How long does the battery last in the Prius, and how much will it cost to replace?
The Toyota Prius battery is designed to last the lifetime of the vehicle and considering that the Prius is designed to be as durable as any other Toyota, and considering Toyota's reputation, that is a pretty long time. Toyota have lab data showing the Prius battery can do 180,000 miles (290,000km) of normal driving with absolutely no degradation of the battery's performance. To give some real life examples, there is a Vancouver taxi driver, Andrew Grant, who has done over 320,000km in his Prius taxi and another Canadian taxi driver Jatinder Parhar who has traveled over 410,000km in his Toyota Prius Generation II Prius taxi. Neither of them has had to do anything to their Toyota Prius taxis other than standard servicing. (click to read more here). Toyota have stated in a recent press release that they have sold over 100,000 Generation II Prius in the USA and have never had to replace a battery due to wear and tear. (click here to read Toyota Press release). Given all this, the price of a replacement battery is probably irrelevant, however in the extremely unlikely event you needed to replace the battery in your Prius, current cost, at time of writing (Oct 2006), is NZ$4000.00 for a Generation II Prius and NZ$2750 for a Generation III Prius. However this is coming down all the time. When we first looked into this at 2 years ago the battery packs were priced at $7000 each. We believe the price will fall to around $2000 within a year or so given the increased production of Hybrid Vehicles using this type of battery. For piece of mind every Toyota Prius brought from The Clean Green Car Company is covered by a 2 year, unlimited km Hybrid Car Warranty that includes cover for the battery pack.
Another opinion..
That has to be one of the least suitable cars for a taxi. Better than a Golf, but not much else.
covered by a 2 year, unlimited km Hybrid Car Warranty that includes cover for the battery pack.
Sounds like the battery is good for a little over 2 years. My current car is closing in on 18 years. That's the equivalent of 9 battery pack warranties.