Help! 2005 Prius with 180kMi needs new battery pack

Is there a video on the cell rebuild procedure?

 

I forgot to ask how many hours did it actually take and was balancing the cells difficult?

 

You can look over these threads for some more help on that. It is a bit time consuming:
Gen II Prius Individual Battery Module Replacement | PriusChat
Prius Battery rebalance thread | PriusChat
There are a couple of other longish threads, if I recall correctly.

 

I'm in L.A. --- Lower Arkansas. They priced the battery at $3100, but parts, labor, and taxes totalled up to about $4900

 

It took me about 3 and 1/2 weeks to do mine. I ran one A/C powered charger and 2 D/C powered chargers. There were some that I had to cycle 5 or 6 times to get the readings I wanted. It would be a little faster if the charger could be set to discharge up to 5A, but the best you can get is 1A.
I didn't think it was too hard. A lot of good info on here. I was scared I'd never get it back together since I waited about 3 months after I got the battery out to start working on it. No missing parts or extra parts left over though!
The wait was well worth the $$$ I saved.

 

2008 with 120K miles here. The only problem We've had with the car has been the failure of the 12V battery. I don't consider that a Toyota failure; rather I consider the 12V battery an expendable item. Other than that we've had zero problems; not so much as a loose screw.

In the interest of keeping my long term automobile costs as low as possible I hope to squeeze at least another 120K miles out of the Prius. We live in Redding CA where summer daytime highs can be over 100 degrees for most of the June-July-August days. I'm guessing we will have a traction battery problem sometime in the next 4 years. With what I know today I would opt to replace cells. I like the posts above showing that for about $500 it can be done, including the cost of battery chargers. That idea appeals to me. I watched a video on youtube showing one man's work to replace a whole traction battery. It looked easy if time consuming. I'm retired so I have the time.

About 95% of the time we drive the Prius or my motorcycle. The 4Runner sits cleaned and covered on the side of the driveway. So if the traction battery fails we'll just switch to the 4Runner while I go through the rebuild and rebalance process. It works for me.

We really like the Prius. Were I to be in the market for another car today it would be a Prius again.

 

When my '04 Prius traction battery fails I plan to replace the innards with lightly used, balanced G3 modules. That should be good for 150 - 200k more miles -- well worth the ~ 1500 USD cost. If not available I'll pay the $2300 or so for a new battery from Toyota.

 

Well, typical survivalship bias like someone else mentioned already. Besides, many of those 200000 mile persons probably put the miles on quickly driving mostly hwy. If no hills, hwy driving put almost no wear and tear on the battery. Also, time in service is more important than miles in service.

When one talks about life of 12V battery, we talk about years (and temp) but not miles. HV life is a bit more complicated, but years and temp are still the most important variables IMHO. So, we should stop that fixation with HV life vs miles. Makes no sense to me.

 

With the 12V battery there actually is an inverse relationship between battery life and miles driven, certainly in the case where the car is driven less than ~10K miles per year. The battery remains in a partially-discharged state due to lack of sufficient time where the Prius is READY and this will shorten ultimate service life unless the owner periodically fully-charges the battery or uses a battery tender.

 

You can actually say the same thing for HV battery for slightly different reasons, fewer miles one drives, the shorter trips and more cycling on battery from either initial propulsion (in EV mode on cold engine) or sitting and selfdischarging.

 

I had my HV battery die on me at 130k . I replaced it for 1500$ with a gen2case with gen3 cells from a Falcon Hybrid Solutions in N,J, I went from avg of 45mpg to up to 53mpg...I got a friend to install it, took about 2 hrs total...install cost me dinner for him and his wife...If I could of got new oem battery for $2ooo that's what i would do....

 

How do you know the modules you got are actually from gen3?

 

Did you realize that the product you chose only has a 1 year warranty?

 

How is the battery working now? Considering doing the same thing myself - am looking for people's experience with Falcon. Thanks -

 

You can.