Sorry if this has already been addressed but is there any way to tell how many miles the internal combustion engine has on it vs. the total miles on the car. My other two Toys have 250,000 ('93 4x4 pickup 2.4L I4) and 160,000 ('02 Tacoma 4x4 2.7L I4) on them and are still going strong. It seems to me that with the assist of the electric motors and regular servicing that the ICE should reach half million miles or so easily. I would estimate that it is about 10% or less of the time that the ICE is off while traveling. Anybody have any thoughts on this? Thanks
Did you ever wonder how your engine longevity might vary if you stopped and started the engine on your other cars a few dozen times more than you did every single day?
Keeping in mind that the Prius engine does not really start in the conventional sense. It gets spun up to speed with full oil pressure, and then combustion starts. The Prius ICE lives an easy life. Tom
BUT, -ALL- power comes from the ICE. I see no difference between the ICE in a Prius and one in any other Toyota (comparing apples to apples, as it were). The Prius engine does get to run at nearly optimum RPM most of the time, with no "lugging" or over revving. So that -might- increase longevity a bit. But most modern automatic transmissions also ensure the ICE they are connected to isn't "lugged" and most modern ECUs won't let the ICE over rev. So other than starting (non-hybrids must start at 350-700 RPM with little or no oil pressure) I see no difference. Brakes are another matter. They are known to last much longer on Prius, maybe partially because they release on bumps.
Are there enough Prii with enough mileage for anyone to know the weak points. The answer must be no for the 2010 Prius. Perhaps the electric motors or some mechanical drive train components are more prone to failure with mileage than the ICE. Maybe the various ECUs are the weak link. I guess the batteries on many of our hybrid cars will go first, although it is just a guess about what will go next after the batteries are replaced. My hope is that the current hybrid technology will be so out dated ten years from now, our current hybrids will be considered to be so inefficient, compared to the new models, that we'll be ready to replace them even if the ICE is still working.
The ICE is always attached to the car, so it travels the same number of miles as all of the other components. :madgrin:
A great question, even for curiousity's sake. I'd imagine it'd be very different between a hypermiler and the average driver.
yes the ice is not only a lot less used then in a normal car also starting it is less wearing on the ice then on normal cars so its gets a easy life.. will have to last really longggggggggggg
I am almost certain in my complete guess-way, that Toyota's black box will probably contain this info as well as the total odometer reading. It seems like an easy enough thing to measure, why not record it?! Its only a few bytes worth of data anyways.
