Should I go for a Prime??

Keep the Avalon until it is paid off. Unless the 2020 Prius Prime is a new car, you will not get the tax writeoffs. The prime is Prius like, not Avalon like. It will pull a trailer better than a Prius.

 

If you want to save the most $ get the LE.

If the stereo is important to you and you like the giant 11.6” screen go for the higher trim.

If you prefer physical buttons instead of a touch screen, get the LE w/ the 7” screen. You only get 6 speakers though as opposed
to 10 in the two higher trims, however you can easily upgrade the door speakers with aftermarket ones to sound just as good.

 

With your use case that we discussed in the Gen2 hijacked thread lol, Yes, PP would work very well as an only car although towing on PRIME may be a bit more work than on Avalon Hybrid. If you are closer, I would try to sell you my 2020 PP, but generally in our region, buying a brand new PP is cheaper than buying a used one.

 

Yeah, under the circumstance, I would not recommend any air travel. The return drive home may be much longer but at least well self-isolated. Your state incentive of $5000 is fantastic. Ours is only $1000 and is running out quickly. It's too bad you can't find a deal like we have here in NE.

As for the budget you have for a car, I do very similar analyses with my cars (either new or used and with or without trade-in). Your $600-$700 per month budget for a car cost seems high to me. You may be paying more on insurance or other fees, but my average true cost to own (and operate) a car has been $344/mo on HCH, $682/mo on Gen3, $331/mo on 17 PP. Those three cars were all used for my daily drive 40 miles/day, 15Kmiles/year and the cost includes everything. That is the cost of the car paid - car sold, and all tax, fees, fuel or electricity paid, insurance, maintenance and repair cost, accessories bought, and even small cost like car wash. Any money that I spend on the car is included. I did really bad on the Gen3 (2015 Two) because I did not get a very good deal on the sales price and was really priced down on the trade-in making it almost $5000 more than what I paid for the 2017 PP. I am trying to sell my now only 10 mo old 2020 PP with only 3K miles. I already have a firm offer for it for $22K. What is amazing is that if I go through the sale, my monthly cost to own and operate the 2020 PP is going to be -$180. Yap, minus $180. I can actually make money on this car after driving it for 10 mon if I sell it now.

It is regular black plastic material the same as the under body cover. Very slushy snow can get stack, but it usually melt and drops after worms up even in sub freezing temp,

Yes, AFAIK, all Toyota cars require special TPMS tool or Techstream to change the TPMS sensor registration information. For my PP, I just use the external TPMS (~$30 at Amazon) on my winter tire and wheel. I did not bother to buy and install the internal TPMS sensors. For PP, the TPMS warning light is way to the right of the dash and inconspicuous. Having this on does not bother me much. However, since we have three cars all Japanese requiring OBD TPMS re-learning for wheel swap, I bought the Autel TS508 TPMS tool very cheap on Ebay. It is very easy to use and takes 15 seconds to reprogram the ECU after the tire swap. I do the swap myself and the used wheels I bought on Ebay for our other cars came with OEM TPMS, so this tool saves me at least $60 for each tire swap.

 

As much as I love my PP, I agree with keeping the Avalon.

 

A prius prime can tow up to 2,000 lbs as long as the tongue weight doesn't exceed 300lbs but it's not going to be fast by any means. I would likely upgrade the prius tires if you plan to tow just for the sake of grip as the stock ones are made for economy, not emergency braking.

 

Seriously check out Carvana. They offered me more than that on my ‘20 Prime LE and I have almost 12k more miles. No idea what trim yours is though.

 

The offer I have is from Carvana. Their price is regionally adjusted. PP sells for less in NE, but still, Carvana's price is the highest compared to dealer trade-in appraisal. But, if I am purchasing a new car, then the dealer trade-in will reduce the amount of sales tax on the purchase. That can be more than $1300 for PP, thus, I have to compare the deals carefully.

 

Nice! Good thinking. Another quick Carvana story - back in August I decided I wanted the new, current (4th gen) 2020 Mazda MX-5 Club (approx $31k). At the time I had a 3rd gen 2012 Mazda MX-5 Grand Touring. It was immaculate and had 32,940 miles.

Went to Mazda to trade it in, they wouldn’t offer me more than $12,500, and that was after rejecting offer after offer (they started at $10,200 - lol.

