I don't think the hybrid nature of the Prius simply means that there's more opportunities for things to go wrong. The fact that there's a large battery capable of supplying power means that the engine RPMs don't have to spike as much when you floor the accelerator, so the presence of a battery could significantly reduce the overall wear and tear on the internal combustion engine and thus reduce the overall need for repairs, despite increasing the number of parts.
Right! This is the exactly way to think about it.
Engines are pretty much "figured out" by now. It's hard to get terribly complex there (exception: Audi. Seriously, fuck Audi).
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%.
I have a Prius that i drive daily so I can add a few more points:
- Engine shuts off a lot during normal gentle driving.
- The air conditioning compressor is electrically driven and only come on as necessary
- Regenerative braking reduces wear on brakes. I am still on original brakes after 72000 miles.
My understanding is that the process of converting kinetic energy back to some form of potential energy in a regenerative braking system doesn't actually employ the brake pads at all. So the brake pads are only used when the driver pushes the brake pedal past the maximum capacity of the regenerative braking system. Depending on driving conditions, and especially if the driver maintains a proper following distance, this could be fairly rare.
