Battery Longevity

Andrew Grant has 240 k miles on a new model Prius taxi and still seems to like it OK.

http://www.greentaxi.org/testimonials.php

Might be fun to invite him here to discuss the entire Yellow cab Prius fleet.

 

I am sure everyone uses NiMH batteries for a lot of things and they DO wear out with the time. My Prius has only 350 miles so I can't tell,
I'd be very interested to hear from someone with more than 100k miles about how is the battery doing and gas mileage cause I'm sure with the battery in bad shape the gas mileage will go down.
Does anyone know how much would it be to put a new battery after the warranty expires?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ByWire @ Mar 1 2007, 11:07 AM) [snapback]398483[/snapback]</div>

Once the car has 150K+ miles, if you ever have to change the battery you could probably find one pretty cheap from a salvaged prius. The supply of totaled priuses with salvageable batteries should always surpass the number of older priuses needing new batteries. Plus toyota will pay you to return the old batteries.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ByWire @ Mar 1 2007, 11:07 AM) [snapback]398483[/snapback]</div>

Few, if any, devices manage their batteries as well as the Prius does. The car's computer goes to great lengths to prevent the battery from either being overcharged or excessively drained -- major causes of shortened battery life.

 

You can get a used one for about $700 (ebay) now or a brand new one for $2,150 + $215 S&H.

I am thinking of adding another pack to extend the stealth range. I've been in a pretty heavy traffic jam (rare) and stock battery is not enough. I hate it when it drives like a Civic hybrid (the engine comes on to move an inch). By adding another HV pack, I may be able to capture more energy in regenerative braking. Say, both packs will be able to capture 56 hp instead of 28 hp.

Can someone with plugin conversion comment on it?


Dennis

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(usbseawolf2000 @ Mar 1 2007, 01:44 PM) [snapback]398594[/snapback]</div>

It's a topic for another thread, but I have wondered about that, too. I suspect it would be more complicated than running two battery packs in parallel because odds are slim that they would be identical in performance. Over the long haul (or maybe even not too long) you could end up with dissimilar states of charge. I could be wrong but I think this would involve interfacing with a second battery control module to handle the second pack.

 

Im at 1796mi at counting, :lol: no problems yet!

 

I was told that my battery would cost $3100 for the Prius 2001 I own and it has 170,000 miles. It has begun to degrade.

 

Shop around and ye shall save 50% to 90%...

 

01-03 Toyota Prius Upgraded HV Hybrid Battery Pack: eBay Motors (item 130434034645 end time Sep-30-10 11:24:40 PDT)

 

Nothing lasts forever.

My 2004 Prius is at 181,000 miles and the original battery is still functional (but I'm sure that it is not as strong as it was new). The folks at Toyota are not stupid and they warrant the HV battery for 150,000 miles in many states (CA rules). If they expected more than a very small percentage to fail in that interval, they would not have agreed to the length of the warranty due to cost.

As was noted earlier, the Prius battery is babied by the computer and Panasonic has improved it over the years (the 2004+ Prismatic cells are significantly more robust than the earlier designs) so that most of us will never see a battery failure. I probably will some day as I tend to drive cars into the ground before getting a new one.

JeffD

 

Yours is a Gen I battery. This discussion is about Gen II batteries, which should last longer than the Gen I batteries.

Tom