Miami-Dade County bought 300 Toyota Prius hybrids over five years ago and then forgot about them

The Miami-Dade County government purchased about 300 Toyota Prius hybrids in 2006 and 2007, but misplaced them without ever having used them. The taxpayers are out $4 million.

The county "discovered" this fleet of no-mileage vehicles after reading about them in a Spanish-language newspaper there. Most of the misplaced motorcade is made up of Toyota Prius hybrids whose warranties either expired with very few miles on the odo or will very soon.

Hundreds of 5-year-old municipal vehicles found in Miami that were never used (Via The Agitator)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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dbergen

Well, to be fair, they are pretty small cars.
- Guest
  
  I think somone switched on the Somebody Else’s Problem field generator
inkfumes

Our tax dollars well spent. Since no one is using them why not give the cars to someone like oh say… teachers? (sez the teacher that drives a 28 year old vehicle)
- Bill Walsh
  
  Because that makes too much fucking sense and governments aren’t about doing things that make fucking sense.
  - inkfumes
    
    We need a “Make F-ing Sense” law.
    - http://twitter.com/trempls tré
      
      That would make too much fucking sense.
      - D Wyatt
        
        Guys, guys, Youre spelling it wrong, its spelled Cents not Sense! Nearly every law is a “Make Fucking Cents” law.
- LikesTurtles
  
  Because the nurses would claim they’re more in need/important than the teachers?
- RJ
  
  If you can keep a 1984 ANYTHING running, you deserve respect.
  Wait. It’s not a Le Car, is it?
  - inkfumes
    
    It’s a Le Toyota Truck…
http://twitter.com/anderalert Pat Eisel

Do they have a droid army stashed somewhere, too?
- twency
  
  Begun, this hybrid war has.
SoItBegins

If they’re not using them, could they give one to me, then?
fnc

Everybody knows cars go stale if not used by the date printed on the bottom.
- acidrain69
  
  Batteries do. And batteries in a hybrid are expensive.
  - Donald Petersen
    
    I wanna hear them drive away, with the ossified flattish spots on all the tires going smacksmacksmack.
- A Nonny Moose
  
  After five years just sitting, you can pretty much count on having to replace most of the braking and fuel systems, as well as any rubber/neoprene seals in the engines and transmissions. Probably gonna need new tires, too.
Mitchell Glaser

And I’ll bet the government employee who set up the deal got a big fat bonus to match the bribe from Toyota.
- EH
  
  Yes, let’s see who was involved in this deal. I’m sure the dealership didn’t have any pre-existing relationships with Miami bureaucracy. After all, it’s not like the economy is down and someone’s brother hasn’t sold a car in a while.
Matt Evans

Fact: Prius drivers drive like dicks. Or is just me that notices?
- LikesTurtles
  
  I’ve never noticed it but given the obsession amongst a minority of Prius owners with hypermiling, some of their driving habits could be frustrating. My only complaint with the Prius has been that more than once I’ve been snuck up on in a parking lot because it was running totally on electric. If it hadn’t been for the crunching of a bit of gravel, it would have been easy to have been flattened.
- ultranaut
  
  After minivans and SUVs they are the dickish dicks on the road
  - GawainLavers
    
    And sports cars and luxury sedans.
  - EH
    
    Around here, minivans and SUVs have the good grace to stay out of the fast lane. Priuses are the worst drivers on the road, bar none.
- http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EJUMVRTBBP5JEJ2JOTDNZCQQ5E Sum One
  
  The huge blind spots caused by the low drag rear windshield design certainly don’t help matters, either.
- taintofevil
  
  As a cyclist, the only car that I consistently hate to see coming because of the way it’s typically driven is the Mustang. Inattentive SUV drivers are a menace, sure, but Mustang drivers seem to actively seek conflict.
  - Donald Petersen
    
    As I mentioned hereabouts sometime last year, the worst drivers in my experience (in Los Angeles and surroundings) usually turn out to be driving ninth- and tenth-generation (’83-’97) Ford Thunderbirds.
    
    I can’t imagine why. But every time I see one of those on the road, it’s being driven in an appallingly dickish manner.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      It’s all sports cars. They’re driven by timid teenagers or guys having their mid-life crises in their 80s. Although Corvettes are popular with hyper-extroverted, 40ish construction company receptionists with bleached blond 80s hairdos and short denim skirts.
gastronaut

…but think of how much fuel they saved by not driving them!
- Doctor 13enster
  
  Think of how much more fuel they saved by not driving these Prii instead of by not driving gas guzzlers!
- Guest
  
  Are we sure that prius’ are more eco-friendly to make?
  - ocker3
    
    You can recycle a prius’ parts and make a new similar car, using the same amount of resources as it takes to make a new car. Where’s the gain? You’ve now Not used one prius-worth of resources, so you can either leave those resources un-mined, or have two cars now for.
http://imcravingpresidency.tumblr.com/ SedanChair

Nope nope nope don’t care don’t care don’t care. Not playing into the “government waste” meme
Ultan

So the plural of of “Prius” is “hybrids”. Well played.
grimc

Technical question: Does sitting unused for 5 years do anything to the batteries?
- Just_Ok
  
  It makes them feel neglected.
- bcsizemo
  
  I’m assuming this is NiMH, and if so then the answer is a little more vague. NiMH can take a good amount of abuse and still work fairly well, assuming they were charged above 60% they might be salvageable. As they sit right now I bet they are dead as dead can be. A better question would be if the on board systems can revive the batteries after being discharged this long…
  
  I have some standard 1600mA NiMH AA’s that I hadn’t used in probably 5 years sitting in a drawer. I ran them through a cycle in a smart charger and they came out working fine…. but obviously YMMV.
  
