How are Gen3 HV Batteries Doing? Good it seems

they can afford to discount the batteries, nobody buys the cars.

 

Is that part of the extended warranty program you pay for, and does it include labor ?

 

Sour grapes

 

Print from the link:

Can an owner wait until year 8, and then extend the warranty for two years by paying the 39 UKP fee for annual checks ? If so then the UK has a CARB type warranty.

 

The battery technology is not new.
Well vetted.
My assumption is that The Gen 3 Batteries will perform within specs, for at least the time frame and/or mileage that Toyota warrants them. Which is 8-10 years, or 100,000-150,000 miles. Non-CARB or CARB state applied.

I think it's really still too early to obviously come to any long term conclusions. Even though we are on the verge of seeing the 4th gen Prius, The Gen 3 in the real world barely at it's oldest offering meets the 1/2 a decade standard.

I think we can conclude there are no huge obvious defects or problems. But if you plan to keep your Prius 8-15 years? We can't yet conclude how the HV battery might behave or last with that duration.

My pure speculation would be an expectation equal to, or exceeding those of GEN 2 HV batteries. But we won't know until we actually enter that Jurassic Park.

 

You can either pay for the cover in 12 month/10k mile intervals at £39 or it's included as part of a normal Toyotadealer service. I guess it's a way to keep you loyal to a Toyota dealer for servicing. It includes labour should the battery require replacing but it is only for the battery, the transaxle or catalytic converter are not covered by the HHC.

Full extended warranties are about £300 per year over the 5 years.

I guess it's a way of Toyota UK showing confidence in their HV batteries. I think there is something similar offered in Norway and Portugal, but not in Ireland. FAQs

 

Living in a CARB state I get the 10year/150k mile warranty so I don't give it much thought. We put over 90k on in 4 years but just 6k in the 5th year so far as we don't drive it nearly as much anymore thanks to increased public transportation and some other work/life changes. If I get 5 more good years out of the car and battery post-payoff I'll consider it a remarkable success and value. Depending on the condition of the rest of the car at that point, $1500± for a new battery will be a bargain in the overall Cost of Ownership.

We have the exact opposite of typical taxi use here with almost zero "stop and go" driving and lots of mid-speed secondary roads. Not to mention only about 3 months of hot weather. While hilly northern New England might not be optimal for max-average-MPG, I think its' very conducive to long, happy battery life.

The car drives like new and is rust free still, I see no reason we won't get every last mile we can out of it.

 

In Italy is similar to the UK, just without the option to have it free with the Toyotadealer service.
BTW you have to do it before the 10th year, but then it last one year, so the HV battery is covered 10 years and 11 months/unilimited km.

 

The traction battery price is USD3,412 MSRP and a discounted price of USD2,559 here at this Houston, Texas Toyota dealer:
2010 Toyota Prius Parts - AutoNation Toyota Gulf Freeway Parts

We are going to need Grumpy to export the UK-sourced traction batteries to North America...

 

^^
With exceptions all around, it does appear that in general the batteries are more time than distance limited.

 

I guess they are lasting pretty long. If not, you can get one on Craigslist that's been jacked out of some poor souls car
There's about a million sites talking about it.

Seriously, for years people here have chatted about a cheaper way to get a replacement battery than paying $3k to get the part and labor at Toyota.

As the demand for replacement batteries goes up, what is going to keep the crooks from spending 20 minutes to make a thousand bucks?

 

DO remember that a lot was learned about the "prismatic" (rectangular, not cylindrical) batteries in the GII. Some improvements were made, even though they are hard to see from the outside. We don't know if improvements have been made gradually over the years or not. I would guess probably. We do know there were failures in the interconnects early on and those were addressed.
The Panasonic division of Matsushsita (sp?) makes the batteries. Both they and Toyota want them to be reliable, so failure teardowns and reports are surly forwarded.

My guess is reliability is affected both by use (inverter reprogramming) and construction details. I notice the GIII uses the battery more than the GII. Yet so far we don't see a big difference in failure rates.

 

good point on the reprogramming, and the subsequent anecdotal (unproven) complaints regarding lost mpg's.

 

Curious, I am pretty confident in saying just the opposite, at least based on the frequency of seeing the 'low battery' icon.

 

Running the battery down depends SO much on the type of driving tho, hard to quantify?

For example, I find it really hard to avoid a two bar battery, every time we park on an upper level in this parking garage. With low speed it pretty much refuses to engage the engine, and the relentless up grade eats charge very efficiently.

I don't worry about it much, it does what it does. The only way to avoid battery depletion is to drive like you're in The Italian Job, lol.

 

Yes, but I was comparing our driving the same route(s) with Gen2 and Gen3 cars

 

Yeah, was going to acknowledge that, but opted instead to just trample about, and ramble. My bad.

 

No worries; and you still have a fair point. It may be that some routes are harder on a Gen2 battery and others on a Gen3.

 

I'm pretty sure they want them to last just past 10 years and 150,000 miles.