Evaluating a High-Mileage Toyota Prius for Uber Driving

The Prius proves to be an economical choice for Uber drivers, offering impressive mileage despite some mechanical quirks.

### Insights on the 2008 Prius: Performance, Maintenance, and Reliability
* 🚗 The owner of a 2008 Prius purchased the vehicle for **$8,000** with around **87,000 miles** and has since driven it over **140,000 miles**, experiencing **minimal issues** aside from some **engine jolting** during transitions between electric and gasoline modes.
* 🔋 Despite the original battery still being intact, the mileage has decreased due to the battery's **wear**, typical for a **13-year-old vehicle**, especially one made in Japan, which is noted for its **superior quality** compared to those produced in other locations like Mississippi.
* 🛠 Regular maintenance, including oil changes every **7,000 to 10,000 miles** using synthetic oil, has helped prevent major problems, and the Prius is particularly advantageous for Uber drivers due to its **impressive fuel efficiency of about 50 miles per gallon** in city driving.
* 💰 The owner is making a profit from this investment, considering he bought the car for **significantly less than its original price of $25,000**, and has not incurred **substantial additional costs**.
* 🔍 Diagnosing issues with the Prius requires specialized equipment due to its **complex electronic systems**, and while the check engine light may not illuminate, it is essential to **seek further evaluation if problems persist**.
* 📉 Testing revealed that the auxiliary battery is **weak and may need replacement**, which could resolve some of the performance issues, although the hybrid battery's **age is also a contributing factor**.
* 💵 The cost of replacing the hybrid battery is approximately **$3,500**, leading to a consideration of whether it is more economical to invest in a **newer used Prius** rather than repair the current one.
* 🤔 Ultimately, if the minor jolting issue persists but the car continues to achieve **good fuel economy**, the owner may opt to live with it, as many others have done, indicating a **common acceptance of such quirks** in older hybrid vehicles.

Rev up your engines, okay. We gotta use Prius here. The guy bought it for eight grand with about 87 000 miles. Now he's got over 140, so he's gotten 50 something thousand miles out of it so far, and he hasn't had any real

problems other than now it jolts when it turns the engine back on from running from the electric motor and battery, and it idles a little shaky. He parked under a tree at an Airbnb, so be wary of Airbnbs that have birds that crap in

them. Still got the original battery in it, and he notices his mileage is a little down from what it used to be because obviously the battery is worn since it's got 141 000 miles on it. It's now 13 years old, but it was made in Japan.

Now he rented a new Corolla that was made in Mississippi the other day, and he said it was nothing to this car. Made in Mississippi versus made in Japan, there is a difference. Don't let people BS you that they're all the same. They are not the

advantage of a Japanese car is it was not just built in Japan. Motors and battery pack and all that stuff, but it was put together by Japanese, and there is a difference. You haven't seen my video that I made the other day about the guy who used to work for Toyota who

had a 2017 Toyota Tacoma and the white paint was coming off of it. Put together and painted in Mexico, and they did a lousy job painting, and the paint was coming off of it. So there is a difference. You get it made in Japan.

vehicle it's going to be better quality there's nowhere fans or butts Oh he's smart he changes the oil every seven to ten thousand miles with full synthetic oil so he doesn't have any head gasket problems in the regular gasoline engine He's an Uber driver now these things

actually make a lot of sense for an Uber driver when I go to Seattle and do internet business stuff there invariably I'm riding around in Prius Ubers they all have them because it's so much better gas mileage stop and go that's what these

things are made for they're not made for highway cruising because they're not using the electrical portion of hardly at all except when you accelerate they're made for stop and go traffic It makes sense you actually make much more money on an Uber you're

spending a lot less money on gasoline Okay average is about 50 miles a gallon in the city Imagine this scenario I've seen guys driving Uber with a Suburban in town that thing gets less than 10 miles a gallon so this thing gets five times better gas mileage and that

certainly hits the bottom line if you're going to be an Uber driver So as far as it stands for him he's making good money on the deal because he only paid 8000 for a car considering that this car was 25 grand to start off with he got it for

eight and that included taxes and everything he said so that was a good deal 50 000 something miles on it hasn't put any real money into the thing he's coming out pretty good But always be warned they're very complex cars This thing's having a clunky stalling issue so