I said no and went on Carvana that night and I was astonished they offered me $16,450. So I did that and then bought the 2020 model without the trade. Easiest transaction ever, they showed up, I signed some stuff, they handed me a check and then towed it away. That’s approx $4,000 more than the dealers best offer.

Uploaded pics of both the sold silver 2012 & the current red 2020 - (it’s basically in storage now until the spring).

 

I did a similar on-line sale, not Carvana but a company called Peddle.com for our 12 years old minivan that still run but needed a major repair. KBB number was something like $4000 as is, but a dealer I took it offered me only $1500. I tried to sell it on Facebook, Craig's List, and CarGurus. I had a lot of inquiries, but after two months, no offer. Not a single person actually came to take a look at the van. So, I decided to just get rid of it. Used Peddle.com, they gave me an instant offer for $2500, I took it. A truck came to pick it up and handed me a check. All in a matter of a few minutes. I envision Carvana is similar, but unfortunately, we don't have the Carvana hub nearby. They only come to pick up a car within 50miles from their hub. So I have to arrange a drop off if I go through the sale through them. With a local dealer, I can just drop it off when I trade-in and buy a new car.

 

Ahhh gotcha. They literally came right to my house, there’s a Carvana “tower”‘ with their gimmicky coin in slot and you get a car thing about 50 min away in Philly-

 

Oh, I see. Yeah, if you subtract the resale value at any point even before the loan has not been paid off, the number would be lower then. I try to keep my true cost to own a car to be $300/mo or less. So far I have not been able to achieve that number with my previous three cars, but my 2020 PP will beat it easily, of course, that is because I have not driven the car much and with large incentives and discount and relatively high resale value, I can profit by selling it. If I keep the car for 2 more years and drive it more regularly, I expect the cost to be higher.

One experience I had, when I bought my Gen3, I use to have auto insurance from Met Life which has some discount from my employment. I really never did comparison shopping on the insurance carrier. When I asked for a quote for adding the Gen3 on my policy (no trading since I kept the HCH I was driving before. The premium went up more than $1000 for 6 mo. I then immediately started to do comparison shopping. I ended up with Geico which gave me the lowest premium and everything can be done on-line with no agent to speak to. Adding the new Gen3 to my policy, instead of paying $1000 more if I stayed with Met Life, the total premium actually went down compared to before. Since then, almost every year, I have done a comparison of premium quotes from various insurance carriers, but so far there has not been any company that comes even close to what Geico is offering. After the COVID restriction went into effect, GEICO offered me a 15% discount on my current premium. I was well prepared to pay the regular premium after this 15% discount period, but the very recent renewal policy premium actually went down even farther than 15% off from the last year. Now, I am paying only a ~$400 for 6 mo premium on two cars with a maximum liability and medical full coverage and collision/comprehensive with no-deductable.

Wait... I think there is something wrong with the numbers. 3/8" is 12/32" inch. Not many new regular All-season tires have that much tread depth on them. 5/8" on a brand new is 20/32", that's off-road tires on a monster truck. PP comes with All-season tires with 10/32 treads.

Yap, I tried three different cheap miniVCI with pirated copies of Techstream on three different laptops, but none worked for me. I don't plan to do any in-depth diagnosis or repair DIY. The Autel TS508 TPMS tool I mentioned and OBD Link LX with a few different apps are all I need for now.

 

Yeah, insurance pricing is a very strange business. I really don't know how actuarial science works, but I know for sure the variation is huge in some cases. If you did comparison shopping and found the numbers to be similar, then it is most likely relating to where you live. Our auto insurance premium price decreased by over 70% when we moved to the current location from a major metropolitan area in NE for the same drivers (no age change) and for the same cars.

 

3/16" is 6/32", is that required for non-winter tires as well? I try to keep my winter tires above 6/32" to be effective, but I would let the non-winter tires to go down to 4/32. More often than not, I buy newer tires not due to tread depth, but for other reasons, such as a non-repairable puncture or increased road noise. The legal limit of 2/32 is a bold tire.

 

Interesting story about the Miatas. I had a 2012, same model and color that I traded in 2017 for my PP. At that time I got $12K for it and saved another $1K on taxes by trading it in. I know the market for used cars has been good this year, but it looks like I got screwed. BTW, what is the advantage of the soft top 2020 over the retractable hard top 2012?
Ray