Hybrid car question

[Slvrvalk1]

My wife is looking at a 2006 Lexus hybrid.  It will be parked in a garage next to my Interstate, so this is Valk related.  I do not know much about the maintenance of a hybrid or the life of the batteries.  Does anyone know the projected life of the batteries?  Does anyone know of any particular problems that have been found with hybrids?

Any information would be appreciated.

Dave

[Ricky-D]

Yup, three years.  Get out your wallet. Them batteries are gonna need replacing soon if not already now.

***

[Thunderbolt]

whichever comes first.  I have 30,000 in a year and 9 months, so I will hit 100,000 before 8 years.  There is probably a BBS for Lexus like there are for other cars.  Priuschat is the one I like for the Prius.  There is a lot of good information there, do a search for batteries and you should get a pretty good sampling of information.  From what I have seen on the board, the batteries are holding up well.  Even the 1st generation Prius has had few problems.  I drive 29 miles each way to work and am getting 52.4 mpg and have no problems at all.  If you drive as few as 5-10 miles to work, you probably should stick with a conventional car unless you are just wanting to go green.

[sheets]

My company rig is a first gen Prius.  Nearly 100K on the clock.  No malfunctions, batteries or otherwise, to date. 

[Navychief]

The wife and I are the proud owners of an '07 Prius and she drives the daylights out of it! She averages 52-54 mpg in and around town (Tucson). We averaged 50 mpg on a trip to San Diego and back. I did some serious research before buying this car. Supposedly there have been less than 10 batteries that have been replaced (and they were in Japan and the cars were used in taxi service)! Why the batteries are warranted for 150k miles in Calif. and only 80k for the rest of the country, no one has been able to explain this to me!
I am very impressed with this car and when we are ready for another car in the future, it will be another Prius.

[Puffs Daddy]

Yup, three years.  Get out your wallet. Them batteries are gonna need replacing soon if not already now.

***

That, of course, is untrue. The first generation Prius went on sale in 1997. Even then, the battery life was estimated at 7-10 years. And that turned out to be an underestimate. But since then, the battery technology has been improved, primarily in terms of charge management, giving the battery a projected life approximately the same as the rest of the car, i.e. about 25 years.

[Black Pearl's Captain]

"And Toyota claims that not one has required a battery replacement due to malfunction or "wearing out." The only replacement batteries sold--at the retail price of $3000--have been for cars that were involved in accidents. Toyota further claims that the nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) battery packs used in all Prius models are expected to last the life of the car with very little to no degradation in power capability."

http://consumerguideauto.howstuffworks.com/hybrid-batteries-none-the-worse-for-wear-cga.htm

[dipstick]

Not so sure the Prius or any other hybrid is really all that green when it comes to the bottom line. If your into that carbon footprinting stuff the prius and Hummer H-2 have the same carbon footprint due to the batteries.