New EnnoCar (China) HV battery installation

Hi all,

This past weekend I installed a new (upgraded) HV battery into my silver 2005 Prius.

The story starts about a year and a half ago, a few months after buying my 2005 Prius. The 'triangle of death' came on and the car would not drive well so , after much research and reading posts on PriusChat and Youtube videos, I determined that it was the HV battery.

I removed the battery and deep cycled all the cells, and with helpful advise, I decided to replace any cells that discharged lower than 6000mAh... which turned out to be 14 of the 28 battery units. I purchased these replacement units from a great source in England (UK), replaced the units, balanced the whole HV battery and this battery has run great ever since.

In the summer last year, I purchased my second Prius, a blue 2007 (I had converted my mother into a Prius lover, so I bought her one!), and a few months ago, the same warning signs came about. This time I took the car to the Toyota dealer who had confirmed it was the HV battery.

So, I had the choice of buying a new battery from Toyota for EUR 2554.00 (including labour), or looking at options. This came with a 1 year warranty.

I was hoping for a Li-ion replacement as I had so many good things from TheHybridGuy / NexPower but I could never find the battery for sale, so I finally landed on EnnoCar who have been selling hybrid batteries for over 10 years.

EnnoCar rep was great with all my questions, and they offer two options for the gen2; cylindrical, or steel prismatic. Cylindrical offers the same performance to the original OEM, while the latter offers more performance apparently.

The batteries come with a 3 year/100,000km warranty, and after calculating shipping (DHL) and import taxes, it cost about the same as the local dealer option.

So I ordered steel prismatic, and it came well packed a few weeks later.

For some reason, I prefer the way the 2005 drives (plus it has many more options like cruise control) better than the 2007, so I moved the HV battery pack from the 2005 into the 2007 (in case I will sell it in the future) and placed the new HV battery pack into the 2005.

I was really happy to see that all my work a year ago on the HV battery held up - no corrosion (see pic)!

All went well.. everything was easy to reassemble and I found no issues.

My initial error codes (on both cars) were due to me not pushing down the orange HV breaker handle, so I disconnected the 12v for an hour to reset the error codes.. and after that, both cars are working perfectly. It's been just under a week so I am happy to post about the experience.

I hope you enjoyed the post!

 

Thanks Mendel, everything looks great so far. Both Priuses seem to be driving well and strong.

I will certainly update this thread in case any issues arise with the new battery..