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.
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%.
Wut.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
In theory, theory and practice are the same thing. In practice, they're not.
But sure, the toyota hybrid is an impressive piece of engineering.