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It's been remarkable to watch how cars like the Toyota Prius have taken the automotive industry by storm. While hybrids are a mere fraction of total vehicle sales, the reality is that it's quite hard to argue that this is not the wave of the future given regulatory requirements.

The biggest pill to swallow many years ago was the issue with the batteries. Firstly, will they deplete charge once the warranty expires and then buyers will be stuck with expensive paperweights? Secondly, what do you do when that happens: Replace the battery or the vehicle?

It turns out that many early adopters have not had to make the latter decision. That's because many of the early Prius' and Honda Civic Hybrids are still using the original battery they were shipped with.

According to The Truth About Cars, the batteries were engineered with safeguards to prevent serious depletion that is aided along when a battery is either fully charged or fully depleted. So, product developers decided to force the batteries to only make use of 60-70 percent of their capacity to avoid that premature end of life.

Anecdotally, Agent 001 and I have spoken to many taxi drivers using their hybrid autos and most have said that they've used the vehicles up to 300,000 on the original battery. Though I spoke with a couple of drivers who had their batteries replaced it was all taken care of under warranty.

So, how about that, Spies?


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Hybrids Doing AWESOME Long Term? Almost ALL Still Running On Original Batteries...

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Agent00R