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It's kind of crazy to think of it this way- most cars on the list have one engine to think about. But the car with the lowest maintenance cost- the Toyota Priu

It's kind of crazy to think of it this way- most cars on the list have one engine to think about. But the car with the lowest maintenance cost- the Toyota Prius, which had the full gas engine system PLUS an electric battery+motor, and the complexities managing the two together. Truly remarkable. Toyota should be really proud.

outworlder 10y ago
They probably are, given the sales volume. I do believe that, while Toyota should be commended on its engineering, the electric motor is actually beneficial to reduce wear and tear on the most expensive parts. This seems to be supported by the fact that are many other Toyota models in the low maintenance list, but only the Prius at the top. The prius is pretty mature now too. And the "synergy" system is licensed to third parties. Nissan uses it on their hybrid models. Disclaimer: Nissan Leaf owner. I am not expecting high maintenance bills either. The only thing that worries me is the weight of the vehicle and the crappy OEM tires it comes with.
rcthompson 10y ago
I don't think the hybrid nature of the Prius simply means that there's more opportunities for things to go wrong. The fact that there's a large battery capable of supplying power means that the engine RPMs don't have to spike as much when you floor the accelerator, so the presence of a battery could significantly reduce the overall wear and tear on the internal combustion engine and thus reduce the overall need for repairs, despite increasing the number of parts.
- busterarm 10y ago
  Right! This is the exactly way to think about it. Engines are pretty much "figured out" by now. It's hard to get terribly complex there (exception: Audi. Seriously, fuck Audi). It's all about performance relative to peak load! A power supply, like the one in your computer, performs much better over a longer life when it never crosses 80% peak load than one that is constantly above 80%.
- 2sk21 10y ago
  I have a Prius that i drive daily so I can add a few more points: - Engine shuts off a lot during normal gentle driving. - The air conditioning compressor is electrically driven and only come on as necessary - Regenerative braking reduces wear on brakes. I am still on original brakes after 72000 miles.
  - riprowan 10y ago
    > Regenerative braking reduces wear on brakes. I am still on original brakes after 72000 miles. Wut.
    - rcthompson 10y ago
      My understanding is that the process of converting kinetic energy back to some form of potential energy in a regenerative braking system doesn't actually employ the brake pads at all. So the brake pads are only used when the driver pushes the brake pedal past the maximum capacity of the regenerative braking system. Depending on driving conditions, and especially if the driver maintains a proper following distance, this could be fairly rare.
petra 10y ago
Is the modern system based on division of labor more reliable ? it can be much more reliable if designed properly. And there's no secret - smart complexity can buy reliability. But sure, the toyota hybrid is an impressive piece of engineering.
mdip 10y ago
I was personally surprised by this as well. In fact, it's the single biggest reason I didn't purchase a hybrid vehicle outside of the initial cost being much higher at the time. My thinking was, yes electric cars are quite a bit simpler and have enjoyed a lower repair rate due to that simplicity but here's a car with all of the repair issues that would be found in a gasoline vehicle, all of the added repairs that might come up from the electric engine and then repairs associated with all of the fancy features like regenerative braking and such, not to mention the battery. And they're in the extreme minority meaning I'd either have to hunt for a third-party shop that happened to have a really skilled mechanic who happened to understand all of these odd systems (say goodbye to trusted family friend who's a mechanic and really inexpensive) or get utterly hosed at the dealer. I had a car that had to have the transmission rebuilt multiple times -- a very costly repair ($2400/time in the late 90s) I guess, though, when I think about the common repairs that car owners experience, "Engine Failure" is rarely one of them, so maybe that's one of the core reasons that having two engines doesn't affect things much, but the battery, which is a part that has a guaranteed wear associated scared me quite a bit. Impressive for Toyota, for sure.
vkou 10y ago
"What kind of engine it has" is very much secondary to build quality. An 80s Lada and Volkswagon both had the same internals, yet one had to be repaired before it rolled off the production line. The design of the car places an upper boundary on reliability. Whether or not you hit that upper boundary is up to your manufacturing line. As a Prius owner, I am also amused by the oft-repeated Tesla claim of 'All electric! Simpler system! Fewer repairs!' - given the many production defects they seem to have.
- outworlder 10y ago
  > As a Prius owner, I am also amused by the oft-repeated Tesla claim of 'All electric! Simpler system! Fewer repairs!' - given the many production defects they seem to have. Those are not mutually exclusive. You can have fewer parts and a simpler system and yet a high number of failures. That just means they need to improve the manufacturing. Another way to look at is: your Prius is not much more complicated than a "normal" car, as the EV portion adds so few parts ;) And that's assuming Tesla really does have that many defects to begin with. Much like their accidents, could be biased reporting.
