New Battery Needed at 105,000 miles!

How would you (if you were Toyota) ever prevent batteries failing just beyond the warranty?

If you need a new battery, it will be about $2500 plus labor, but if you just need a different battery, they can be much cheaper.

Re-InVolt In NC sells a 're-manufactured' battery for about $1700 installed. Used batteries on Ebay tend to start at about $500, if you feel comfortable with lethal amounts of electricity.

Remanufactured Hybrid Vehicle Battery Packs

prius battery items - Get great deals on eBay Motors items on eBay.com!

 

You might want to try to contact Re-Involt as well: Remanufactured Hybrid Vehicle Battery Packs

Good luck dealing with Toyota. My personal experiences have been extraordinarily disappointing.

 

BARNEY: Please tell us more about your driving routines. Was your car driven for very short times, stored a lot without being driven much, etc. etc? Things like that are important to us Gen II folks. I have a 2005 and I am currently at 141 thousand miles. I replace the 12 volt auxiliary battery every 2.5 years. Currently I have a new Optima 12 volt in the car. My car was driven over 100 freeway miles a day for about 5 days a week starting in 8/2005 and still sees about 2-300 miles a week right now. I would consider a battery purchase from Re-Involt if I had to, and I would pay a local shop to install it too. If you could, please tell us how many miles you think you drove it per week. I have heard that most of the very few failures have come from vehicles which were not driven much on a regular basis. Our Prius is currently running fine, and exhibits no weirdness with charge and discharge cycles from the traction battery. Since I am about 8 thousand miles from our California warranty expiration, I would like to know whats up with yours. Also, I have heard of two shops here in Cali that have the Tech-Stream diagnosis software to have a critical look at the battery. Good luck with your replacement if you really need one. Make sure you have good connections to and from the battery. I would be cautious of just anyone's FIRST opinion.

 

AutoEnginuity w/Toyota can also do this, $399 (I have it and Techstream). Art's Automotive has a nice writeup on how to do a hybrid battery load test.

Consider also a salvage battery. They are typically $500. Ask around at Toyota specialty shops or look for a mechanic in your area who has taken the Up Your Voltage hybrid training. They should be able to help you locate and install a salvage battery. Word of caution, many salvage yards leave the orange service plug installed. While you want >200V at the terminals when it is installed in your car, you DON'T want that while it is rattling around loose on its way from the junkyard. Regardless of whether you get a new battery, a salvage battery, or a ReInvolt battery, make sure that your battery cooling fan is running properly and that all ducting is clear of debris.

Finally, be absolutely positive that you are outside of the warranty. Cars sold in some east coast states have a 150,000 mile traction battery warranty.

 

I second the salavage yard idea. I know there is a hybrid salavage yard in the Sacramento, CA area (Rancho Cordoba?) and that would be my first thought. Then you need someone with the training to swap them out. I don't mess with high voltage! BTW, my '05 just turned 155K miles and no problems, thank goodness.

 

That sucks man, if I owed much and that happened, I might fasten my seatbelt and find the nearest tree!

 

Dealer diagnosis, I presume? Get a diagnosis from a different dealer. They do sometimes screw up.

 

Assuming that you mean the battery fan constantly running and that the engine has to "surge" (rev) a lot to to accelerate then yeah it does sound like the traction battery is the issue.

Early failures are rare but it looks like they do sometimes happen. I wouldn't mind betting that in almost all of these type of early failures that there's just one dead cell in the pack. It must be a pretty good deal for places like reinvolt in some cases when they get the trade-in battery for close to nothing and replace just one cell then sell it for $1700.

 

Damn Toyota for offering a warranty in the first place!

 

I have personally seen or heard of very few traction battery failures for the 2004-2009 model. These have been on cars that spend their lives in mountainous area's where they see extreme and frequent charge and discharge cycles.

If, indeed, your traction battery needs to be replaced. A used one with low miles can be had for a fraction of that price. We have them in stock in Denver and we sell them for $600 plus shipping plus refundable core deposit. These are fully tested and carry a 90 day warranty.

Eric
Adopt A Part
1-800-508-2211

 

I'd bet your attitude would be much different if you were the OP.

I got a Mazda approval 2k miles out of warranty. It wasn't for a $3k battery, of course, but a pro-rate by Toyota would go along way to help keep a customer.

Just my 2cents.

 

Don't bet -- you would lose.

I accept that reliability data will likely follow a normal curve. So while most people will get ~ 200k out of the traction battery, a few percent will happily report 300k miles, and a few will replace at 100k miles. OP was unlucky, but expecting Toyota to transcend probability is unrealistic.

That said, if I lived in a state that did not have a 150k traction battery warranty, I would have considered (and personally rejected) an extended insurance policy. After all, the policy costs about half a lightly used replacement, while failure rates are way below 1%.

Not zero. Just really low.

 

Shortsighted of Toyota NOT to. They plan on their mastery of hybrid technology continuing to make them the market leader in green car technology and market share going forward. The cost of helping a consumer out with a VERY RARE failure such as this would be far less than the potential consumer blowback.

It would only take a very few unhappy campers speaking out in, say, the NY Times to make many, many Americans think twice about a Prius (or other hybrid). Were I running Toyota I would assure there were ZERO instances of such people.

Some years back my Mazda minivan blew an auto transmission at 63,000 miles (just outside the 60,000 mile power-train warranty). They met me halfway on a rebuilt unit, installed. I wasn't pleased that it happened, but I have only ever had good things to say about my dealings with the company. That amounts to a little positive word of mouth and avoids a whole lot of negative word of mouth.

 

GuamKelly:

I do not disagree with you, but I do not run Toyota. As it is, they give the longest traction battery warranty in the business, so I find it hard to criticize them harshly. Will GM or Nissan fork over $20k for those inevitable battery failures just over warranty ? They sure are not promising anything.

This entire business of consumer expectations from warranty is tricky. Mostly I think it is a matter of not being able to please all the people all the time. I personally like the idea of a pro-rated warranty up to 200k miles, but again I do not run Toyota. Perhaps that kind of warranty encourages fraud or abuse -- I really do not know. What I do know is that I expect to self-insure against low odds of early failure.

Years ago I thought it might be nice for the forum to have an insurance pool at ~$5 a person against premature traction battery failure, but I did not pursue it because I realized it is too easy for a member to defraud everybody else.

 

Great news!

I just love a stand-up company . . . like Toyota!

 

Can you give more details on how you did this? What do you mean by "bouncing around"?

Thanks,

 

wow, my '06 is only at 101,000 miles...

I need to get driving!

:focus: