It’s a 2007 with 190,000 miles. A local mechanic fixes up old Priuses and does the battery refurbishment himself. The battery is a Greenbean, but he installs the cells one by one. The sale price comes with a charger that he suggests using to plug-in overnight weekly to maintain the battery. Does anyone have any experience with this and can you offer any advice?
Welcome to PriusChat!! The existing HV battery is a random set of used modules that needs weekly charging, it would be best to plan on it failing in the near future. How much is he asking, and do you have another 2k for a new battery? FYI : you're moderated until you've posted 5 time.
I don't see the point of weekly charging if the car is driven at least once a week. If you seldom drive the car like only once a month then it make sense. I just don't buy the idea of having that charger weekly.
That makes no sense........unless maybe he is a contractor for GreenBean. That is what THEY do. Anything less than a full brand new set of cells......ALL of them.......often is a waste of time and money and ends up being a HUGE pain in the backside.
If you don't mind wrenching on cars and he's offering it to you for only a few thousand, < $2K, then go for it. Bottom line is this is a refurbished battery pack, that most people play wack-a-mole, when the red triangle pops up. Some people don't mind that. IMHO; I have better things to do with my weekends. A brand new battery pack will reliability get you 10 years and/or 100K+ miles - that's assuming the engine or transmission doesn't break before then. There's already 190K on the clock and unknown maintenance history. That hot New Mexico sun doesn't help matters either. Extreme heat kills a battery pack faster. Just my 2 cents....
Consider a new pack as part of the purchase and put the pack money aside. I have a feeling you'll be glad you did. Check before buying that it has a pigtail to easily plug in the charger and it would be good to identify the charge name and type and let us know so we can advise you if this is a good charger or a generic cheapy. Old batteries are old batteries and batteries that need that amount of attention is an unreliable battery pack by definition. There's no harm in doing the charging once a week as long as you have the money put aside for a new pack and you got an appropriate charger with the deal, but a pack that is in reasonably good shape really doesn't need any attention other than to drive regularly. The seller saying you need to charge once a week is a red flag that needs careful consideration before purchase. Another good investment is an inexpensive ODBII BT adapter and the Dr Prius app for your cell phone or tablet so you can test the battery pack before purchase. It will give you a test to do that gives you the life expectancy for that HV pack. At least you will be able to tell if the pack is junk or good without the seller trying to convince you how good the pack is.
Keep in mind this is a Greenbean refurb that has been refurbed by the seller. So a refurb of a refurb. That's 2 rounds of Whack-A-Mole. Caution is warranted, I think. Especially if reliability is a priority for this purchase. As an example, I purchased a 2007 with 126K base model and knew the pack wasn't bad but was maybe lower end of OK according to Dr Prius. I factored in the price of the battery with the purchase price and 8 months later before any warning lights showed a problem with new batteries. The difference in driving characteristics was night and day and I finally saw what a proper Prius drove like. Nothing like a fresh pack and it still drives great almost 2 years later.
I think that was a used greenbean battery from a wrecked/donor Prius (cannibalizing I say) and the shop just cobbled them together with the charger, quick way to make a buck. I have greenbean on my camry hybrid since 2018 and I paid $1800 for it, still going strong.. Camry is 206k miles now, original battery lasted 150k miles. I'd say that refurbed greenbean battery was re-conditioned really good and cobbling re-conditioned batteries seems shady to me (as a business) I honestly didn't do any reconditioning when I replaced the 2 modules on my Prius, just slapped in new 2 modules and it's still going since last year.
