Gen II Prius Individual Battery Module Replacement

Hi , been a while since I've been on here - now having the same problem with the 11 year old NiMh pack ...

In 2006, got 01 prius with ~100k – red light starts appearing , replace bad modules , got a few thousand miles and problem again, more modules replaced, finally replaced whole pack, driving good and sold it with ~138k , 2010.

2010 got 05 prius with 80k miles - this past week noticeable issues with battery flairing up red triangle , about 142k miles. It was a hot summer here in central FL. Get codes p080a and I believe p03015.

Fluctuating soc – starts out good around 50%, within seconds drops to 30% and sometimes red triangle. Have seen it charge up to 100% on last drive home Friday. From reading, I surmise that some modules in the center of the pack have likely a bad cell and are out of voltage delta range from the rest of the pack.

I am either gonna get another pack, or try and replace 1 or 2 modules in block7. A nice program for elm323 hopefully can give me those voltages as I dont believe the scanguage2 with fw 3.15 can get that detail without firmware upgrade.

 

gday mate, it might not be the middle of the pack it could be anywhere in there! if your really lucky one cell has dropped out and you will see an obvious difference in voltage on that one block ..

good luck with it

 

well, I did get a p3015, block 5, but my experience with the previous playtime on the gen 1 pack was it did buy time, but not too much and the great solution was someone who had a pack they didnt want that had very low mileage (<60kmiles) -- that way, every body in the pack is more within delta and perhaps it buys another 80+kmiles --

another school of thought is why was toyota being so cheap and waiting so long to go to lithium - it is a far superior chemistry (aside frm the fire from overcharging)--- it is a great car, but the 'suprise' awaiting everyone in a hot climate with over 100k leaves a nasty taste in the mouth .!!!

 

as matter of interest, the V is very comparable to 2 lithium cells - I dont see why one couldnt get some high current rated cells, 2 per module space (or 2 pair in parallel) and just slap them inplace of the crappy nickel metal ha ha hydride !!!

 

Won't work. The car will notice the difference and won't like it.

 

if the battery management computer is looking at each of the 6 cells per module, then yes, if it is merely seeing the voltage at either end of each module , then the chemistry characteristic might be being analized, - would imagine the lithium, being a faster charge taker and giver, would throw off what is being sought after by toyota's look up tables ---

 

naa finding lithium cells with such high discharge rate would be your first among many challenges! your not going to chuck a couple 18650's out of busted laptop or your ecig in there and drive away, put it that way! plus most lipos are 3.7v ea

too many have tried and failed for me its so much easier to just throw a good used module in the pack and do a balance im not in for trying to revise Toyotas system .. all too hard

 

true - !! lithiums are pretty reasonable now, something they weren't back in the early 2000's - i think there is a conspiracy between corps and big oil, to put inferior tech into the cars, make great cars, but not long living, part of the business plan to not have a saturated market --- otherwise toy wouldnt have waited until 2015 to put lithium bat packs in the cars!!!!

((I can envision the smoke filled back room: " they think they're getting good gas mileage , --- and they are ! ---- (that's the bait) .. wait for it .. they think they can drive for 200,000 miles getting that good gase mileage but surprise surprise , red triangle at 130-140k for people with false faiths and beleifs, leaving them with a 3000 pound scrap heap !!! they only recaptured a small portion of their expenditure for saving, having endured all the middle fingers, honking and big diesels blowing black smoke at them while they were trying to be green and save some money , suffering in their sub-compact with PZEV -- ah ha ha ha, just make the whole car contingent on the hybrid power core , keep the old NiMH battery in there which is cheap, the ticking time bomb they don't forsee until it's too late ... (make small improvements like metal on the prismatic module for better cooling, that will rebuild their confidence to buy a newer vehicle to have faith in ) ...

is my sarcasm unfounded ? assume dead battery. ok, provision to get home to drive car in normal car mode (ie non-hybrid) or to still have a car without the hybrid enhancement ? gas mileage quite poor, acceleration mind blowingly slow -- where will all those electrons go for regen , a large dissapation resister ? It seems this awesome design is dead in the water without the HV battery pack.

