What Toyota doesn't want you to know

How much of that 3k is labor?

 

How about getting a salvage battery? As far as I know, they are relatively cheap in the US. Changing a traction battery yourself is not that hard, or you could surely get a mechanic who would do it for you for reasonable $$.

 

Terry

Firstly, bad luck with the battery. You may get some joy from Toyota if you keep trying. I'm pretty new to Prius ownership but given the age and mileage of your car, a secondhand battery as a replacement sounds the best option if this is not at least partially sorted as a just out of warranty issue.

I have never taken any car past 130 000 UK miles, that one was an Audi A4 Tdi Ist gen, but I had to rebuild the front suspension completely at 80 k as many of the ball joints were shot. I did that myself but the parts were £350.

A single bill of 3000 US dollars is a big hit on an 8 year old vehicle of any make though.

 

Do you guys think the miles killed it, or the 8 years?

 

Other threads have leaned very heavily towards high temperatures and age. Miles, without those other factors, don't seem to be a problem. Witness the many taxis with very high mileage and few or no failures.

 

No, not early. Not overly harsh. The "poll" itself is a troll and in the wrong forum. I wasn't referring to the poster.

Considering the car is 8 or 9 years and none of this applies to current or even recent vehicles it doesn't really belong here.

Look at the potential poll responses. They are so biased as to be worthless. It's a yes/no question with no "yes" option! That is a troll.

Whether the OP never considered that a battery could fail or what the warranty was is not really OUR problem.

I didn't say to "bury it" but to put it in the appropriate forum. This intetionally biased poll is a troll/FUD and should not be tolerated in a newbie section.

 

105k is a little early - when Luscious Garage wrote about Gen 1 battery replacement, they said the lowest mileage they'd seen was 130k. It may well be down to the age or number of driving cycles rather than actual miles covered.

Their replacement price sneaks in at just under $3,000 for a brand-new Gen 1 battery. They'll also do you a rebuild using two used Gen 2 batteries - Gen 2 has only 28 cells to the Gen 1's 38, so two batteries are needed to get the required voltage. That costs a shade under $2,400.

The Gen 2 battery seems to generally be very reliable indeed. So much so that for Gen 3, Toyota have increased the maximum power draw, from 25 to 27kW, while using the same part as Gen 2.

 

(bold added by me)
I'll tell you a secret, you MIGHT need to spend $2000 on a transmision after 100k miles. You MIGHT need to spend $3000 on body work as you MIGHT get in an accident. You MIGHT need to spend $20,000 on a new car because a tornado hits yours and totals it.

Exactly as they stated, Toyota EXPECTS the batteries to last much longer than 100k miles. They don't gaurentee it, but they expect it.

It is the nature of all manufactured products that some will fail sooner and others (of the same type) will fail later.

I am sorry you feel betrayed, and it sucks that you happened to get one of the early failures. But I think your expectations are unreasonable.

 

And you're starting to sound like a shill. Nice to be called names, huh? It applies directly to our cars as direct descendants of his.

It's not unreasonable to expect battery failures to happen on some sort of distribution (it's probably not normally distributed, but there's probably a peak somewhere in there). A lot of posts have been put up showing how long the battery can last (exemplifying one end of this distribution) in the Prius and it's not necessarily unreasonable for people looking to buy one to realize that the battery *can* die right after the warranty runs out - otherwise telling people repeatedly that the battery will last 150k+ in like every case (and it does happen a lot) is basically lying.

I do think this thread should be renamed "Prius battery failure after 105,000 miles"

+1000000000

 

I don't know what a CARB state is (I'm a low-carber myself ;-)), but I live in California and was told that the Gen 1 battery was covered up to 100,000 miles. Luckily, mine gave out at 95,000 so it was free. I was told that later generations were covered until either 125K or 150K, I forget. So you are partially right. It's just the Gen 1 that is only covered until 100,000.

Hope this helps!

 

What where you expecting the cost to be? I've been led to believe that GenII replacement batteries only recently (early last year) fell below the $2500 range, excluding labor and all the fees that shops pack on to the bill these days.

As for how soon, there are always some folks who lose the lottery. Based on recent reports, the odds haven't looked bad enough to stay out of the game. Of course you purchased long ago when none of this longer term data existed.

 

C.A.R.B.

California Air Resources Board

Welcome to the California Air Resources Board

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Air_Resources_Board]California Air Resources Board - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

there's no positive response to the poll like, "Yes, that's pretty much what I was told"

 

And you sound like a confused nice person, nice to be called names, huh? As I said, I wasn't calling the poster a troll, but the posting.

 

This^^^

Try as best you can to get Toyota to absorb part of the cost but it is out of warranty and there is nothing that they need to do legally or morally.

Absent some contribution from Toyota try to get a 2nd hand battery on eBay or from one of the local Toyota body shops if there's a totalled Gen 1 Prius hanging around.

BTW that is the retail cost including labor I presume of putting in a new battery. Go to any Toyota store in the country and ask the full retail price of a Gen 1 battery...it's $2488. This is pretty reasonable IMO.

 

TP

That brings up a good point. Taxi's will typically rack up their miles/kms quite quickly. The average privately owned automobile will usually take far longer to put on similar miles/kms

In other words, in the future we may see more Gen II battery failures, not due to miles, but age. Chemistries may start to change over time within the NiMH cells

jay

 

Troll = Someone who enjoys deliberately stirring up trouble by posting negative facts in an exaggerated and unbalanced manner.
FUD = Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.
OP = Original Poster.

 

Actually, what you posted is the exact opposite of that. It appears that it never occurred to you that a battery could fail during the lifetime of the vehicle. You relied on some car salesman's projection as factual. Then you went on blissfully ignorant of the possibility for 8 years before researching this AFTER a failure?

Is that a balance to what you've been hearing or what you've been saying for the past 8 years?

Judging by the results of your heavily biased poll so far, the majority do not. We have to put up with this sort of FUD on a regular basis from folks who know nothing about the vehicle. That we are hearing it from a self-professed first adopter is weird. Are you trying to balance out what you have personally been telling every one? (Which apparently was repeating the salesborg spiel.)

Why didn't you avail yourself of this site sooner? I've read of many failures of the Gen I traction batteries and a fair number of Gen II's. I considered that in my purchase decision. They happen. Some of it is luck of the draw, some conditions. The failures can be within warranty or outside it.

I can't predict when my HV battery might fail, but when I get close to the hybrid warranty expiration it will weigh on my decision whether or not to keep the car or sell it and move to a new one.

Obviously Toyota doesn't expect a lot of failures within the warranty time frame. Even so, the Gen II battery was redesigned to fix some problems with the Gen I. Were you aware of that before visiting here?

I'm pretty sure you didn't spread the word to me, and since you claim to be a newbie here, I'm not sure where you get your sense of balance from.

They are quite different. "I don't care" doesn't preclude a no answer. "No, but I don't care" would be equally valid as "yes, I don't care." It doesn't really describe my opinion either, which is "yes, I know, factored it in." I care, and understand it can happen. I also understand that it might last for 150k, 200k, 250k, or more.