  - vkou 10y ago
    They aren't - but as a consumer, the only metric that matters is: "How often does the car break?" Cries of "Simpler system" cloud the issue. When talking about reliability, I don't care if it's reliable because it uses an ICE, or because it runs on rainbows and unicorn dust. I just care that it's reliable!
    - outworlder 10y ago
      Agreed. They are using the potential higher reliability as a marketing point. Everything else being equal, they'd be right. But everything else is not equal, at least not yet.
- mcguire 10y ago
  "As a Prius owner, I am also amused by the oft-repeated Tesla claim of 'All electric! Simpler system! Fewer repairs!' - given the many production defects they seem to have." In theory, theory and practice are the same thing. In practice, they're not.
Gibbon1 10y ago
Two things about the Prius are the motors are brushless dc motors and the transmission is (far as I know) a fixed gear planetary drive. Both are very reliable well understood technologies. Prius also gets a double bonus in that Toyota is oriented around selling low cost of ownership cars; higher upfront cost offset by lower maintenance costs and higher resale value. And because the Prius was their first hybrid vehicle they put extra effort to nail down the design.
- alvern 10y ago
  Close, the prius drivetrain is two brushless 3 phase motors nested in one another. This allows regenerative braking and charging while still providing power to the final drive. Fun fact the ICE in the prius is an (1) Atkinson cycle which operates at a specific efficiency instead of a powerband. The engine revs up to a low or high range but doesn't have a traditional linear powerband. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson_cycle
  - lloeki 10y ago
    There's another notable Atkinson engine in some petrol Honda Civic Euro FK2 (2006-2011), can't remember engine code, but on that one i-VTEC is able to let inlet valves up during the beginning of the up stroke compression phase, turning the 140hp 1.8l engine into down to a 1.6l one. Turbo-less downsizing with all the benefits of a full-size (aluminium, so lightweight) block. Interesting tech. I owned one, the resulting fuel economy puts diesel engine to shame.
    - lloeki 10y ago
      (edit expired) Engine is R18A2.
  - Gibbon1 10y ago
    Yeah. What I though was neat about the Hybrid Synergy drive is how they use the strength of each component to compensate for the weakness of the others. Atkinson drive: very efficient, but over a narrow speed and output range. Mechanical gear train: Inefficiencies in the high nineties. But gear ratios are fixed. Electric drive train: Not as efficient as a mechanical gear trains, but is efficient over a very wide speed range. Add those up and you have a high efficiency mechanical power path through the planetary gear. And you use the electric power path to divert enough power from the engine to keep it running at it's most efficient. Because you have the electric power path you can cycle energy to and from the battery. Which gives you regenerative breaking, and allows you to stop the engine completely when you don't need power. Genius!
chris11 10y ago
I don't trust those numbers for the hybrids. I have a hybrid and replaced the hybrid battery pack. It was expensive. I'd expect a dealer quote for a replacement would run several thousand dollars. I'd also expect the average battery to be replaced at least once in those ten years. That cost would be most of the average upkeep cost You have options for non-oem battery packs that are less expensive, but you are going to have problems finding an independent shop who will work on it. Dealers won't work with non-oem parts, and most shops won't want to work on the HV electrical system in your hybrid. I haven't found a local independent shop who will work on the hybrid systems. You can do some work yourself, the companies that sell non-oem battery packs will tell you that you can. But you should definitely be comfortable working with HV electrical systems if you want to do it yourself. Some independent shops will work on hybrid systems, I found a mechanic with a great reputation that I'm really happy with. He was literally half the price of some of the dealer quotes. But he's in an entirely different state. Independent shops that specialize in hybrids are hard to find. Plus there are other systems involved with the hybrid, like the transmission, that I would assume would usually be a dealer repair. So I'm assuming this list isn't including the costs to repair the hybrid systems. I think those will usually be dealer repairs.
- lern_too_spel 10y ago
  Hybrids purchased in California have a 10 year traction battery warranty, so the replacement cost is zero.
  - chris11 10y ago
    That is true, but that is because of the state, not the dealer. I actually had some frustrating problems with that. My battery was out of warranty, but if I had been dealing with California regulations it would have been in warranty. I ended up getting a large goodwill discount, so that was nice of the dealer. But it was a little frustrating to realize that my expensive car repair would have been free in another state.

