For long- term Prius owners, the availability of crashed Prii in junkyards that have the relevant pieces is a critical issue. My experience is that simply the more cars of a given make and model that were sold,the higher the likelihood of finding parts in salvage yards. To that end, I used Wikipedia and Dashboard, to calculate total USA sales of each model of Prius. Combining hatchback , C and V sales for Gen 3 (because many parts overlap), I get these results: Gen 1: 65,837 Gen 2: 747,137 Gen 3: 1,088,138 Are these figures roughly accurate folks ? If so, salvage parts should be fairly plentiful for Gen 2 and Gen 3, but scarce for Gen 1.
I was at the local Pick 'N Pull this weeekend and saw a Gen 1 but no Gen 2 or 3's. Still plenty of parts on it. Didn't investigate it thoroughly as we had other parts to find. The auto recyclers probably are the reason for that though as there are plenty of parts to be had there, but not at the same low prices. And with the amount of auto recyclers out here, they probably swipe them up pretty quick. Good information. Thank you for compiling.
Most of those Gen2's came 2007 2008 2009 as Prius popularity and gas prices both climbed. So re: HV batt replacements, we have had a fair number replaced on 2004-2006's. If the HV batt failure rate remains the same, we should expect many many more. However, seems to me we are hearing less HV batts replaced, possibly suggesting Toyota got better at reliability.
Toyota is already preparing for the rush of warranty replacements soon. They are testing the refurbished batteries in the west coast, surely this will be the direction of warranty replacements to come Goodwill warranties will be a lot less expensive for them
