Toyota Prius

Which Toyota Prius years should you avoid?

Going by 12,525 owner complaints filed with NHTSA, the Toyota Prius years to avoid are 2010, 2007, 2008, 2006 and 2015.

• 20102,823 complaints, 9.0× a typical Prius year, most often about the brakes.
• 20072,004 complaints, 6.4× a typical Prius year, most often about the headlights.
• 20081,497 complaints, 4.8× a typical Prius year, most often about the headlights.
• 20061,440 complaints, 4.6× a typical Prius year, most often about the headlights.
• 20154.6× the usual share of fires, crashes and deaths for a car of its age (1 fire, 29 crashes, 3 deaths).

2 more years cleared the same bar; they are marked in the table below.

Better bets: among years old enough for a low count to mean something, the 2016 drew the fewest complaints without an unusual share of serious ones.

Too new to judge: 2025 and 2026. Complaints take a few years to arrive, so a new model year looks better than it is.

How this is worked out: each year is compared with a typical year of the same model, which takes most of the difference in sales out of it, and its share of serious failures is compared with every other car of the same model year, because older cars were complained about differently. A year needs 25 complaints to be judged at all. Complaints are unverified owner reports. Full method →