Why are remanufactured batteries so bad?

The short story is the demand has outstripped the good supply.

Back in 2008 or 2010 or even 2012 you could get a "junkyard battery" for cheap. These were Prii that were happy and healthy driving down the road when they got smacked and totaled. They ended up in a junkyard. A Prius HV battery is a very niche item and not really very useful to anyone except with another Toyota style hybrid. So people would buy the junked batteries and use them as direct swaps when the 2001+ Prius batteries started failing. This was fine, great recycling.

But then more batteries started failing just because of age and the fact that there were now millions of these Toyota hybrids on the road. Enter the professional reconditioning companies. They would take your 8-10 year old battery and recondition it, and maybe pepper the failed modules with nice similar older modules from junked batteries. Put it all together and off it went again. This was fine as well. Another good use of recycling.

Today, this doesn't work. The still marginally useful battery modules would be from 2010+. This leaves 2001-2009 Prius packs as basically not saveable. The junkyards have dried up because there is super high demand. The only way to get these modules is from newer Gen-3's and some Gen-4's that are crashed and go to junkyards. But they aren't so naive anymore. A junkyard pack will cost you good money now, they see it has value. This leaves most to all reconditioning companies to just take your 10 year old or 14 year old or whatever batteries and try to balance them along with the stock they have. Whereas before you may have an 8 year old battery and get 4-5 years out of it for a 12-13 year total battery life, you are now starting with a battery that is already past its useful reconditioning life at the start in many cases. Only the largest companies can keep any stock of newer modules and you will pay dearly for those newer but still old modules.

NiMH batteries are consumable. They will fail. They have a shelf life and a useful life. With proper care you can extend it. With some reconditioning you can extend it more. But eventually even with the best professional treatment, it will still fail. This is where we are now with reconditioned batteries from basically every fly-by-the-night service. And this is where the big professional companies find themselves. This is why the Dormans and such are getting bad reputations now but weren't as bad many years ago. If you've seen their facility it is top notch. Very professional, awesome equipment, they do it right if they follow their guidelines. But you can only breathe so much life into a dead battery and even their super awesome equipment has limitations. It's my guess that they will either exit the remanufacturing business or will attempt to get new cells since they have a distribution network. Time will tell what happens. They are a huge company that sells lots of things, HV batteries are just one piece. How much do they care about keeping that piece? We'll see.

 

A lot of people simply don't get NiXX battery 'basics'. All rechargeable batteries wear out...period. How fast they wear out is highly variable with some major issues being: heat, use pattern (neglect can be as bad or worse than steady use), and initial quality. After that, you get age, cycles, just plan luck, good or bad and a few other variables.

Re-manufactured batteries.....aren't. They should be called re-assembled USED batteries. It can be quite difficult, even with fairly sophisticated equipment trying to tell when a NiXX cell is nearing the end of it's life.

A small but relevant similarity is power tool packs. Drills packs, etc, get old and die. It's cost as much, or more, to get a replacement pack as a new drill. Cheap replacement packs usually are.....well, cheap and awful. People that try to replace a cell or 2 in a dying pack with new cells usually find the rest of the cells, that maybe tested OK when checked, are also soon dying.

All the Prolong charger really does is fully cycle the cells and attempt to re-balance them. This can be useful, but it really doesn't repair dying old cells, it just.....prolongs.....(ha) their use.

 

The batteries there using are the same age and have already been used. They just goose them up in order to hold a decent charge....for how long who knows.

These are not new in the wrapper batteries.

 

As someone who owns a Prolong charger I had very very good results doing a very mild discharge and a periodic charge/balance on my 130K mile and bought new 07. Its been about 14 months so far and the battery still looking much better.

Be aware your very hot climate is hard on the hybrid battery especially if it lives outside and no effort was made to cool the interior...insulated window shade...good tint job.

But if your battery has not thrown any codes yet its ripe for some battery maintenance.

 

Does your prolong charger has both the charger and discharger as a single unit, or it came separately. Considering ordering one, but won't want to get stuck with only the charger.



Dxta

 

They are separate units.

 

This is pretty simple.

If you have a flashlight and one of the two batteries goes dead, do you just replace that one.......or do you put in two new ones ?

ALL of the cells are the same age and have seen the same usage......and they ALL have about the same life expectancy.

If you replace only the ones that have failed completely......what do you EXPECT is going to happen next ?
That's right, more of the old ones fail in a relatively short time.

 

Unfortunately there isn't.

