A/C instead of rolling down the windows to lower the interior temperature and push cooler air through the battery.
I think to sum it up is that the way people used to own cars has changed from the way I remember it, and is further exacerbated by used car prices. My parents never owned a car that was less than 10 years old, at most. One was a 1951 Plymouth (I learned to drive in), a 1973 Impala and a 1957 Chevy pickup. This was in the late 80's through early 2000's. My dad would just rebuild the engine or transmission whenever one died. Today he drives a 1984 Toyota Pickup he rebuilt the engine in.

So if the Avalon were totaled tomorrow it seems my option would be: use the insurance money to put a down payment on a new Corolla and call it a day. If not: keep driving the Avalon saving up what are my payments are now, and then when it get's too expensive to maintain, sell it and put a down payment on a Corolla. Or if used car prices come back down, maybe instead put a down payment a 3 to 5 year-old Camry or even an Avalon again with either money. The question would be if the hybrid would be worth it?

Yes, I'm selling the Prius.
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Last edited by Isaac Zachary; 08-22-2022 at 05:55 PM..
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