2005 Prius 241,000 Miles Hybrid Battery Replacement Story

efusco can you use the canbus tools ( do you have any? ) android phone with obd2 adapter or other obd2 scanners to read out the OHM of you cells while driving and so on?

i think its time to open a treahd with a poll where people post they year make the location on the planet ( hot or cold most of the time or "normal" wheater ) and the Ohm readout of the car
maybe a test where you charge the prius ( need some kind of obd2 scanner ) to a set voltage ( press brake and gas pedal? or just drive ) and then stand still and run the AC full. and see howlong it takes for the ICE to come on.
so you can see the capacity of the HV battery.
mine is at only 600 watt hours where my salvage packs have 1000watts.
so i geuss my prius battery pack is not one of the best.

 

From what I have seen, internal resistance is not a good indicator of impending failure. Falling MPG, driveability problems on hills, and increasing frequency of hearing the fan on high are better indicators.

 

fan on high OR seing a high battery temp when driving? ( using something like canview or some obd2 scanner? )

 

All these horror stories, from my prespective.

05 Prius with barely 40K on it, garaged when not driven, I don't work in the summer so not out in extreme temps... and if so, not for very long, and always look for shade and still use sun shades and my battery has flaked out. Probably was always a flake as I never got the mileage others mention after the first couple years. 48 mpg was the best after a road trip.

Battery under warranty, but supposedly a 3 week wait still. What am I suppose to do w/o a car for 3 weeks? 2nd car is a Ford Ranger, hardly worthy of grocery shopping for 4 adults, and most the time it is at work with my husband. Far enough away I wouldn't consider driving him to work so I could have it. He no sooner gets home then my son needs it to go to his job.

Took Toyota 2-3 days to figure it out it was the battery and get a new one ordered, now on day 4 and no ETA. Next Prius (yeah... I still love it.) I want a contract for free rental car if battery goes.... ever. Under warranty or not, no one should have to wait 3 weeks for their vehicle unless it has been in a very bad accident.

 

3 weeks is a long time. Perhaps ask the dealer for a car rental ?

 

My 2004 Prius is now at 367,000 miles, with no signs of HV battery failure. The only part that failed is the combination meter that stopped at 299,999 and I replaced that. I later found on here that I could have had it fixed much cheaper by pEEf. I do live in Maine, where hot is not really hot, usually under 90 degrees. I don't know if that makes a difference or not, but my car still runs great and gets 50 mpg.

 

Well it hit 106F here the other day. I heard my battery fan for the first time after parking the car in my garage for about an hour after coming home from work. We got back into the 05 Gen2 with 44k miles (still parked in garage), and took off down the road. All of a sudden I heard a fan running, took me a minute to figure out it was the battery fan because I never had heard it before. After about a minute it turned off. I had the A/C on btw.

Also, in my new C, the fan was running when I left my office parking lot. I park outside, again it was very hot, but I have window tint and a windshield screen with windows cracked open. After 10 minutes or so the fan shut off, I guess because I had the A/C on and that helped cool it down. On the C, I could not hear the fan, but I could feel the vent with my hand since it is right behind the drivers seat.

Are the battery cooling fans variable speed? Or just on and off?

 

Jeff,
will 2010 modules fit into 2004-2009 battery ?

Thanks,
- Alex

 

I believe that they will, but you should ask Seilerts to confirm as he has dealt with 2010 modules.

JeffD

 

Thanks,

hopefully he will read this.

- Alex

 

I just changed my HV battery and now all my dash lites come on. The engine wont start and I cannot get the car into drive or reverse only P or N. I changed both batteries with New Toyota parts. What can I do, is there any reset? I cheched all wires and connections. Do I have to take it in to the dealer now, or is there anything else I can try?

 

Did you slide the disconnect plug on the HV battery into position after inserting it?

JeffD

 

Warning: This is a very long informative only post.

I wanted to post an interesting update to this story (or at least I think it so). I did pick up the battery pack and tore it down over the past year. It was (and still is) on my workbench so when I had time I would tend to it. I sent my findings to ZitterZap back in October but I guess he hasn't been online since then. I did a lot of research and found a lot of great information, especially from Seilerts (thanks for all your great posts!) I was able to figure out what I needed to do and mapped out each module. I discovered that 6 modules where really shot and the rest of the modules where pretty much in line with each other.

My interest in this was to learn how the pack works and when my 2005 Prius takes a dive I would be able to get it back on the road with little to no cost. On February 20th, my wife was pulling out of the garage and the dash lit up (red triangle of death, VSC, Check Engine, ! Brake lights). She took a picture and texted it to me, pulled the Prius back into the garage and proceeded to take another one of our vehicles.