  If they were Li-Ion they probably still have a charge, but given that lithium cells typically loose capacity over time they would have lost a decent amount of their capacity in the last 5 years or so.
  - grimc
    
    Cool. Thanks.
    - Donald Petersen
      
      They certainly wouldn’t be worth a damn if they were the standard lead-acid batteries used in regular cars. Without regular charge/discharge cycles, those go unrecoverably dead in a matter of months.
Guest

Think of all the smug emissions that greater Miani-Dade was spared.
RJ

Think about that.
Cars get stolen routinely in Miami, yet for five years, nobody touched an abandoned fleet of Prius hybrids.

I think I even read about a Pontiac Aztek getting stolen once.
- LikesTurtles
  
  The security guard in the office building across from the one I work in recently killed a woman and stole her Prius. I’m not sure what is weirder, that the killer was the security guard or that he made his get away in a Prius.
  - AlexG55
    
    My parents have a Prius. A year or two ago, it was stolen and used in an armed robbery. There are so many Priuses in London (to avoid the congestion charge) that it blended right in, and speed isn’t an issue in London traffic. It was found abandoned, as far as I know the robbers are still at large.
  - bcsizemo
    
    I have a lot of old copies of a VW performance magazine, and one article detailed the attack, theft, and recovery of a mid 60′s VW Bus…
    
    For all the get away vehicles to choose from on the road that one is certainly pretty close to the bottom. Needless to say the driver made a full recovery (after being shot) and the perp didn’t make it far at all.
http://www.facebook.com/michaels.f2 Michael S. Ferrell

Im sure they were given away like gift cards and who doesnt spend four million on cars every day ? Who would even want these cars ? I drive a cad suv and could drive over these cars like a speed bump. I get the gas thing but they are so damn ugly. All that really needs to be said is that this is just amazing and that any money going to Florida needs to really be looked at. I am going to look to see if WA state has any free government cars even if they are ugly.
- http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi
  
  I assure you, from someone that wouldn’t be seen dead driving the giant monstrosity that is a Cadillac SUV, ugly is subjective.
hbgvfcdxsz hbgvfcdxsz

The statement “The county “discovered” this fleet of no-mileage vehicles after reading about them in a Spanish-language newspaper there” is incorrect. If you go to the spanish article then it is clear that: “The case was revealed Tuesday by News America newscast Channel 41 in Miami, after an eight-month investigation.” And thus props must go to Ch41 News America. Yes it does make the story more whacky and cool if they really had discovered it in a spanish language paper. Alas not true. Peace.
- Stooge
  
  You’ve over-translated. The program’s not News America, it’s América Noticias: Ch41 is used by América TeVé, an independent Miami Spanish language TV channel.
  
  What impact this has on how whacky or cool the story is, I leave for others to judge.
D Wyatt

What a waste of all those batteries.
JeffF

A seemingly better article:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/26/2769647/miami-dade-commissioners-have.html

According to that they didn’t ‘forget’ the vehicles at all. They reduced their car fleet by 1000 cars, but had locked in orders from previous years and ended up with more cars than they needed. So they sold some, and parked others in a garage (including various kinds of vehicles, not only priuses).

Sounds like some politiicans were just caught flat footed by questions.

They say they were maintaining them during the long term storage. Driving them every few months, etc (which prevents moisture from building up inside I believe).

So barring some wierdness with the batteries (which lots of people seem to think exists, but I have never seen evidence for) the cars are likely perfectly fine.

They failed to make full use of the warantee, probably lost a trivial amount of useful life, and lost money by buying something before they needed it and storing it for a long time.
- Guest
  
  Yeah, but these cars were also bought when Prius’ were waiting listed, and the shortage of them allowed dealers to sell for higher than the market would have borne otherwise
  
  Was the shortage a natural shortage, is my question.
JeffF

Doesn’t change the aparrant fact that almost every claim in this post appears to be false.

The county didn’t forget about the cars.
They didn’t misplace them.
They aren’t out $4m.
The extra cars weren’t mostly priuses.
The county didn’t learn about it through a newspaper story (a few politicians may have).
Reply

Sorta true claims:
The cars were purchased in 2006&7… sounds a bit more like they were delivered then, but the order was committed to some time earlier.

True claims:
The car’s werent used for a long time.

Not a good ratio.