Replacing Battery for 2006 Prius to Lithium Ion

Replacing with lithium would be great.

Even if the cost were double what you mention.

For me, I'm most interested in how they are fooling the car into accepting lithium. I have lots and lots of automotive lithium batteries, would be great to put them to use in a Prius.

 

I heard Toyota was selling rebuilt batteries for around $1500 with a 1 year warranty. Also have seen services that come to you and replace your battery with a known good battery for under $1k...look on eBay.

SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using PriusChat mobile app

 

Seems like the safest bet is the new battery. Cheapest is the diy repair and a grid charger. Most adventurous learning experience would be the lithium transplant. It might be a disaster, or it might be amazing. Either way, we'd know more than we know now, but it's also the riskiest bet.

 

Here is one option

Look at this on eBay 2004-09 Toyota Prius HYBRID HV Battery Used/fully Tested and sycled NIMH | eBay


SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using PriusChat mobile app

 

Really?

You the best buying from a random guy on ebay that can't even spell the world cycled properly is the way to go?
LOL

 

It's an option, there are other options on ebay also. My battery is fine in my 2010. If I had to replace it, I would buy the used / refurbished one from Toyota.

SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using PriusChat mobile app

 

The used refurbished from Toyota re only in a very limited California market and right now as far as I see they are on backorder. As if they aren't really even fulfilling the orders? It has looked that way since I've been checking on it since earlier this year.

 

while this is correct, it's only 1% of the story. new cells don' play well with the existing ones. so for a decent refurb, a huge amount of time is necessary to rebalance everything. his drives up the cost considerably.

 

you need a new 12v.

 

a new one is 13+, so, eventually, you may find yourself stranded.

 

IIRC, you said it was 11.9V. That's way low unless something discharged it. The 14V while running just tells you that your inverter is feeding 14 volts to the 12V battery as it should.

Here's a pretty good explanation. Ignore the part about revving the engine if you don't have a multi meter. Very hard to do on a Prius and wouldn't help anyway. How to Test Your Auto Battery | Battery Testing & Maintenance | Autobatteries.com Without a good 12V battery it's really hard to figure out what else, if anything, is wrong.

I once found that my 12v was down to 8 volts. Only problem was that the accumulator pump was slow to build pressure when I started the car. You never know what will happen with a low 12V battery.

 

Tampahybrids.com in Lutz Florida:

Hybrid FAQ - Tampa Hybrids Inc.

 

There's absolutely nothing wrong with Lithium Ion batteries. BUT...
It's uncommon, untested, untried and unknown to the point of being nearly Pioneering to have a Nihm to Ion swap. I certainly would be incredibly hesitant about any shop saying they could do it, or even would do it, and especially for only $1700. Testimonials? Evidence of track record? Experience?

As pointed out, it wouldn't even necessarily be about the physical change...it's that the entire system, software included is designed to work with a NiMH battery. I'd be very dubious that it could be as simple as swapping out the one for the other. I'd be worried that anyone thinking they can would be either incompetent or ignorant to the reality of the challenge.

Plus the fact that in the original post, we are NOT just talking about a battery swap but also..."making me a plug in prius".

$1700 for not only a NiMH to Lithium swap but also a standard to plug in conversion?

No...something isn't right about the whole thing. Something sounds very, very wrong.

 

About 40 Caddy ELR batteries sold out of junkyards for $900 ish each last year.
No idea how many are needed to motivate a Prius but if the BMS interface is cheap enough and you can get more than one cars worth from a pack I could see it.

 

Those are some huge batteries. It sounds like an interesting project. How did you find sales data for salvage yards? I searched my resources and can't find a single one. I'd buy one just to bust it open. Wiki shows that only 2958 total cars were sold in US and Canada before production stopped.



Calendar Year Total sales United States[37][38] Canada[34]
2013 10 6 4
2014 1,354 1,310 44
2015 1,049 1,024 25
2016 545 534 11
Total 2,958 2,874 84

 

I believe last time I talked to Todd at tampahybrids.com he said he had a G2 with lithium battery's in it for sale.
Maybe he can weigh in and call me crazy lol.....

 

@TampaPrius.com ?