There are all sorts of reports in these forums about how installing the EV button in a Gen II Prius will void the battery warranty. That's been enough to convince me not to install it, if only to preserve resale value. Now the Gen III Prius has arrived, and behold! The North American model finally comes with an EV button, and still has a 160,000 km warranty on hybrid components. Is anyone aware if Toyota has reconsidered its position on the Gen II EV switch now that it's available on the Gen III? Does the Gen III have a totally different control system that reduces the potential for battery wear, or are they essentially comparable? I'm going to try writing to Toyota, but I wanted to see if there's any "word on the street" as well.
I got an incredibly vague response from Toyota, as follows: Does anyone else have any more specific insights? Any ideas on how I can get them to give me a clearer answer?
The Prius III has much tighter limits on speed, range and kick-out amperage than does the North American EV mod and I suspect you're still SOL if you have a premature failure with an EV mod installed and the dealer and Toyota decide to be sticklers. That said, I'm at 90k with my EV mod that I've had...a long time, can't even remember my mileage at time of install, but it had to be under 5k miles.
Best I can tell, all the reports of warranty denial are based on one instance where Toyota ending up replacing the battery after an initial denial and after the owner agreed to remove the switch. My logic in deciding to install the switch went like this: Battery problems are rare even among cars equipped with it, whether factory or aftermarket. The burden would be on Toyota to demonstrate that the identical switch they include from the factory on overseas Prii somehow harmed the identical battery on my U.S. model. On the other hand, I also acknowledged to myself that that wouldn’t stop them from trying and that I might be confronted with a legal fight if it came down to it. Still, after carefully considering the potential benefits (to me) and the risk (quite small), I chose to install it.
Magnussen-Moss is your friend. Unless the mod CAUSES damage to a component, it cannot void the warranty.
