Toyota Prius Declared Most Reliable Used Car

Need another reason to buy a hybrid? Here’s one – the Dekra Used Car Report (which focuses on green vehicles) announced this year that the Toyota Prius was the compact vehicle with the fewest problems.

Hybrids – Complicated AND Dependable

Hybrid vehicles are a daunting prospect for many car buyers – the general impression is that they’re really complicated, which leads to a fear of many expensive trips to the shop or the dealer to get something fixed. Dekra shows that it just isn’t true; the Prius was easily at the top of their quality section as the compact car with the fewest defects showing up between 30,000 and 60,000 miles.

Dekra’s method of rating cars is their defect index, which subtracts the percentage of vehicles with “significant deficiencies” from the percentage of vehicles with no relevant defects. In other words, the higher the number, the better. When the Toyota Prius was evaluated, 90% of the vehicles had no significant problems, while 2.5% had serious issues, giving it a defect index of 87.5%.

Apparently Toyota Makes Reliable Small Cars

Toyota actually did quite well across the board in Dekra’s report, with the Auris (also available as a hybrid) taking second place for quality in the compact car section, and the Yaris firmly taking top place among the small cars. Toyota, one might speculate, is not surprised by this news at all, as its on internal statistics show the Prius as having the fewest maintenance costs of any car it is currently selling.

Think about that for a moment – of all the cars Toyota has under warranty, the one that costs them the least is the Prius. Complex or not, that sounds pretty reliable to me. The competition needs to step it up a notch.

While conducting its research, Dekra evaluated 15 million general inspections of 230 models from the past two years (that’s an average of over 65,000 cars of each model type). They evaluated typical used-car defects only, which is to say if the car was screwed up from not being properly maintained, the owner had it coming and those problems didn’t count (worn-out tires not caused by engineering defects, for instance).

Ready for a Prius – or at least ready to embrace the knowledge that hybrids are as dependable as any other car? Let us know in the comments, below.

Source: Gas2.0