How does the Toyota Prius differ between 2004 - 2009?

2004 marked the first year of the 'new' Prius, the 2nd generation. It was a big improvement over the 1st generation--faster, bigger, more comfortable, etc.

Since then there have been 2 or 3 new generations but they are incremental improvements. I don't think the newer ones get better mileage, except there's a new model that's a lot smaller so you'd expect it to get better mileage.

We got a Prius in 2004 (and we still own it). They told us the batteries were guaranteed for 100,000 miles, and after that they might fail one at a time. I forget how many there are, and how much they cost, but I did some quick figuring and calculated (at the time) that it would cost $2500 to replace all of them, and we would save just about that much in gas over the same period. (Of course that was when gas was $2.50/gal!)

BTW we have 140k miles on the Prius now, after nearly 10 years, and the batteries seem to be working about as well as when they were new. Haven't needed to replace one yet!

2004-09 are all identical as far as the drivetrain and hybrid system go, since they are all NHW20 model.

The year-to-year differences are mostly cosmetic, IE:

2004-05 have an MFD (touch screen LCD) that uses lower resolution analog video

2006-09 have a higher res MFD with digital video

'04-05 had the "shift" indicator to the right of the speedometer and fuel gauge and odometer to the left of the speedometer.

'06-09 were the opposite, shift to the left and odo/fuel to the right.

At some point the tail lights went from red tinted to clear, or the other way around.

'04 and '05 have different HID headlight bulbs than 06-09

'07 and newer have "hybrid" badges on the front fenders and an auxiliary audio input jack in the center console.

The last couple of years also added a factory leather seat option.

Etc.

I want to ask the same question as the previous person.