outworlder 10y ago

They probably are, given the sales volume. I do believe that, while Toyota should be commended on its engineering, the electric motor is actually beneficial to reduce wear and tear on the most expensive parts. This seems to be supported by the fact that are many other Toyota models in the low maintenance list, but only the Prius at the top. The prius is pretty mature now too. And the "synergy" system is licensed to third parties. Nissan uses it on their hybrid models. Disclaimer: Nissan Leaf owner. I am not expecting high maintenance bills either. The only thing that worries me is the weight of the vehicle and the crappy OEM tires it comes with.

rcthompson 10y ago

I don't think the hybrid nature of the Prius simply means that there's more opportunities for things to go wrong. The fact that there's a large battery capable of supplying power means that the engine RPMs don't have to spike as much when you floor the accelerator, so the presence of a battery could significantly reduce the overall wear and tear on the internal combustion engine and thus reduce the overall need for repairs, despite increasing the number of parts.

busterarm 10y ago
Right! This is the exactly way to think about it. Engines are pretty much "figured out" by now. It's hard to get terribly complex there (exception: Audi. Seriously, fuck Audi). It's all about performance relative to peak load! A power supply, like the one in your computer, performs much better over a longer life when it never crosses 80% peak load than one that is constantly above 80%.
2sk21 10y ago
I have a Prius that i drive daily so I can add a few more points: - Engine shuts off a lot during normal gentle driving. - The air conditioning compressor is electrically driven and only come on as necessary - Regenerative braking reduces wear on brakes. I am still on original brakes after 72000 miles.
- riprowan 10y ago
  > Regenerative braking reduces wear on brakes. I am still on original brakes after 72000 miles. Wut.
  - rcthompson 10y ago
    My understanding is that the process of converting kinetic energy back to some form of potential energy in a regenerative braking system doesn't actually employ the brake pads at all. So the brake pads are only used when the driver pushes the brake pedal past the maximum capacity of the regenerative braking system. Depending on driving conditions, and especially if the driver maintains a proper following distance, this could be fairly rare.

petra 10y ago

Is the modern system based on division of labor more reliable ? it can be much more reliable if designed properly. And there's no secret - smart complexity can buy reliability. But sure, the toyota hybrid is an impressive piece of engineering.

mdip 10y ago

I was personally surprised by this as well. In fact, it's the single biggest reason I didn't purchase a hybrid vehicle outside of the initial cost being much higher at the time. My thinking was, yes electric cars are quite a bit simpler and have enjoyed a lower repair rate due to that simplicity but here's a car with all of the repair issues that would be found in a gasoline vehicle, all of the added repairs that might come up from the electric engine and then repairs associated with all of the fancy features like regenerative braking and such, not to mention the battery. And they're in the extreme minority meaning I'd either have to hunt for a third-party shop that happened to have a really skilled mechanic who happened to understand all of these odd systems (say goodbye to trusted family friend who's a mechanic and really inexpensive) or get utterly hosed at the dealer. I had a car that had to have the transmission rebuilt multiple times -- a very costly repair ($2400/time in the late 90s) I guess, though, when I think about the common repairs that car owners experience, "Engine Failure" is rarely one of them, so maybe that's one of the core reasons that having two engines doesn't affect things much, but the battery, which is a part that has a guaranteed wear associated scared me quite a bit. Impressive for Toyota, for sure.

vkou 10y ago

"What kind of engine it has" is very much secondary to build quality. An 80s Lada and Volkswagon both had the same internals, yet one had to be repaired before it rolled off the production line. The design of the car places an upper boundary on reliability. Whether or not you hit that upper boundary is up to your manufacturing line. As a Prius owner, I am also amused by the oft-repeated Tesla claim of 'All electric! Simpler system! Fewer repairs!' - given the many production defects they seem to have.

