Finally had to replace Traction Battery

Just posting this as it may help others. After 253,000 miles my 2006 finally threw the dreaded "Replace Traction Battery" code. I knew it was going as it had thrown this error before, but after driving the car for a few hundred miles it held together, but finally it died. So like many others I was faced with what to do now. I refuse to pay dealer prices, and while I might buy a used Transmission for my Dodge from a yard I'm not buying a battery from one. After hours of searching this forum and others I came across Prius Rebuilders they are now known as Falcon Hybrid Solutions. Much to my delight I discovered they were only about 90 minutes north of where I live in South Jersey, these guys are in North Jersey. They have a pretty good how to video on replacing the battery. I was in pretty big rush to get this fixed so Sunday afternoon when my Prius died I watched the video, and within about 1 hour I had my old battery out loaded in my truck. The next day I called them to verify they had one in stock, I opted for there "Middle Tier" battery offering that is a GEN 2 Pack loaded with GEN 3 cells. This option is 1350 bucks 400 bucks more than the standard rebuilt Gen 2 Pack with Gen 2 cells they offer, however it seemed like the better way to go. With this unit they offer an 18 Month Warranty but it also has a 50000 mile cap (I think it was 50000). I am told the Gen 3 cells have 20% more capacity than the Gen2 cells and since these are used cells they are not as old as the Gen 2 so logic dictates they should be in better shape. Replacing the Pack was simple, took about another hour to put back in. One thing I will note, it's important when you put the Orange Safety disconnect back in you slide the handle lock down after you have pivoted it up into the lock position. I forgot to do this and the Battery will not engage if you don't do both motions. Had the new one for about a month now and so far so good. My Mileage was down to about 42 MPG when to original battery was close to failure, since replacing I seem to be up to about 46 MPG doing the same driving route. Time will Tell. I'm not going to go into the rebuild process but they do have a pretty interesting operation. It kind of reminded me of how Apple got started, they run out of a portion of an old warehouse.

Total Cost with Tax was about 1430 Bucks. Since I was able to pick up the Battery I was able to avoid the 200 Shipping Charge. Also if your doing the shipping route there is a 400 core on the old unit.

I'll post again as I put some miles and months on this unit.

 

That did go through my mind more than once, a certain amount of trust needs to exist with your vendor there. The battery has a seal on it from the re-builder so I can't open it up and verify what model of cell is in there without voiding my warranty. However given the moderate size of this outfit and the fact they seem to be trying to make a name for themselves I am inclined to think they would not intentionally try to deceive their customers as sooner or later someone will open one up. I was also feeling better about my purchase after seeing several pallets of NEW cells and stacks of them at each workstation. Also while waiting for the transaction to go through the guy showed me the big stack of cells that were destined for the scrapper due to being unusable and in many cases bloated. Next to that pile was 3 Pallets of very neatly stacked and wrapped used cells. I inquired what that was for and was informed those were cells that would still take a charge but were no longer suitable for a Prius due to it's demanding nature of rapid charge and discharge cycles. So they were destined for India to Ta Ta to be used in the booming electric scooter industry in that country. All these factors gave me a bit of confidence this was not a fly by night outfit. However I had the luxury of actually seeing where these things were rebuilt, when dealing with shipping I totally agree you need to know who your dealing with.

 

Perhaps I did not describe that properly, what I saw was a pallet full of scrap cells some of which were bulging at the sides. Not a pallet full of those just some that were. One of the biggest reasons for failure is overheating the battery.

 

Well I saw that, I can tell you this, they are a small operation. I saw about 5 guys in the shop in there are only like 4 or 5 workstations for rebuilding. At the time I purchased my battery back at the beginning of August they had only 1 of 995 Version (Gen 2 cells) and 10 of 1350 version (Gen 3 cells). This sort of makes sense to me I would bet there are far more reusable Gen 3 cells around in the used market then Gen 2 cells, lets face it they are getting rather dated now. I am not in any way trying to shill this place, I am just relaying what I saw. This operation started out of a garage and moved to a warehouse and went from 1 person to I guess like 5 or 6. But they seem to be growing so they must be doing something right.

 

Negative, in daily operation inside a Prius. My battery died after I left my car locked up in to summer heat un-driven for a week.