Battery Cell #5 Replaced

It's wonderful that you could get that done under warranty. Is your car modified in any way? If so, I'd really really appreciate an itemized list of overall mods so I can have a documented precedent.

Thanks,

~ dan ~

 

Roughly how many miles was on your Prius when this happened and what year is the car?

I'm curious because 2 years ago when I had my Honda Insight I replaced the batteries. They were warranted for 80,000 miles and they went out at 96,000. Total battery cost was $7000 and $1000 for labor. Fortunately Honda covered it as if it was still in warranty. When I bought my Prius, I was under the impression from some research I have done, that the cells last much longer than they used to. Thanks.

 

Are you sure they just replaced the sub-pack? $3300 is close to what it costs to have the whole battery replaced.

 

It's safer and less stressful on battery management if you replace the whole battery. Though you -can- replace one cell, you will get less-than-optimal performance depending on management. That's how I understand it.

Realize I am the kind of dork who enjoys engineering better batteries for cordless telephones and other such nonsense. I have learned that swapping out one of three cells for a higher-capacity (more milli-amp hours) cell makes the battery seem to perform worse. Probably because the battery management systems charge it until only the one cell will take a charge, but that cell always runs short.

~ dan ~

 

It's not surprising that a cell failed. After all, they make millions each year. There are bound to be a few that will fail after a year or so of use.

 

1) There are no procedures written up to do this by Toyota (I've looked). 2) They do not have the individual cells in their standard inventory, even though there is a part number. 3) It truly is a rare event, so little money would be saved by Toyota....but some $$$ would be lost in repair pack sales. 4) They would not get back the whole battery pack to find out if just the cell went bad or if there was an external event (e.g manufacturing damage of failed cell and adjacent cells).

Whole battery replacement looks to be the better option for warranty repairs but other views are valid.

 

Bummer, I thought there was a ray of hope that Toyota techs were
becoming competent/confident about jumping inside the packs.
Looks like Toyota is still having them treat the whole thing
as a hazardous black box.
.
WRT the "battery reconditioning" stuff, well, that's lovely, but
how do you get hold of this group that's supposedly researching
it and actually obtain their finely crafted work if and when you
need it? Without a phone number where you can hear "we'll fix
ya right up", it sounds like marketing spin.
.
_H*

 

well, there's a number of issues with the single cell replacement...

first, under warranty it'll always be a new pack. and it should be.

secondly, past warranty where the owner is covering the problem out of pocket, you run the risk of other cells going bad later, through circumstances that are likely not related to anything the tech did. then you have the owner returning, screaming about how they just paid $x to replace cells and why is it bad again, this is on the dealer's head to fix.

in some cases it may be true, but i can't tell you how many coincidences happen that the dealer did not cause but they cover anyway. expensive coincidences (ie hybrid batteries) are very strongly avoided.