Media contact/Prius expert?

there are tons of battery threads. mostly bad, but that's what you get on the internet. the happiest people are those that get goodwill assistance from toyota.

 

there are lots of original statements in the battery threads, and i'm sure you'll get some here, but you're looking for a small portion of priuschatters, many of whom came for help, and never returned after the conclusion.

 

The 'unbiased' and statistically representative data is the trick. There are lots of battery threads on PriusChat and, reading those, you might get a sense of gloom, but that's partly to be expected just from the way a car forum works. The Wikipedia Prius sales number up through early this year was "almost 4 million". The PriusChat front page at the moment says we have 133,609 members, or maybe 3% of all-time Prius owners here, and the 3% who seek out and join a car forum is a different mix than the owner population as a whole. While some of us are here because we're just geeks and enthusiasts, a lot of people have their first urge to join a forum when they are having some worry about the car. A lot of people who aren't having problems or worrying about their cars are off doing something else and not hanging around PriusChat.

Maybe the biggest large-scale data collection about hybrid batteries was done by Consumers Union and reported on 4 or 5 years ago, in about the twelfth year of Prius existence. They had waited that long because until then they didn't have enough battery failures to satisfy their statisticians, and when they did publish, I think they had seen battery failure probability around 4% by year 11, inching up to 5% by year 12. Of course that was before many Gen 3 batteries would be expected to wear out at all, and before Gen 4 existed. If they have continued the study to now, they might be able to report on how the probability rises in years 13 to 17, but I don't know if they're working on that.

My 2001 was at 15 years and 232,000 miles when I sold it; I had never fussed with the battery, but the person who bought it from me reports having changed it (and runs a shop, and was doing other repairs at the same time).

There was somebody working on a long-term vehicle reliability web site who used to regularly post here asking for data. I haven't seen those posts for a while and I don't remember the details, but a forum search should find them.

Here's hoping you find good representative sources!

-Chap

 

@mkaresh

 

Assume first that Toyota knows all with respect to selling replacement traction batteries. Second, that they won't tell. Although, at some point, they may have enough 'distance' from NHW11, NHW20, and so on. I could imagine that they'd get net favorable notoriety from putting a capstone on experience with a particular model. But imagine is the key word there.

Various independent hybrid shops have been discussed here, and others probably exist. It may be much easier to get them to reveal work history. Free advertising for their capabilities.

Least representative of 'the fleet' I suppose are DIYers who do whole packs or cells. Yet PriusChat should be a good place to fish for experiences.