The sales guy couldn't give me a straight answer about cost. Most recent hybrids I can get a "ballpark" on replacement cost, but not the Prius Prime. It is the one item holding me back from purchase a Prius Prime.
See these previous threads: Does anyone know how much a full battery replacement for the Prius prime would cost ? | PriusChat How long will a Prime battery last and how much is a replacement? | PriusChat
Your question is based on a false premise: that the battery will ever need replacing. The odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the battery lasting longer than the car does.
Also "ballpark" doesn't really exist for something like this. You can used used ones for more than new ones. You can get dealers that sell it for TWICE the cost of other dealers. For example the non-plug-in is anywhere between $1600 and $4500 to replace the battery today. That's a big ballpark. And these prices changed because the car became older. There was a dip for the first 10-ish years for replacement batteries since anything before that was usually a warranty replacement or there were so many junk cars that you could pull one for basically scrap. People were getting 2 year old "junk" batteries for $200 from a totaled car, putting it in their car from 10 years earlier and just like new. So now the ballpark is $200 to $4500 on a mass market hybrid, plug or not. If you buy a weird HEV or PHEV, something that only a few thousand units of which are sold, you're going to be screwed when the battery goes out because it is very unlikely to find mountains of them sitting in junkyards. But a Prius? Millions sold. They are THE hybrid. It will always and absolutely be the cheapest to repair the battery just because of scale. It doesn't matter what the dealers tell you today because it doesn't matter in 15 to 20 years when you may need a replacement. But you can bet in 15 years there will be a lot more PiP's sitting in junkyards than there were of something like the GLC350e ever produced.
"The sales guy couldn't give me a straight answer about cost." Of course not. He knows how to sell cars. That doesn't mean he knows much about them. The service writer will have a cost for labor. The parts counter person will have the Toyota battery price. Wanna bet their battery cost is much more than NAPA's?
agree on the 'sales guy'. when i bought my 2004, the sales guy told me they just replace a bad cell if anything happens, no big deal.
Thats ridiculous. A friend of mine has plenty of classic cars. Stuff goes bad and can be replaced. Cars can live forever. I am very interested to know what the replacement cost (and life) of a Prime battery is.
a lot, i know that. i think it has 4 sections that can be replaced individually though. maybe a few grande each plus labor? it's here somewhere edit: see post #2 above
I'm in a position to test the premise. Our 2017 Prime has 179k miles. When I have asked Toyota, service/parts has told me 9k-11k.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but we *should* be in an excellent position as Prime owners if the battery ends up degrading. On a normal Prius, the battery can degrade to the point where the car won't function properly or mileage can be heavily affected. The normal Prius battery is small (~1.3kWh) so, accounting for the safety buffer on either end, degradation can quickly lead to very little juice storage ability. On a 9kWh Prime, even extreme degradation of 50% or more would leave more than enough capacity to run well. Sure, EV only range would be reduced, but it would be more than enough to maintain gas-only mileage. Right?
i think you are misunderstanding. degradation is one thing, and fairly unusual. you are correct about that. but a failed battery is caused by a bad module, which prevents the rest of the battery from operating, and the engine will not start. but that is very unuasualas well, and this whole discussion is purely philosophical. there is very little concern regarding prius batteries for at least 10 years, and usually a lot more.
Are you saying that 1 bad module within a battery causes failure of the entire battery? If so, then wouldn't that imply that a larger battery pack (ie-Prius Prime) has a greater risk of failure than a smaller battery pack (ie-regular Prius)?
yes, exactly. when one module goes out of spec, you get a trouble light and shut down. idk the answer to that question, but i will guess not necessarily. it isn't generally a matter of odds, but time and usage. history shows us that the closer to the center of the battery, the more likely to suffer damage due to heat, because these batteries are air cooled, instead of liquid. and climate matters as well. all that being said, we don't know much about toyota li-on plug in batteries. they've only been around since 2012, and there haven't been many failures yet. the prime air cooling system could be vastly improved for all i know. still, all batteries eventually die.
All things being equal, a battery with more cells will fail before a battery with fewer cells. This is basic reliability theory. However, all things are not equal. It's a different battery in a different car. Granted, the car and battery are both similar, but who knows how these differences impact battery longevity. Only time will tell.
