I recently started driving a cab. The company has 800 cars of which 80% are Prius. yesterday I was driving a genII that had 251k miles on it. I was quite impressed. Drove nice, still looked pretty good, quiet. She seemed like she had a lot of life left in her. i have not spent much time in the genII since I owned an 03 and 10 but I kinda liked it after spending 250 miles at the wheel. The genIII I had the day before had 130k miles but this one had horrible road noise (tires), made a constant whining noise, the light grey interior was filthy and falling apart, and stunk! From what I hear, Toyota (Japan) has made a couple trips out here to inspect the fleet and ask questions. I guess they are interested in what kind of repairs are needed and what kinds of fixes have been developed to address them. I think they have also allowed recall work to be performed onsite in an effort to not flood the local dealerships. There is a constant flow of used Prius arriving to be outfitted for their next stage of life as a cab. And when the times comes, there is a corner of the yard that becomes their final resting place
I've noticed that many Prius cabs that I've ridden in (especially 2nd Gen) have probably never had a transmission fluid replacement. The whines are often attributed to the PSD and MG1 within the transmission. Having owned all three generations (and still own two), I'd agree that each generation has it's own charm. Welcome back!
Cheers, Bretaz. I'm curious why the company you work for use Prius. Who pays for the fuel ? I'm assuming the car belongs to the company. Most places that have heavy Prius/hybrid penetration are organized so that the driver owns the car *and* pays for the fuel. That way the financial interests are aligned so that the car purchaser chooses the best lifetime TCO.
