Hey all, Wondering if anyone is having the same issue I am having with the Dr. Prius Lithium battery. I have a 2007 with 335k miles on it and placed the Dr. Prius Lithium battery in it last year. My previous original HV battery worked just fine and was still going strong at 320k, but the Dr. Prius app said it had around 50% life left and I was moving across the country so I replaced it prophylactically. Unfortunately after placing it I learned that they were having issues in cold climates with failing prematurely (within the really narrow 2 year warranty...), and I moved to Utah for work which not only has cold climates but also high elevation with lots of hills/mountains. Because of this, I upgraded to the V2 a couple weeks ago. Since then, the V2 packs have discontinued due to poor performance. I only upgraded to V2 because I got emails urging me to due to the cold climates.... Since "upgrading" my mpg has dropped from 46 to 36 in just 2 weeks, the lowest I've ever encountered even with my ancient OEM battery. The temps here are not even very cold yet, only 30-40F, and I have not been driving up the mountains either. Just driving to and from work, 10mins each way. I'm curious if I'm the only one experiencing these issues or if there are others out there like me. I'm in the unique unfortunate position where my original battery was just fine and I regret replacing it. If I could do it over again I would've went with another OEM battery once mine died as those are tried and true and have been working fine for the past 15 years for my car. There was not information out there about the lithium batteries failing in cold climates when I bought mine, or I would've steered clear because I knew I had to move for work. I should mention that Jack of Dr. Prius has been very helpful in offering to recondition my battery for free but I can't be without a car for 2-3 weeks.
the Prius App is not really a good predictor of battery life, it's like "Nostradamus".. it can be interpreted in different ways and you could always twist the results. I will only use the Prius App for checking before and after reconditioning results (just to verify how much improvement or for comparison) Who knows that 50% life you see on the original battery is 10years of use (or weeks or months...)
I generally run the original Toyota battery into the ground The bus bars are green nuts frosted . Build up in abundance etc. I know that all the Eev makers are having trouble in cold climates with batteries batteries generally have trouble in cold climates are they always have even lead acid. So when I heard that they were making a lithium battery for the Prius I thought to myself well yeah cool but with all the problems that other people with electric cars and semi-electric cars are having in the cold with batteries maybe not a good idea to spend $600 more dollars for that type of technology from my Prius even though I'm not in cold climates per se so I'll just keep my $600 and buy the Panasonic Toyota pack in Central North Carolina so I don't have a lot of hills and any other obstacles per se. So I'm kind of glad I kept my 600 or so bucks and just went with the original Panasonic Toyota battery business seems in my situation this will be okay like I say all of you other folks are getting 50 and 60 mi to the gallon in a generation too I commend you and good on you I have never seen 60 miles a gallon displayed on my MFD in the miles per gallon consumption meter area of the display I saw 50.1 a few times but at the end of the tank when I do the math I'm always around 47.1 which is what the car is rated for from the factory so I don't believe changing my battery is going to magically push me into the 50 mi per gallon club for any length of time or to make any huge differences in my actual miles per gallon traveled.
I got the lithium battery because I heard how reliable it was from years of Jack’s testing and people were getting in the mid 50s mpg. I’ve never seen that and it’s barely above my 15yo NiMH battery in warm weather (46mpg now vs 44mpg previously). Cold weather it’s significantly worse than my old battery (36mpg now vs 42mpg previously). I thought my battery at 320k probably didn’t have that much longer but who knows. I was moving across the country and wanted something reliable. Unfortunately now I’ve had to do way more than I ever wanted to upgrading it to V2 and now again to V2.5. The new battery seems less reliable than the OG Toyota battery that was maintenance-free for 16 years. The cold weather issues were not made apparent to me before I bought it, probably because most of the testing was done in California. Since posting this thread though Jack has offered to ship me another and I’ll ship him mine back when I receive it.
Could be one reason why Toyota continues to use NiMH in colder climates. I guess they probably spend a lot on R&D........
This falls into the if your gonna offer something that can’t really get cold… my view is that a lithium pack should be handled like the linsite where you have a 12v starter backup and lock out the battery or you have some method of warming the pack and plug into a wall in cold weather. AC current applied directly to frozen lithium has been found to be more affective at warming the batteries than an external heater but it’s still a prototype on a couple diy guys conversions. Seems like I and a couple others mentioned cold climate as being a big problem.
Well, I put a Project Lithium protoype pack in my 2007 for cold weather testing 3 years ago and haven't had any of these problems. But it's always great when you get oustanding customer service. I was just talking to Jack and mentioned this post and I'm super impressed that he straight up shipped you a brand new pack to swap out your old pack with even before identifying the problem. Suspect this going above and beyond what's provided in the warranty is possible because the amount of packs needing that warranty coverage is small enough to allow for being generous and giving the customers a better experience than most because things are goign well with the pack design. Even better, he's always looking to improve and some of the new design ideas he's testing are amazing! That's quite a contrast to my recent Mini-PC purchase from Geekom where without any notification in the specs, they sold me a computer with a locked bios that prevents me from installing another other operating systems beyond Windows 11 . Today is day 45 since I made that purchase and not only did I return the old computer close to 2 weeks ago... Not only did they charge me an extra $100 for different computer that doesn't lock you into one OS, but they still haven't shipped me anything. So infuriating.
Interesting that you didn't have any issues in the cold weather. I didn't last winter either in Arkansas with my V1 and we had freezing temps for most of the winter. As soon as I put the V2 motherboards in the cells started getting warm which I thought was weird because they weren't in the car or connected to anything. I think that excess heat is leeching the battery life, which if it's necessary so that it doesn't prematurely fail I'll deal with it. I completely agree about the customer service through - Jack is really going above and beyond. I first offered to drive 10hrs to California to get it done over the weekend but that wasn't feasible for his team. I will be paying return shipping and it will be an equivalently used pack, but it's still great because I can't have my car down for any period of time. I'll ship him my pack after I get his pack installed.
i'd say toyota was (is?) using nimh in awd to use up their paid for nimh supplies. more and more lithium is being used in toyota hybrids, and they can't determine where the lithium batteries are being used. it sounds like the op shouldn't have upgraded to v2, i couldn't find in his post what was wrong with v1.
The V1 was failing early in cold climates so all of us who purchased it were sent emails to upgrade to V2 ASAP. So I did. The V1 didn’t heat up enough or something so it was staying like a little ice cube in the cold.
From the OP: Unfortunately after placing it I learned that they were having issues in cold climates with failing prematurely (within the really narrow 2 year warranty...), and I moved to Utah for work which not only has cold climates but also high elevation with lots of hills/mountains. Because of this, I upgraded to the V2 a couple weeks ago. Since then, the V2 packs have discontinued due to poor performance. Any comments on this from our local lithium battery experts? First I've heard of this.
I suppose if jack is sending a new battery, he doesn’t feel it is the cold, but a defect o/p, what is the average temperature? Are you parking the car outside, in a cold separate garage, in an attached unheated garage, or heated garage? Since the mpg’s didn’t drop until it was upgraded to v2, perhaps a problem with the upgrade, or at 335,000 miles, a coincidence?
Priuschat is not a good place for product recommendations because too many scams and influenced “demo” installations occur. One thing for sure, this product has low transparency on how they emulate NiMH and now why versions continue to pop up.
The average temps outside now are high 20s-40s currently. I park the car in a cold separate garage, the first time it's been in a garage its whole life actually. Probably not a coincidence if I was getting 10mpg more the week before with the same temps with V1. I'm assuming the V2 aggressively discharges heat which is why it lowers the mpg.