When I got home from work that night I took a code scanner and sure enough the P0A80 code (Replace Hybrid Battery) came up on the screen (146,657 miles). I was happy that it wasn’t one of the other big ticket items that I wouldn’t want to deal with. I tried to get Priidash working on my laptop but I was unable to get it to talk with the Bluetooth ELM 327 ODBII interface that I have. I can get it to work with other programs but not Priidash. I guess I will need to go purchase one of the USB cable ELM 327 ODBII interfaces instead (that is for another day). I wanted to see what the computer was seeing with the battery pack before I removed it and tore it down. I didn’t want to wait to go purchase a different interface so I decided to start tearing down the Prius.

I will say that over the past six months or more I have noticed that the battery pack charge status has fluctuated drastically up and down as what other people have witnessed but my MPG was consistent. Regardless, I knew the end was approaching.

I didn’t have time to work on it until the 23rd. I tore down the back of the Prius I noticed that my Yellow Top Optima (5 years old) had a huge buildup of corrosion on the negative terminal and it was also going down the side of the battery and along the bottom of the battery well. The battery was holding a charge, although not perfect but still not in the bad range. My original battery meet an untimely death from wife/kids leaving the rear hatch open a crack and sitting in the garage for an entire weekend. It cooked the battery and regardless of my recharging efforts it was never back to its former self. I purchased the Optima from www.elearnaid.com and converted it to support the bigger battery posts. I took out the battery and cleaned it up and discovered that the base of the negative battery terminal was separating from the yellow top of the battery. So I went and checked out the battery prices and noticed that elearnaid still had the field beat on the battery prices ($175 delivered) so I ordered one and pulled out the original battery connections from my toolbox to reinstall them when the new (small battery post) battery would arrive. I know I probably should have gone with a different type (I have seen the recent cheaper battery posts) I am not a huge Optima fan but for unknown reasons I wanted to stick with it. **Note to anybody who is going to pull the 12V battery. Place something in the rear hatch latch to prevent the hatch from closing all the way. I placed a wad of paper towels in the latch. You do not want it to close because it will not open again without 12V power.

I tore down the Prius and checked the fan and it wasn’t very dirty at all. I cleaned it 5 years ago when I replaced the 12v battery and it wasn’t dirty then either. My fan doesn’t run but a few times a year and I live in a very hot climate, odd I know. I got the battery out and placed it on some sawhorses, tore it down and did a voltage read of each module. All of them where within .05 volts except for one that was 1.28 volts lower (#13, in the middle-go figure). I pulled out my old spreadsheet of the battery pack from ZitterZap and found the best module to be #1. I tore that pack down again and did a voltage read on all of the modules and compared then with how I left them and they all seemed to be in line with what was on the spreadsheet. #1 was still the best so I took it out and swapped it with #13 from my pack. Put both packs back together and ran the replaced module through a discharge/charge cycle with my Supermate DC6. Took a measurement along with the output from the DC6 and compared it against the old spreadsheet again to make sure it was still what I expected it to be (it was). My battery pack was about 1/2 charged when it thrown the code so I placed newly charged module back on a discharge cycle to bring it down to the same voltage as the rest of the pack. When it was close I turned off the charger and let it sit overnight as I knew the module would change voltage. *Disclaimer: I know this module is going to be weaker than the other modules in the pack, but I wanted to get it back on the road. I wanted to treat this entire process as an experiment to see how long it will last. Next time, if there is a next time this happens I will reevaluate how I will rebuild/replace pack or modules.

Next day (24th) measured it again and sure enough it went up a bit so I put it back on the discharge cycle until it was right in line with the rest of the modules. Once complete I put the pack back together and put it back in the Prius. Dropped the busted but operational Optima in and brought the Prius back online in ACC mode and cleared the code. After a reboot I started it up and it worked as it should, ICE came on and started charging the battery. I noticed that the battery meter showed just over half charge on the HV battery. I let it warm up and shut the car down after about 10 minutes. I put as much of the Prius back together as I could except for the 12V battery area. I pulled the Optima out and waited for the new one to arrive.

27th the battery arrived and I dropped it in, fired the Prius up and it was once again operating as expected. I reset the driver’s window, clock, and radio presents (wrote down trip, MPG, etc. before unplugging the 12V the first time). I put the rest of the Prius back together and took it out on a test drive. It did spend some time recharging the HV battery but it started operating as it should and I immediately noticed that the Prius had more pep then it did before. I have put several hundred miles on it since and it is still working great. I do not know how long it will last but I am very happy with it thus far.