Let's get out the big computer now, we're getting ready. Here's a bit of humor, irony too. Electric hybrid Prius, right, but it's got a hand seat that you gotta pull a lever on. We'll turn the idiot lights on, intelligent diagnosis and

while we're waiting for the machine to do its job, realize you can't work on one of these Priuses without a fancy computer like this. I mean, you can change spark plugs, brake pads, crap like that, but diagnosis, you got to have a machine like this because look at all the stuff

going through all these different modules, everything's green or gray. Gray just means it's not equipped, so there's no kinds of codes or anything. So we'll go into the main computer system now, realize that this car is no different than any other in terms of the computer

setup. If data is plus or minus 20, it's going to trip a trouble code. There's no trouble codes because the problem is less than 20. Humans can feel things that the computer doesn't care about, mainly because the computer's programmed that way. If they program the computers to do

one or two or three percent, your check engine light would be coming on all the time. And that's one of the reasons that it's set up the way that it is. So if you ever go to a mechanic and they say, 'Well, the check engine light's not on, there's

no trouble codes, well we can't find out what's wrong.' Go to another mechanic, that's not where you end, that's only where you begin. So we'll look at some of the special functions we can do. Yeah, there's nothing there that we need to

mess with, we'll look at the actuator test that we can do if necessary. We can do all these tests, but it would be wild guessing to start there. So instead, we'll go back to the data stream. We selected them all, and guess what, it's time for a

road trip. We'll record what's happening, see when it acts up, then we'll analyze the data and off we go. It's running on the battery now. Let's give it some gas. There goes the engine. We'll give it a good road test. There'll be a lot of the

ground. These things do handle quite well. The main reason to be low to the ground though is because then they have less coefficient of drag and they're more efficient. That's how it can get 50 miles a gallon driving around in stop and go traffic. Okay, now the engine's shut off.

We're gonna see what happens when we take off. [Music] It kicked in and it wasn't too bad. It didn't clunk yet. That's just normal. Okay, now it's off, so we're gonna put the AC on and we'll sit here until it turns

itself back on. It can only run so long with the AC on without turning itself on. Here we go. It really wasn't that bad. A little jiggle but not much. It kicked in. It didn't really jiggle a lot of people poo-poo the Prius as they

say, 'Ah, they're so slow, they don't get out of their own way.' But that's not exactly the truth. Here, we're stopped with the engine's not on. Let's floor it and see what happens. You can see it's not that slow when you have the electric motor and the

gasoline motor combining it's got a reasonable amount of torque and if you're just cruising down the road you get a battery boost when you floor it see it's not all that bad now the computer hasn't found any real faults and so far electronically I haven't

either it hasn't really done that much of a jiggle so let's go back and look at the physical mechanical parts you can see with the edge that it has on it the battery isn't charging up all that much you can see the battery has a very low

charge even though it's being driven around the lower the battery the harder it's going to be for the thing to restart itself when it shuts off and turns itself back on again now I notice I'm braking a lot and the battery is charging up better here you can see it's

starting to get higher but with its age it's discharging the battery a lot faster than it would with a newer vehicle because the battery's losing its level of efficiency that's what happens with these hybrid cars they get to be older like this and basically it's a 12

year old car that the batteries will not hold the charge as long they'll discharge faster okay so we come to a stop it's got a higher level of charge now see if we get a little bump out of it we'll go up a hill they don't like

going uphill of course they're going to turn the motor on pretty quick [Music] well that was a completely seamless transition I didn't feel you bump it off realize it's got a regular motor too and it has motor mounts could be a motor

mounted transmission mount starting to get a little weak in the trunk there's a small battery we're going to test that first and there it is the little bitty battery we're going to test this now this is a 410 cold cranking amps battery so we're going to test

it with our little battery tester let's see what the little machine is going to say in vehicle we want battery test it's a regular flooded called cranking amps and it's 450 so we'll go down and here we go replace battery it's only

got 342 left now you might think oh it's got the gigantic huge batteries that's under there but they also have a regular lead acid battery in these things this one even though it's only a year old it's shot now he's an Uber driver I

