Does this project affect resale value for all Prius owners?
An interesting issue came up in the Priusonline forum. Avid poster BIF added this thought to the discussion of using Prius power: If the rest of the world begins to think that people can power their houses with their Prius ICE’s, you can watch our resale values crater to rock-bottom levels. Why? Because we only have an odometer, which only tells us how many revolutions the wheels have made. There’s no mechanism to tell us how long the gas engine has been running. Think about it, why would ANY buyer want to “pay up” for a used car if he can’t tell how heavy its service was? Time to rethink our way of measuring the life-expectancy of our cars! Until then, I don’t want to hear any more of this “use my Prius as a house generator” crazytalk. Stripped of its dire conclusion, it is a valid question. (And what is the internet but a bunch of crazytalk anyway?) How does one respond to this? First, a major purpose of this project is that it’s suitable primarily for emergencies. One expects to dri
