2001 Prius can you drive it with a dead hybrid battery?
 

The title pretty much explains it.

regards
Mech

Nope (that should pretty much answer it :) ).

Toyota Prius 2001/ Reduced

I guess that means it's not worth $2800 with just over 110k miles.

regards
Mech

Unless you can get a new pack and/or refurbish the old one. Hybridbatteryrepair.com does refurbish them. You could call them up and see what they charge for a rebuild. It could definitely be worth it.

For someone else maybe a good deal, but no way to test drive the car to see if anything else is bad. You would have to tow it away and pay to have the battery fixed, then pray you get lucky. Maybe for half what he is asking it might be worth the gamble.

I'll just keep riding my bike and drive the Maxima on cold-rainy days.

An Echo is worth more than that car with the same mileage and gets almost the same MPG, without any battery issues.

regards
Mech

Yes, a Echo can achieve the same mileage. But if you've never driven a Prius you wouldn't really understand how ridiculously easy it is to get good mileage. It makes hypermiling so much more fun and easy. For someone who has used P&G for years (and beaten the Prius mpg by quite a bit), I love driving the Prius.

With gas prices going up come summer time I have my eye out for fixer upper high mpg cars. I agree the asking price does seem a bit high for a car that doesn't work.

yeah I have a 2001 prius. I agree that I COULD MAYBE get the same mileage from a compact car but:

It'd be smaller
It'd pollute far more
and it'd NOT BE as easy as it is with this thing.

Driving normally on the highway I can get 50MPG. being intense about hypermiling I can get quite near 60mpg, and I've only 3,000KM on the car so I've got much to learn. Could I maybe, MAYBE get that from an Echo or similar traditional car? Yes, but not as comfortably and not without going waaaaaaay out of my way to hypermile. EOC, P&G, etc. This is mostly just driving with load and keeping a reasonable speed. The occasional coast in neutral thrown in and timing lights.

I've had 3 people in the car, in urban traffic, stopping every 20 minutes stopping almost long enough for it to be fully cooled), driving with mild aggression, and still gotten over 40MPG. That's just plain not happening in a traditional car that could even hold 4 people in comfort.

Every day I can ride my bike on my normal 40 mile 46 traffic light route, I use right at .5 gallon of fuel on average, not quite as well in the winter, say 73 instead of 84 MPG. Cost $3750 with 684 miles.

The Maixma, currently at just over 28 MPG average sits in the garage waiting for rainy or cold weather. Cost $2k with 138k miles. We bought the car new, sold it to our son in law, then bought it back 80k miles later.

My 94 VX best mileage was 68MPG at 64 MPH on the Interstate for 300 miles with over 500 pounds of payload.

Best on my 02 Insight was 70.2 MPG for 654 miles.

The Insight required $7000 in warranty repairs from 35k to 64k miles, all done for free by Honda, but it would have been a nightmare if I had to pay out of pocket.

Daox, I have looked at some customer reviews of hybrid battery repair and they have some issues, customer service is spotty at best. Reading Metro's thread about reviving his Insight battery seems like a viable option.

The main issue for me is logistics of the purchase which is 3 hours away. If the car was drive able then I would seriously consider it, but the closest place where I could park it would require a tow costing a lot of money. I could borrow my brothers truck and trailer and haul it here, but even that means I am buying a car that could have other issues and not know of them until I had put a lot of money into the deal.

I do agree, if it was half as much money it would be a neat project.

regards
Mech

there is (almost) nothing else in a prius, what may possibly fail. no starter, no alternator, no gears, no clutch. even the exaust seems to be bulletproof.

a dead hv-batterie is rare, so u can use a salvage part and have a good chance. if the price is hot, i would by a prius at the phone.