Hybrid Battery Replacement

I get my batteries from a local guy who was the millwright at a big plant and he likes to build batteries for fun on the weekend I have no idea why He drives to generation 2 Prius He can work or referb I think 56 modules at a time is what he set up for He does good work and he cares about the kind of work he does I've had good luck with his batteries so there is that I have also purchased new apparently at a very good time when I paid about $1,400 for a dealer supplied generation to battery in the very few first months of the pandemic at my local Toyota dealer bought online that battery I expect to get the near 10 years I got out of the original The refurbed batteries my buddy makes I generally expect the seat three to five we'll see like I say I have no complaints If I drive to where he is I can swap out a battery in a Prius for $550 He has them ready to go generally at least a few of them so far this is worked out really well He seems to do really good work bus bars and nuts are new or tumbled and cleaned properly and look new I get a battery from him lift up the black covers spray the anti-corrosive stuff on the connections facing me do the other side drop the battery in the car have had no problems in two or three vehicle so far and one of those is a customer's car. I also have a green bean or green tech I'm not sure which it is I have to look again when I have the cover off that I'm expecting to die any minute but everything seems to look good in the Toyota software I'm quite surprised actually at what others have had happened with these batteries this one seems to be doing well and it's a few years old so I'm letting it run to see if it'll get as bad as what was in my '09 where the ice engine was running all the time 39 mi to the gallon Right now I'm getting between 41 and 45 depending upon how the car is driven this is a late 07 car. And the green battery looks to be 3 years old when I saw the date.

 

Prius owners are killing their batteries themselves by waiting for them to die instead of restoring them before it's too late and significantly extending their lifespan.

 

How do you restore the hybrid battery?

 

I'm going to have to buy a battery charger that can handle charging the complete pack and a discharger are you borrow somebody on the list if such a thing exists in your area I have the Venice hybrid charger setup The Prius charge is on set up too I think that limits it the charge at a maximum 300 volts You charge it until the meter shows no change in a 5-minute period And then you stop then you can discharge by plugging up the discharge and connecting a halogen lamp or some sort of load that will drain the battery at some sort of rate and then charge it again and then discharge it again something like three cycles apparently this is one way to restore refurbish something get rid of the what are they call that when it's the memory effect get rid of the memory effect I guess like we used to do the old microtac cell phone batteries in the '80s. But generally they say 8 to 10 years on a Prius battery is pretty much limit I have seen one battery that is original that has 470 mi on it right about now and is original in a red car it is local to me.

 

Not at all, you can’t hurt any part of the car through regular driving.
It is charged when needed through the engine, going downhill, or braking.
You’ll know that you need a new battery when the icon on the dash starts going back and forth between low and full.
That means it’s not holding much charge.
When it gets bad enough, you’ll get a warning light and trouble code

 

If you learn the pulse-and-glide technique you'll barely use your battery bars. Mine stays at 6/8 to 7/8 with around town driving. I also get better fuel economy. According to the BSFC plot (in the forums), the engine is most efficient between ~2000 - 3000 RPM.

SM-A536V ?

 

It depends on what kind of battery I'm dealing with. If the car is fresh with low mileage and no signs of weakness, I use the hybrid automotive method, discharging the pack to 84 volts, but I usually discharge it to a lower voltage, 40-60 volts.
If the car is older than 10 years with high mileage, I discharge the pack below 5 volts. When the battery is over 10 years old with low mileage or less than 10 years old but with high mileage, the battery loses its capacity about the same. I bought a 2007 Prius in 2018 or 2019 with 34k miles on it. At 47k miles one module in the battery failed. No one has touched the battery in its entire life.

 

The worst condition batteries I have seen were on Priuses that were used in the Washington DC area. Hybrid batteries on Priuses that are used on the highways last a very long time, the owners confirmed this on this site.

 

There are hundreds of threads on Prius Chat about traction battery replacement and how to recondition them as well, use the search feature here and read them then come back with questions, lots of friendly members willing to help!

 

Actually, I remember the Prius will probably still continue to run with a dying hybrid battery as long as it is not completely dead. The gas engine will never stop running and you may get some lights on the dash.

As long as you don't get stranded, I would wait for it to fail rather than pre-emptively replace it. Well, that is my opinion.