outworlder 10y ago
> As a Prius owner, I am also amused by the oft-repeated Tesla claim of 'All electric! Simpler system! Fewer repairs!' - given the many production defects they seem to have. Those are not mutually exclusive. You can have fewer parts and a simpler system and yet a high number of failures. That just means they need to improve the manufacturing. Another way to look at is: your Prius is not much more complicated than a "normal" car, as the EV portion adds so few parts ;) And that's assuming Tesla really does have that many defects to begin with. Much like their accidents, could be biased reporting.
- vkou 10y ago
  They aren't - but as a consumer, the only metric that matters is: "How often does the car break?" Cries of "Simpler system" cloud the issue. When talking about reliability, I don't care if it's reliable because it uses an ICE, or because it runs on rainbows and unicorn dust. I just care that it's reliable!
  - outworlder 10y ago
    Agreed. They are using the potential higher reliability as a marketing point. Everything else being equal, they'd be right. But everything else is not equal, at least not yet.
mcguire 10y ago
"As a Prius owner, I am also amused by the oft-repeated Tesla claim of 'All electric! Simpler system! Fewer repairs!' - given the many production defects they seem to have." In theory, theory and practice are the same thing. In practice, they're not.

Gibbon1 10y ago

Two things about the Prius are the motors are brushless dc motors and the transmission is (far as I know) a fixed gear planetary drive. Both are very reliable well understood technologies. Prius also gets a double bonus in that Toyota is oriented around selling low cost of ownership cars; higher upfront cost offset by lower maintenance costs and higher resale value. And because the Prius was their first hybrid vehicle they put extra effort to nail down the design.

alvern 10y ago
Close, the prius drivetrain is two brushless 3 phase motors nested in one another. This allows regenerative braking and charging while still providing power to the final drive. Fun fact the ICE in the prius is an (1) Atkinson cycle which operates at a specific efficiency instead of a powerband. The engine revs up to a low or high range but doesn't have a traditional linear powerband. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson_cycle
- lloeki 10y ago
  There's another notable Atkinson engine in some petrol Honda Civic Euro FK2 (2006-2011), can't remember engine code, but on that one i-VTEC is able to let inlet valves up during the beginning of the up stroke compression phase, turning the 140hp 1.8l engine into down to a 1.6l one. Turbo-less downsizing with all the benefits of a full-size (aluminium, so lightweight) block. Interesting tech. I owned one, the resulting fuel economy puts diesel engine to shame.
  - lloeki 10y ago
    (edit expired) Engine is R18A2.
- Gibbon1 10y ago
  Yeah. What I though was neat about the Hybrid Synergy drive is how they use the strength of each component to compensate for the weakness of the others. Atkinson drive: very efficient, but over a narrow speed and output range. Mechanical gear train: Inefficiencies in the high nineties. But gear ratios are fixed. Electric drive train: Not as efficient as a mechanical gear trains, but is efficient over a very wide speed range. Add those up and you have a high efficiency mechanical power path through the planetary gear. And you use the electric power path to divert enough power from the engine to keep it running at it's most efficient. Because you have the electric power path you can cycle energy to and from the battery. Which gives you regenerative breaking, and allows you to stop the engine completely when you don't need power. Genius!

chris11 10y ago

I don't trust those numbers for the hybrids. I have a hybrid and replaced the hybrid battery pack. It was expensive. I'd expect a dealer quote for a replacement would run several thousand dollars. I'd also expect the average battery to be replaced at least once in those ten years. That cost would be most of the average upkeep cost You have options for non-oem battery packs that are less expensive, but you are going to have problems finding an independent shop who will work on it. Dealers won't work with non-oem parts, and most shops won't want to work on the HV electrical system in your hybrid. I haven't found a local independent shop who will work on the hybrid systems. You can do some work yourself, the companies that sell non-oem battery packs will tell you that you can. But you should definitely be comfortable working with HV electrical systems if you want to do it yourself. Some independent shops will work on hybrid systems, I found a mechanic with a great reputation that I'm really happy with. He was literally half the price of some of the dealer quotes. But he's in an entirely different state. Independent shops that specialize in hybrids are hard to find. Plus there are other systems involved with the hybrid, like the transmission, that I would assume would usually be a dealer repair. So I'm assuming this list isn't including the costs to repair the hybrid systems. I think those will usually be dealer repairs.

lern_too_spel 10y ago
Hybrids purchased in California have a 10 year traction battery warranty, so the replacement cost is zero.
- chris11 10y ago
  That is true, but that is because of the state, not the dealer. I actually had some frustrating problems with that. My battery was out of warranty, but if I had been dealing with California regulations it would have been in warranty. I ended up getting a large goodwill discount, so that was nice of the dealer. But it was a little frustrating to realize that my expensive car repair would have been free in another state.