I'm driving my second Prius, and I sold the 2008 to our son at 140,000 miles. He drove it another 50,000 miles and has just taken ownership of my husband's 2012 Prius C at just over 100,000 miles. Hybrid tech has been around a long time. Pretty much everything on your Maverick will fail before your hybrid battery goes. The one hugely important thing with the hybrid battery (at least with the Prius design) is to never run out of gas. Hybrid batteries support the electric motor and the gas dependent motor, but they are not designed to completely run the vehicle. Really, don't be nervous about that big battery. I just isn't a thing you'll have to think about unless you run out of gas.
Toyotas are nuts. My Dad had a Tacoma he sold with over 300k miles, original engine and transmission. Now he says the coworker he sold it to drives it to work every day and parks right across from him, lol. additionally when he went to sell it, everybody at work wanted that old tacoma! He even sold it for less than offered because he thought they bid too much.
Anyways I still think the hybrid battery may run out at around 8 yrs, but I hope a cheap one could be found at a junkyard or something like that. If you think about it it's somewhat akin to an engine, it has a finite shelf life, but a lot fewer moving parts LOL. Personally I'm 80% wouldn't get the hybrid at any rate, I want the more power (main factor) and IMO possibly improved reliability of the 2.0. The lower gas mileage is obviously the big downside.
My current truck the 08 Canyon 4 cylinder got 20.5 on the last tank when I recently measured it. I suppose some kind of mix of city and hwy driving, honestly probably leaning to mostly city. so i'm not likely to gain much if any mileage with the 2.0.
Since I have owned the Canyon (7.5 years) I calculated I have put about 13k miles per yr on it (seems like it will be maybe 11-12k this yr, judging I do annual oil changes every summer with long life synthetic, and I just noticed the mileage on my upcoming change in July). Anyways so assuming 20 miles per gallon, that's 650 gallons per yr. At current price of ~2.50 (just a ballpark, currently a bit higher) that's $1625 a yr in gas expenses. So I could save about half that if the hybrid could average 40 (sticking to easy round numbers here). So I could save ~800 per yr with the hybrid vs my current truck or the 2.0. Over 5 years (lets say car loan) that's $4,000. Over 10 years (long term) it's $8,000.
It's a lot but also not really the end of the world either. One unfortunate chance engine replacement could easily eat up 8k in savings, so it's just luck.
One could argue the price of gas is going higher., OTOH there have been long periods the last few years where it's averaged less than 2.50 too be fair. With the current world situation and politics my guess would be gas is more likely to go up than down.
Honestly looking at the new options with unsure reliability and high expense, I appreciate my Canyon more. It's easy to work on, reliable for 135k miles now, still sounds smooth and strong if a bit clickety clackety, and even provides good pep for a 4 banger, partly due to the truck being so small (regular cab), but it's ~185 HP and 191 ft-lb of torque I believe. In practice I've noticed it's just as peppy as my Dad's 2016 "new" Tacoma double cab with the 6 cylinder which I believe he said is rated at 236 HP, probably due to the higher weight etc. If my Canyon just had a double cab I'd probably not even be looking around at new trucks.
