If you are considering Prius as a luxury car then its really amazingly startling. Its not a luxury car its an economy car, exactly at the same level as a corolla. Anyway, speaking of Pakistan now and then - even today you see mechanics and other technicians say that the catalytic convertor is plugged and needs to be removed" even from brand new cars - they do this on their "andaaza" - I have yet to see a proper freeze frame screen shot of the downstream O2 sensor which would point to an inoperative cat or even a simple pressure test in case of single O2 sensor.
You have the d'rect fan crowd which if done to EFI cars becomes problematic becuase the ECU cannot go into closed loop mode if it has an electric operated O/D or lockup or full electric shift trans it wont shift into high gear due to cold engine temperature. This is the lack of knowledge that is being discussed. Repairing cars is not a learn by copy art - its an educated ladder.
The reason you see so many Prius is that they provide cheap economy to run - wait a few years and you will see them parked at ustaad getting engine transplants because repairing the original system would be murder to their bank accounts if someone actually could understand them, if not then it would still be murder as the car would be a permanent visitor of such mechanic.
You can neatly place this along home and commercial A/C mechanics in Pakistan - they still use lye to wash the condenser fins - its corrosive to them, they dont even vacuum the lineset, they dont even have strobe lights to set fan blade pitch - and yet A/Cs have been in Pakistan for more than 30 years now.