see some of these things the batteries get low because they don't use them enough and that's the auxiliary battery it just shows those tiny little batteries they aren't that well made and a lot of this problem can be because of that because when it's starting a

vehicle over could easily be that it needs to be replaced anyways because it's too low there's so much relationship in this car the generator puts out all kinds of power it's got to be stepped down to some voltage step up to some voltage and

of course that little one is only a 12 volt battery there's so much complexity in this thing when you do test that if it says replace battery replace that first that could fix all your problems but we're going to test the motor mounts just in case I'll go under the

car as we check we see the cars going up in the air the car's going up in here so is the motor and transmission the body would stay down and the motor go up in the air that's not the case so there's nothing wrong with the mounts

we'll analyze the data anyways as long as you took a road test so go to sync file here and we'll go to Toyota Prius it's all going to be hiding in there it'll be the first one that we did with all that data and we can play it back so

we're going to look for odd data luckily it's color-coded if there's something really wrong it'll be in the red look at stuff in a graphic analysis no bad data coming out there no glitches here we did miss anything we'll go through all 15

pages of data eight seven six five four three two one and everything's still blue so there's no bad data at all now interestingly enough his mother has an older Prius an '05 which just had the main battery replaced with the remanufactured one I'm not that big of a

fan but he says hers doesn't jiggle at all that works perfectly well she's got a fully charged hybrid battery I don't know about the other battery it's not here so I can't test it now we know his hybrid battery is worn the age the

mileage that could be part of it but since the auxiliary battery says it should be replaced from the testing machine he's going to replace it and see if it helps with the jiggling but my advice is if it doesn't help with the

jiggling live with the jiggling cause eventually you'd have to replace that giant battery and then he doesn't know if he wants to spend that kind of money or just go get another newer used Prius. Sometimes it's cheaper buying a car than it is buying a battery

in these things. Well, I just got done talking to Toyota and they do sell brand new ones and they come down somewhat. Parts and labor, the battery without taxes, like $3,500. It is a new battery, it's not a remanufactured one.

But by the time you're done you're gonna pay close to five grand and considering that he paid eight grand for the whole car and now it's getting higher mileage, he'd probably be better putting that money into another used Prius that has less miles. It has 80,000 miles or something

and then go from there. But of course, all that's debatable now because he might be able to buy that little battery and that could solve the whole thing. If it stops doing it, great. If not, the big giant battery and he's still getting 50 miles

a gallon in town. What the heck, I just drive it. Got a little jiggle to it. Personally, I have a lot of customers with these that they really jerk when they turn the engine back on and the people have lived with it and five years later it still does the jerk when it

turns the engine back on, but they still hit 50 miles a gallon, so who cares? So if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that bell. [Music] You

Here’s Why Hybrid Cars Suck

Scotty Kilmer

Prius Overview and Initial Problem Description

8-year-old Prius with 140,000+ miles, purchased for $8,000.

Main issue: jolting when the engine restarts from electric motor and shaky idle.

Original battery, mileage slightly decreased due to battery wear.

Comparison with a newer Corolla made in Mississippi; highlights the difference in quality between Japanese and non-Japanese cars.

Owner is an Uber driver, changes oil every 7-10,000 miles with full synthetic oil.

Use of a diagnostic computer is necessary for in-depth analysis.

Computer system similar to other cars; trouble codes triggered only when data deviates significantly.

Explanation of why check engine lights don't always indicate problems.

Road test conducted to record data during the jolting occurrence.

Observation of engine behavior during various driving conditions.

Low battery charge observed, impacting restart performance.

Battery discharge rate faster due to age and wear.

Checking motor mounts as a potential cause of the jolting.

Testing of the auxiliary 12V battery reveals it needs replacement.

Complexity of the hybrid system and its various voltage levels.

Review of road test data reveals no significant anomalies.

Comparison with another older Prius suggests the worn hybrid battery might be a contributing factor.

Recommendation to replace the auxiliary battery and observe if it resolves the issue.

Cost comparison between replacing the main battery and buying a newer used Prius.

Cost of a new main battery is around $3500-$5000.

Many Prius owners experience similar jolting issues without significant performance impact.

Weighing the cost of repairs against the fuel efficiency benefits.