 

I've been using NiCads and NiMh cells intensively from AAA>D for well over a decade. The Prius is just basically stuffed with a lot of D-cellls. There's no great way to predict when they will die. Kind of like the discharge curve for NiXX they seem to go along doing well and then then simply fall off the edge. Unfortunately when owners have an old car and come asking this is the stage their battery is at. Taking good care of them prevents premature problems, but ultimately doesn't stop the process. The Prolong system if done EARLIER than end stage may be beneficial. It will be less effective as a desperate attempt to keep it alive, though you will get at least some benefit out of it. Whether it's cost effective in terms of cash outlay and time expended I think is somewhat up for debate. Most owners will not be willing to do it.

 

Its the first one they made a charger and the discharger which is basically 2 light bulb sockets and the interface dongle and a small volt meter attached.

 

Do you have another car to drive and the time devote to battery repair?

 

Sounds like you have alot of experience with flashlight battery's.

There's plenty of great ways to predict when a G2 hybrid pack will die. It shows many signs of diminished life all you have to do is watch the mfd.
It was quite clear to me. It does not fall off the edge. It diminishes very gradually performance wise over the course of 11 years. Hows that for a cliff. Oh and still running very well after a very minor discharge session 14 months ago.

And comparing the hybrid pack to d cells is just stupid.

 

The following is a link to a Ni-MH Technical Bulletin put out by none other than Duracell in September of 2009. It explains an awful lot of what you are asking. It also explains very well the usefulness of conditioning ANY rechargeable battery back, no matter the size. I found Page 10 on memory effect to be especially enlightening.

Wayback Machine

 

Nice article

 

I do have a lot of experience with flashlight cells. I have a lot of experience trying to do exactly to individual cells, what the Prolong system is trying to do to an HV pack, by dealing with the individual cells.
Interestingly the Prius pack is a battery made up of a bunch of cells. A pack is only as good as it's cells.

I agree, for someone paying attention, and obviously you are one of those people, you can watch the slow deterioration of a battery pack.
A battery is a chain, and as good as it's weakest link. This is why people who just drive their Prius (most Prius drivers) suddenly get codes, and find their HV battery has problems > weakest link threw in the towel.
Solution - new modules (buncha individual cells), or new pack (expensive). A new pack wipes out much of the gas savings over all those years.
(IMPORTANT note; this in no way detracts from the environmental savings of burning less gas during that period of time. The issues of battery pack manufacture and ultimate recycling/disposal cloud that environmental benefit, something green folk often don't want to factor in. Being 'good' is confounding sometimes. )

The timely application of preventative measures before a pack goes bad can extend it's useful life. Toyota has attempted to do that with it's charge/discharge algorithm, but it's also a compromise. The pack is still being used up, and it's an indication of nearing the end of it's useful life.

People that opt for replacement modules or re-assembled packs still end up getting OLD, USED, cells of uncertain history. It makes it very hard to determine what the viability of those modules and packs is. Whether it's worth it is a personal decision and somewhat of a gamble. I'm not saying don't do it. I am adding my opinions to the discussion of the original question.

 

You can't actually access the cells of the Prius battery.

The cells are made into a module that has string of 6 cells in it, but there is only terminals at the very ends of that string of 6 cells.

The Prius battery consists of 28 of these modules.

When 1 module fails, the likelihood of a randomly-selected used module matching the charge/discharge characteristics of the remaining 27 module is very low.

But people do it all the time.

Sometimes the used one lasts a few weeks; sometimes a few months; sometimes a bit longer than that. Bit it is totally random.

At least the big companies do their best with very high quality equipment, and even then it is very difficult to do.

"Rebuilt" as it relates to hybrid batteries does not have mucheaning. Tere isn't any industry standard. Practices vary wildly and therefore so does quality.

I've been in this business for over a decade, and over time there are companies I will do business with, and companies I won't because of how they "rebuild" their packs.

Unfortunately I can't protect people from themselves, and too often people end up getting burned by the "too good to be true" option because it costs so much less than properly fixing it.

 

Thanks for the additional clarification.

What do you think about and/or do you have any experience with the firm that is putting out the batteries of NEW D-cells?
Having a viable high quality option for HV cells would obviously be welcome indeed.

FWIW, I also have a Nissan Leaf. Nissan has upped the replacement cost of the battery to $8500, effectively rendering the Leaf "disposable" relative to the value of the used car. This has pissed off a LOT of people that otherwise really love the car. They won't even consider purchasing a new one unless Nissan comes up with an effective thermal management system for the pack. Heat is killing lots of packs prematurely, especially in hot climates (AZ, TX, etc.) Luckily for the battery sake I'm in the Pacific NW.

 

I think they're great!

But I'll stay out of it lol.

Leaf is pretty disposable. I've got one too. When the pack dies I'm going to park the battery downstairs for my UPS and pickup another BEV. First and last Nissan for me at least.