Green Bean Battery

Can you do any of the work yourself or are you mechanically challenged? You might be able to find a brand new Toyota Factory battery for not much more. If you can do the work yourself it would be a much better option. Here is a video of a guy doing slightly more than you would do.

 

iirc, most of the reports have been decent. do some searching here and see what turns up.

$1,500. is a lot of dough if you have issues though

 

$1500 for a used battery vs $1600 for a new battery vs $2000-$2800 for a new Toyota battery.

To install a battery, even if it is fully in the enclosure, still requires ripping the car apart to access it. The actual module swap is pretty easy. If you can get to the battery, you can replace the battery.

 

Home Town Hybrids might be able to work in New Orleans.

 

Not noted in the original post is that Green Bean includes installation in that price. That can make it a lot more attractive for someone who doesn't want to DIY.

For me, I have three options:

• Green Bean $1549 refurb 5 yr. warranty w/ installation (bonus really since I'd install myself)
• Toyota $1773 new 1 yr. warranty no installation
• 2K1Toaster ~$1600 new 1? yr. warranty no installation

For me, since I'm willing to install, the choice would probably be fairly clear. The Toyota battery is highly unlikely to fail in 5 years, so the warranty and installation don't sway me. The price is only about $200 cheaper for Green Bean, and the battery is far more likely to fail before another Toyota battery would.

2K1Toaster batteries might be worth it, although they may be more work, there's less data on long-term reliability, and you don't have a true core for trade-in on Toyota batteries when they die.

Toyota's probably the way to go if you can find them cheap enough and if you can either muster up the courage to DIY or find a cheap enough, but good, mechanic.

 

ask green bean if they would install a new toyota battery

 

You mean you cannot reassemble the pack to use as a core?
You still have all the modules & other parts.
@2k1Toaster am I correct?

 

Alright, looking at the situation more, I see you are correct if you keep the modules. His site says:
"Remember if you ever intend to extract a core exchange fee, you will need your original modules at this time."

Of course it may make more sense to get one of his packs, sell your old modules, and if you really need a core later, fill with known bad modules you buy cheap on eBay, etc. This could make your total cost right now below $1000.

 

Hey there! When I had my 2007 the battery died at 165k. I used Green Bean and couldn't be happier with it. The battery worked fine, the guy came out to where my car was (in a Hummer, which I thought was hilarious), he changed it and took the old one in about 30 minutes. I got a 2012 PIP recently but I sold my 2007 to a friend and it's still going strong and still has about 4 years left and the warranty.

110% recommend them. You don't have to to tow a dead Prius to the dealership and the service was great. The five year warranty should give you piece of mind. $1500 is way better than anything that the dealership can come up with. Additionally the dealer (mine did) will tell you it's days of work which is a bold faced lie.

 

I don’t think anyone is saying they are crooks and are going in knowing they are not going to honor the warranty’s. It’s a matter of how long they have been in business and will they have the funds to do warranty repairs when a lot of those batteries hit the 4 year mark. They have not been in business long enough to see battery’s get to the 4+ year mark yet. Do you think they will go into debt if they wind up paying out more for warranty repairs than they are bringing in?

 

FYI :That warranty isn't transferable, and you will need to call in the claim when he has a HV battery problem. Being a friend, you should tell him to never call GBean for a warranty claim

Spend the extra to get the new OEM battery, clean the HV battery fan, and be done with it.

 

The issues are that properly refurbishing & balancing a pack takes care and time. Also, there is less of a supply of decent battery modules to use for refurbishing.
With a little DIY you can get a kit of new cells for $1600 delivered and perhaps sell your old modules to Green Bean

 

But if you don’t have a hobby charger how do you know what cells are really good?

 

Sell them all and Green Bean can sort it out

 

Thanks for the heads up! Disagree about the OEM battery, it's not worth dropping all that money into a car that's worth maybe 4k. Mine in particular was pretty beat up, so I'd be lucky if the car was worth even that much. At the time I didn't have a very good job and needed the car to run. If you're not technical and can't pony up the money for the dealer to do it, Green Bean is the best option. The dealer by me told me it would be about $3k to replace the battery. You know dealerships

I'm also not one to mess with the electric battery. I went to college for music so my technical skill is limited, and I've seen horror stories from people online who've royally messed up battery repair. That's just me though, I'm sure if you were confident in your ability that's totally the best option!

You're not wrong, but they're an expanding company not a failing one (at least right now). My point about not being able to pay for a full new OEM battery or having the ability to do it yourself stands though. If you don't have that kind of money or technical experience at the time the Green Bean Batteries are a good stop gap measure especially if it's the only car you have to rely on. Perhaps I'm thinking it's more in depth than it really is do that stuff? I just didn't want to get into a situation where I tried to fix it myself, messed up, then wound up paying even more to repair my error.

Additionally its a recycled battery! So it's good for the environment and silences all the haters that say the Prius is bad because of the mining to get the components for the battery

 

Many people use eBay.