Snow here falls in quantities large enough to completely shut everything down at least once a year.
The Prius belongs to bcholmes. It had a few problems related to the fact that it was the first production year to be released here, so there were the expected number of bugs. Subsequent model years seem to be more problem-free.
Having said that, at 4 years old, it's an excellent car. The fuel efficiency is phenomenal. It's been fantastically reliable.
My biggest problem with the car is that it's designed for people a good 4-5 inches shorter than me, so it's uncomfortable for long drives. (Anything over about 5 hours.) When we bought the car we were told that other models were going to be getting the hybrid engines, so that problem was going to go away soon. I've yet to see those models materialize.
Repairs (so far) don't seem to be any more expensive than for any other car. The biggest problem has been that the dealership has a limited number of people trained to work on it, so getting an appointment to get it looked after can take longer. Nothing major has yet gone wrong with it however, so we'll see how that goes. It seems that more and more people are trained to actually do the repairs the older it gets, so by the time we start running into serious wear issues we should have no problem getting it serviced. In theory, anyway.
The main battery is garanteed for the life of the vehicle. I would expect the internal combustion engine would last a little longer than normal because it doesn't run all the time, but that's just me guessing.
helping
The Prius belongs to
Having said that, at 4 years old, it's an excellent car. The fuel efficiency is phenomenal. It's been fantastically reliable.
My biggest problem with the car is that it's designed for people a good 4-5 inches shorter than me, so it's uncomfortable for long drives. (Anything over about 5 hours.) When we bought the car we were told that other models were going to be getting the hybrid engines, so that problem was going to go away soon. I've yet to see those models materialize.
Repairs (so far) don't seem to be any more expensive than for any other car. The biggest problem has been that the dealership has a limited number of people trained to work on it, so getting an appointment to get it looked after can take longer. Nothing major has yet gone wrong with it however, so we'll see how that goes. It seems that more and more people are trained to actually do the repairs the older it gets, so by the time we start running into serious wear issues we should have no problem getting it serviced. In theory, anyway.
The main battery is garanteed for the life of the vehicle. I would expect the internal combustion engine would last a little longer than normal because it doesn't run all the time, but that's just me guessing.