Make Toyota Pay for Dead Gen 1 Battery?!

I think Oakland is not too far from Art's Automotive and even Lucious Garage. Independent shops, they may be able to give you other options. . . . What harm in a phone call?

So you had the car since new?

Bob Wilson

 

01-03 Toyota Prius Upgraded HV Hybrid Battery Pack: eBay Motors (item 130407009310 end time Jul-14-10 20:54:52 PDT)

Better than new

 

Excellent on being an original owner. As for dealing with Toyota:

I'm not Toyota but I know folks have had different levels of success. All you can do is document everything and use the Corporate address with all of the facts and data (keeping a copy for your records.) Give the company a chance to address your concern and issues and 'do the right thing.'

If you are not satisfied with their response, take it and your letter to Toyota to a local attorney and for an initial survey fee, ~$25, see if they think there is a case. Do a little research first to find an advocacy attorney. But if the attorney asks for more, up front, begin to weight your options against approximately $1,700 to 'do it yourself.'

My wife once turned down an insurance settlement and insisted on suing. After everything was said and done, she 'won' but only got the same amount about 18 months later. Good, fast, cheap, pick two of three.

Good Luck!
Bob Wilson

 

Well, I hate to say it. But the car had a specific warranty period to which Toyota guaranteed you a working car. It sounds like your battery made it to that point. Obviously, they knew it was going to fail. After all, every battery will fail eventually. It isn't Toyota's job to make sure that you get a fresh battery before your warranty is up so that it will last 10 more years outside of your warranty period.

 

If I was you I would omit the leak/seal argument, and instead focus my complaint to Toyota on the evidence that the battery was performing poorly and should have been replaced before the warranty ran out.

I'm curious -- did your local dealer *try* to have a warranty repair authorized and fail ?

If you end up having to foot the repair bill, Bob Wilson bought a remanufactured HV battery for his G1 Prius made of G2 modules. You can search for his thread, or try PM'g him for information. That strikes me as an excellent back-up plan.

 

Minor correction, it wasn't my NHW11 but a friend who lives down in Blountsville, AL. His 2001 Prius had 250,000 miles and I just helped do 'the heavy lifting.'

Bob Wilson

 

My instinct is just to tell you, that you have a tough case. Truth is that ultimately you got 60,000 miles before a recall, and then an additional 58,000 more after the work was done. Even though you witnessed a decline in how your battery worked. You've also owned the automobile for almost a decade. I know it doesn't help you now, but if you were unhappy about the way your battery was declining or the way it operated after the recall the best time to press it was immediately after the recall, 58,000 miles later and after 9+ years of ownership leaves you with little leverage.

I think your being reasonable about this, and you are probably correct that to an extent, keeping the battery functioning for the life of the warranty even though it was declining was exactly what was happenning. But the battery is a component that will decline with age and use, like brakes, transmission and a lot of automobile components. Again if you thought the decline was abnormal or not happening at an acceptable rate, the time to press it was shortly after having the recall work done, but 58,000 miles later and out of the warranty period leaves you in a bad place.

There was another thread where a person who had a battery failure outside of warranty pressed Toyota, I think with much less of a case, (no recall involved) for a battery replacement. The poster ultimately reported that Toyota had decided to cover a large percentage of the cost for replacement...50% or more, I can't remember. So you might just "ask", reasonably and calmly. You really have nothing to lose. I actually think Toyota agreeing to discount 25% is pretty fair.

Good Luck, I know, "I don't think you have much of a case" isn't what you want to hear but I think it's the reality. Toyota attached an 6 to 8 year warranty to their batteries to create confidence in the hybrid product. So it's a long warranty by default. Nobody wants to cross that line and then have a problem but Toyota has to put the line somewhere...they can't say we'll replace your battery for free...forever....In your unfortunate case, it does seem you had some additional uncharacteristic level of failure before the warranty expired, and that was the time to be agressive about potential replacement. I think calm, reasonable communication is your best friend here. Perhaps you can get Toyota to increase the percentage they are willing to cover, or at the very least find different avenues for cheaper replacement.