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Comment by devmor | Hacker News Reader

As a lifelong Toyota fan, I agree they are miserable to work on, especially the electronics. I have a stoplight switch issue in my 86 (from being rear-ended) that I have neglected because it would require pulling out the trunk assembly to fix.

The engineering praise comes from the fact that if you are taking care of it, you will probably never have to work on it until it's well into 6-digit mileage. This remains consistent through pretty much their entire line with the one exceptional black mark really being the RAV4.

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I occasionally like to see what the highest mileage Toyota Prius I can find for sale is. They are obviously used as taxis and it's common to find one for sale with half a million miles.

Usually at that point someone puts in a new hybrid battery and sells it to someone else starting out driving Ubers.

Oh yes, the Prius gets even better lifetime because the hardest strain on the engine components is completely negated by the electric motor. If I ever ditch the little mini sports car, I will most likely replace it with another Prius.

In fairness most cars get taken for scrap with an engine which starts and runs. Even when they are running a bit rough it's more often fueling and ignition components than a mechanical problem with the engine components.

That said, the synergy drive is by design a very robust mechanical system. It has no dog gears, clutch or torque converter. I'm sure this contributes a lot to their long life.

They reach a million miles because they're taxis, not in spite of it.

What kills the hybrids is that the kind of people who buy these sorts of "peak appliance" cars tend to be the same kind of people who'll obliviously let some critical fluid run too low. You get orders of magnitude less of that sort of behavior in taxi fleets.

I don't know if this is applicable to hybrids, but taxis attain high mileage with relatively few engine cold starts. Engine cold starts are what kills main and conrod bearings and piston walls. Taxis' bodies may be beat to garbage, the interior might be trash, but the engine and likely the transmission too will be representative of a vehicle with an order of magnitude less kilometers driven. Because they go an order of magnitude further between cold engine starts.

All this assumes proper maintenance, especially oil changes.

> As a lifelong Toyota fan, I agree they are miserable to work on, especially the electronics.

I had a Toyota Yaris a couple of decades ago. Very reliable, very few issues. But some routine things like replacing headlights were completely bonkers. You had to wiggle your hand between some sharp metal parts to unscrew the back end of the armature. Sheesh, would it have been that prohibitive to add a few cm of extra space there?

The headlights are a sore point for me as well. I have to remove the entire front bumper piece to replace them on the 86.

Who thought that was appropriate?

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