Prime Heat Pump, Failure and Maintenance Cost

Vary small bumper bump fender bender will cost you.
Prius prime heat pump compressor refrigerant oil requirements is very different than your standard Prius.
Very few mechanics understand, or even know that a Prius prime has a accumulator, and what its function is four, because accumulators have been slowly disappearing and removed from cars, air conditioning systems over the last two decades.
Proper oil balance is very crucial for a long life of a electric compressor.

The expense after a massive compressor, burn out with burnt oil in tiny microscopic size metal flakes scattered throughout the Prius prime heat pump system. The cost will literally be in the multiples of thousands.. many, many, thousands.

Unless you want to take shortcuts like the majority of shops, then they’ll just be no warranty.

 

(“ EDIT “) I noticed I miss read and misunderstood the question or so I’m adding an edit. Yes without a heat pump the engine would need to be running.. but without a heat pump, even with an engine running then there would be no air-conditioning cooling for hot days for the passenger or the high voltage battery or the generator or inverter. So a heat pump or a AC system is a must otherwise, you cannot control the temperature of charging and discharging of the high voltage battery.

to call the car the engine does not have to be running because the compressor is a high voltage three phase motor running off the high voltage battery engine not needed.

In cold winter, like Tahoe in the snow, it uses the heat pump to warn the passenger compartment first for the occupants, comfort, and to extend the mileage of the battery.
A heat pump uses 4 to 5 times less electricity to provide heat on a cool snowy day then electric resistive elements like the old hybrid vehicles would use electric heater elements in on a cold day. Your hybrid battery loses a lot of mileage range just because it’s cold in the first place. This is why they do not want to use electric resistive heating elements to provide heat. They use a heat pump that has many times more efficient. .

Only after the engine has been running a while to produce hot coolant will it switchover turn off the heat pump and start using the hot coolant from the engine .

The heat pump is also needed to cool the high voltage battery when it gets discharged and recharged because the battery must maintain a certain temperature including seeding in the coldest winters high voltage batteries do not like to be discharge or recharged in extreme cold climates

 

as long as it’s a hybrid system with an air gas engine, you’re OK by sacrificing a little battery range but if it was a full EV in real cold, North Dakota weather or Chicago in the winter time it’s a lot more than just a little bit of battery range lost.

The good news they’re extremely reliable systems when well-maintained. If we could just keep the hack mechanics away and the DYII guys away who like to shake the little, can an attempt to top off the refrigerant charge and are the initial cause of compressors burning up will be OK..
If not, somebody’s gonna learn a very, very, very expensive lesson of education or lack of.

AC compressors last as long as the car, and even outlast the life of a car when properly maintained.

 

yes, if you’ve seen any of my other posted videos I have a second business that is commercial and residential HVAC occasionally I’ll release a video of recovery systems that are heat pumps and reuse the heat in hot weather and turn your air handler into a DeHumidifier if you live in a area with high humidity. You can also defrost your driveway if you live in a snowy area that your driveway ice is over especially if you’re on an incline you can provide radiant floor heating.. you can provide heating for your domestic hot water use all from a heat pump.

 

no, we have not because it’s a very durable well-made system. It should last 20 or more years which I think we all can agree upon is pretty acceptable for nowadays vehicles with so many components.

where we will start seeing the problems and failures will not be due to the heat pump. It will be due to the technicians who work on them prior like after a body shop.

After some engine or radiator work, where are the heat pump needs to be discharged then you have those animals in the shop, so just leave the refrigerant lines open to the air absorbing moisture contaminating the refrigerant oil that is extremely hydroscopic and search breaking down on contact of moisture.

Then I will be a slow ticking time bomb delayed failure, afterwords, long enough away, where the customer will not know it was the previous shop who service that causes the heat pump failure a year, two years three years later

The heat pump itself should outlast the life of the vehicle. They are extremely reliable, very durable. As long as they never run low on refrigerant never run low on oil are not exposed to the atmosphere and have moisture contamination, and do not have air injected into the system by the technicians who service them..

Clean tight and dry is the secret to a long life

I heat moisture in the air, like a lubricant and lack of return cooling are the worst enemies. And that is all man-made introduced neglect.
Don’t worry about the mechanical components. You must worry with great Xtreme about the confidence of the technician working on the system..

 

but in one way, I love the hacks they make me so much money by using their little cans of refrigerant and filling up the system by pressure or by the site glass, waiting for the bubbles to go away.
Because of these hacks, we have a lot of compressors to replace. $$$

ignorance shop owners of businesses who are not technically competent, and cannot even diagnose the way out of a wet paper bag and are so incompetent. They cannot even train their own technicians is why we all make a lot of money replacing parts.. I just feel sorry for the general public the customers who are victims of these type of shops.

 

and the dealer is one of the worst culprits in the majority, not 100% of the time. Dealers have gotten worse over the decades of hiring less and less skilled workers for profit you make much more money selling parts that are not needed with much higher profit, margins than having skilled knowledgeable employees who can actually diagnose the proper part the first time and only replaced that one component, it’s not in the dealerships financial benefit to correctly repair your vehicle the first time with just one component this is their business model .

Everybody is on some sort of bonus program with percentages, spiffs little carrots to achieve, including the service writer who is writing you up to greet you when you enter the door.

There’s a lot of magic that goes on between the words of the technician that gets processed by a service writer who wants to see a higher paycheck because he’s not getting paid enough to live so some little fairy dust get sprinkled on your work order to Pat it up a little bit. (“ oops I’m not supposed to talk about this. It’s a secret.”)

And when there’s a recession in times, get tough, or the dealership is not favored by enough customers. Technicians paycheck start starving and they have to start making the decision of feeding their family keeping the kid clothes and housed possibly a private school if they could afford it..
And some extra little stuff starts getting diagnosed that’s needed on your vehicle because you know the end of the month the paycheck is coming up. Gotta keep those numbers up..

When does the dealerships that just downright refuse to pay any technician a living wage and goes to the gas stations pulls anybody off the line from anywhere else and qualified because parts changers who don’t speak up for themselves or the quality of work our team players in our more profitable for the service manager, and his bonus the service writers and their bonus, the owner and his bottom line.

I attend the MACS expo, convention and training seminars and over the past three years only once have I seen one owner show up to the training from the San Francisco Bay area and that’s out of a population of millions of people in a 50 mile radius around San Francisco. That’s pretty pathetic..

I keep probing the shop owners, service, riders and technicians, offering them the information the time, the dates, the hotel, where to go for training, nobody wants to pay for training. Nobody wants to take time off during this rat race more concerned about making money and following profits by going to a seminar about making 1000% more profit, then going to a seminar learning how to actually fix cars..

There’s so many people in the chain that have to make a profit from the owner to the service manager to the service writers to the office, personnel, bookkeeper, and then the technicians there more about profits not all the time, but the majority of time, then about the correct procedures for work.

In 30 years, I’ve met three educated shop owners who are really sharp on air conditioning. They were from old school my dad’s time, and they have all retired and left a field.
Everybody’s about who is the quickest get it done get the next customer in.

It is always 100% of the time the owner of the automotive business who is 100% responsible for all the screw ups in the shop for the shoddy work for Skip procedures for parts that are sold that should not have been sold. It’s always 100% of the time the owners of the business responsibility and it’s always their fault.. they have no excuse.
Something I learned from my father and my grandfather. Saying that if anything goes wrong in the shop, it is always my fault.. and I was raised the same way, and I’m teaching my son the same way.

But we live in a new world with a new generation of little snowflakes, who like the pointer finger and place the blame on somebody else. And if you don’t see it their way you’re not a team player.. lol