 

Your last sentence is correct.
Dead in the water without the hybrid battery pack.

Interestingly early Honda Insight does not suffer this fate. Can bypass the pack and drive on gas alone. In fact I'm doing it today for a cut for under $200.

 

It is not surprising as the Honda Insight design is a petrol engine with electric assist. The Toyota Prius design is an integrated petrol/electric where each depends on the other to get the best of both (hence the term synergy).

 

You prob don't want Lithium packs for other reasons. We had a Tesla wreck in Indy the last few days and the battery pack caught fire and blew apart with each piece of the battery catching on fire and shooting fire. It was an hour until fire fighters could recover the bodies from the car. The community is taking it pretty hard as these were young successful involved people. Anyway stay clear for that reason also.

 

Lithium packs is fine. Not more dangerous than driving around with 10 gallons of flammable liquid.

 

also, the tesla comes with 65 or 85 kwh of juice and is bat only, where as the prius is about 1kw so thats a pretty significantly lesser fuel , but yeah, 10 gal of gas is what most people have anyway and thats always a consideration - the tesla is just a rocketship that begs to have more fun, model S $69k min ----

 

I mentioned that back when I did mine as well when trying to find the best method for rebuilding to maximize service time.

Gen II Prius Individual Battery Module Replacement | Page 11 | PriusChat

 

That's very smart to verify function ! Hours of agonizing disassembly should not have to be repeated too soon.
I guess I need to get me a HF upholstery tool -- there is a local guy selling modules for ~#30 but he doesnt know the year or mileage they came from only that they are about 7.5v . -- A load test is needed and hopefully they can be done quickly on modules.

 

You also need to check the self discharge rate of your replacement modules. Sure the capacity could be adequate and the load test could show positive results but if the module does not maintain voltage you will have problems again if you let your Prius sit unused for several days.

Before you install and reassemble your pack be sure to let the replacement modules sit for at least 5 days to see how much of a voltage drop occurs on each. If it's more than a 0.5V drop per module (after the surface charge dissipates) that's not good. Measure a few of the good modules from your pack as a comparison.

 

that's damn sad .. maybe these old nimh modules aren't so bad after all rip those poor people

 

Crashed Tesla explodes into a massive fireball Yes and as some have pointed out Lithium batteries in a car with a gas tank sounds like trouble to me. I've read that the Tesla is reinforced to help prevent these fires and explosions.

 

I guess all new technologies come with their initial caveats, but with time, we learn to control them, perfect them, and use them safely to our advantage - always has been the case, always will be. I have faith in our ability to make this possible.


iPhone ?

 

Back to prius batteries succking - nimh, sucks, 1.2v brick delta, sucks, not letting people maintain /balance their batteries (by way of toyota battery maintainer/balancer), sucks ! great tech, but 3000 pound paperweight at their whim, toy is happy to quote you $2.5k +$500 install though,, thats where the dif is made up, they sell the car cheap at or below cost or slightly above and this is how they make it back .. with the big screw job at the stealership !

And yes, little tiny incremental change of module with metal sides for cooling and then gen 3 has less internal resistance.

Lets talk about fans. 1 fan,
1) No push-pull (2 fans) -
2) no backup fan (secondary) (like when you are in dusty environment/have pets adn the fan blades get clogged) -- this seems like idiocy by toyota engineering
3) No liquid battery cooling - engine and invertor are coolant cooled, why not a coolant encasing near the battery pack too since its critical that the battery has 14 sets of modules that must stay with in closely defined parameters ..

it seems toy put no redundant systems on the cooling of the very critical part of the car !!! its as if someone said 'lets not build it too good, then they would not bring it back in for repairs or buy another one and we could not recoup our selling them at a loss' ...