Hi! I am in the market to buy a used car and over the last couple of days I did some serious amount of research on couple of cars. But the car that caught my eye is Toyota Prius (2001 model for only $4500!) I think for that price it's a deal. But when I told me friends they told me about some drawbacks of a hybrid car. They told me that--
1) Since hybrids are new, I can't get them repaired in an ordinary mechanical shop. I have to go to Toyota dealers in order to get the car repaired, in case I run into any problem.
2) The battery of a hybrid car goes bad within 1 year or two or by 200k. But the biggest concern is that the battery is EXTREMELY expensive (about $2000-$3700).
3) DMV doesn't treat hybrids as regular cars. It takes about 1 week to two to get the license plate for hybrids while the regular cars take only 2-3 days.
4) Parts for the hybrids are EXTREMELY expensive and they are very hard to find.
So, my questions are:
Are those myths true??
Should I buy a Prius or go with Honda civic (2001 model) or corolla (2001 model) or Toyota ECHO (2002 model)??
1) Since hybrids are new, I can't get them repaired in an ordinary mechanical shop. I have to go to Toyota dealers in order to get the car repaired, in case I run into any problem.
2) The battery of a hybrid car goes bad within 1 year or two or by 200k. But the biggest concern is that the battery is EXTREMELY expensive (about $2000-$3700).
3) DMV doesn't treat hybrids as regular cars. It takes about 1 week to two to get the license plate for hybrids while the regular cars take only 2-3 days.
4) Parts for the hybrids are EXTREMELY expensive and they are very hard to find.
So, my questions are:
Are those myths true??
Should I buy a Prius or go with Honda civic (2001 model) or corolla (2001 model) or Toyota ECHO (2002 model)??