History on my Prius:
I am impressed with it and couldn’t have been more satisfied with any other car I have purchased. I purchased it new in December 2004 with 1 mile on it. I had to wait 8 months for it and I had originally ordered a 2004 but when my number came up it was already into the 2005 model year. No shed tears over that.

It has been in for the recalls: gas pedal, steering shaft, and inverter coolant pump. I have done all of the needed maintenance (plugs, transaxle fluid, oil, etc. etc.). The only thing it goes in to the dealer for is the recall work. I upgraded the OEM frame stiffener plate in the first year, replaced the suspension on it around 105k due to leaking struts. I replaced all of the speakers with Boston Acoustics due to the wife pumping out the jams too much. She shredded the speaker suspension on the front door subs. At the same time I installed a USA SPEC PA20-TOY integration kit so my wife’s iPhone works flawlessly with the car. Since then the CD changer is collecting dust. Knock on wood but no HID issues or any of the other issues that others have spoken about in the forums.

 

Thanks for this detailed report. It is helpful and encouraging to know that HV battery repair is not impossible and within the grasp of the DIYer. Congratulations on your success in keeping your car on the road in a cost effective manor.

 

I found somebody in the Chicagoland area who will replace your dead Hybrid battery with a reconditioned one for 1/3 the cost!!! (that was a $2400 savings in my case) Website is besthybridbatteries The owner is very professional and came with good references. Please pass along to your friends who own hybrids in case they ever run into a similar situation.

 

Hi guys. I haven't posted for quite a while. My 2006 package 6 has 210,000 and recently the main battery is discharging occasionally overnight. Mystery to me why this happens maybe one day in 5. i'll get in in the morning and the car is sluggish. I switch HUD to the Energy Monitor and sure enough I'm on one bar.
Does this mean my battery is end of life? I've heard that batteries can be re-balanced or something. Also hear there are replacement options other than Toyota new.
Most of the threads I see here are dated 5 or 6 years ago, so I'm wondering if there is an update.
Electricity work stops at changing a bulb for me. Love my car, It's been a workhorse. The new generation just out looks fantastic.
Any comments appreciated.

 

Here's what I recently did: My P0A080 fault code and battery rebuild | PriusChat I'm using what's referred to as a grid charger from prolong.

 

I have a feeling that the expedited delivery of a new battery was just a scam to take another $600 from you. Had you ordered a new battery I have a feeling it would have showed up in not much more than a week, however I think the salvage battery was a great option for you, good luck.

 

April 24, 2020 — My 2005 Prius was just hauled off to a repair shop 100 miles away to receive it’s 4th hybrid battery in it’s life. Let’s take a look at it’s hybrid battery history. We’ll begin April 23, 2016 when the original batter gave out. I managed to limp it in to the local Toyota dealer who quoted a price of $3000+ to replace it. They would give me a 1 year or 12,000 mile warrantee. I said, I need to think on this. I began researching and found an independent shop in Chapel Hill, NC (100+ miles away) who offered a refurbished battery for $2000 (3 years or 36,000 miles). That made it a no-brainer. I went on line and found a car hauler who was returning from Norfolk, VA to the NC mountains who would take it to Chapel Hill for $150. A couple of days later the car was ready.

Fast forward to April 2019 — the battery was 1 week from going out of warranted and it crapped out. I called the repair shop in Chapel Hill and advised them of the problem. Some time after the 2016, I upgraded my AAA membership to premium (100 miles free towing). So, this tine AAA loaded it on a flat-bed and 2 hours later it was in the shop again to have its hybrid battery replaced.

Fast forward to April 9, 2020 — We’re in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, so I haven’t driven the 2005 Prius that much, but decided to take it to the local Krispy-Kreme when I noticed that the battery indicator was showing only one bar. I wasn’t too worried because it’s came back up, but took the long way home to give it a chance to charge up. Since then I drove a couple of short trips to pick up an online grocery order and one to the pharmacy. Yesterday, April 23, I headed to Krispy-Kreme again, but this time the dash was lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree. A quick detour to my garage and I learned that the hybrid battery is going out. I called the repair shop in Chapel Hill to make sure that it’s still under warranted, and YES!! It is. An hour later AAA had it on a flat-bed headed to the repair shop. Just got a text that they have it, and the mechanic will look at it Monday.

This will be the 4th hybrid battery in its short lifetime.

 

I'm not surprised as what you are essentially doing is swapping in batteries that contain old second-hand modules. It is becoming common knowledge that these recycled batteries do not last. In fairness to that company, it seems to be doing a better job than some out there given that seem to last 12 months. The reality is that these second-hand batteries really are just a short-term interim solution.

Go luck with your 4th swap.