battery replacement economy?

Hmm, my first Prius got wrecked at 232,584 and age 15 years, driving fine on the original battery. My current un-wrecked one is just over 150,000 and nine years, driving fine on the original battery. I didn't put all the miles on either one ... between the two of them, I've driven about 150,000 battery-free Prius miles over about eleven battery-free Prius years.

I seem to remember some significant repairs on all my former gassers by the time those kinds of miles rolled around.

My expenses on the 15-year-old Gen 1 had included some brake work, two wheel bearings, half a dozen light bulbs, and the one dollar shim set for the A/C compressor. (Besides fluid changes and tires, of course.)

The results from the first Consumer Reports study on Prius batteries, which they could not report until the twelfth year of US Prius sales because until then they didn't have enough data, were that by the eleventh year you had about a four percent, or one-in-twenty-five, chance of needing a battery, and by the twelfth year, that was up to five percent, or one in twenty. Presumably it continues to rise from there. If I keep driving Prii, I won't be astonished if I eventually need to change a battery in one. It just hasn't happened yet.

 

i was probably spoiled by camry's that racked up hundreds of thousands of miles with nothing but regular maintenance
and skewed by all the battery horror stories here

 

Yeah, it's kind of like Sam said back in #9, you can search here for "battery" and find THOUSANDS of posts.

Only, if you have the time to look through them, THOUSANDS of those are first time or prospective buyers obsessively fretting over batteries that haven't died yet, and coming here and finding their concerns echoed in thousands of similar posts.

 

Yeah, this is a great place to get ideas about what problems are most common and how to deal with them, but it it gives a completely unrealistic picture of how common those problems are.

 

but all we can do is impart the info we have regarding averages, while warning their car may not be average

 

Your HyCam? My 1996 Camry defnitely needed regular maintenance work and it was not a high mileage car.
It is tough though. My brother-in-law is now trying to kill it - and failing so far.

 

no, we had a bunch of camry's before the last two hycams. i wonder if the quality has gone downhill

 

I corrected my post. I was referring to a 1996 Camry we bought new.

Toyota Recalls 1993 Camry Due To Fact That Owners Really Should Have Bought Something New By Now

The Onion Pokes Fun At Over-Engineered 90's Toyota Camry - Art of Gears

 

Third Prius and 7th hybrid for me and my wife overall. We have never had to replace a traction battery.

 

we've had 5 and the same outcome

 

So ??
That should be a surprise to........nobody.
Anyone who trades cars often should report a similar record.

 

For 5 years I ‘ve been driving a pre-owned a Lexus RX 450h which now has 160000 km on its shoulders. Although no alarming messages are shown by the instrumentation, nor my Scangauge provides error codes, I am sure that the traction battery is worn out. The symptoms are inequivocable: in summer, often, with minimal load (car stuck in the traffic, lparking manoeuvres etc) the SOC drops from 60% to 38% in a couple of minutes; in winter, even with SOC > 70%, the use of the traction battery is minimum, during parking ICE is running. Despite that, the fuel economy contiunes to be acceptable, 26 mpg in summer, 30-32 in summer.

 

I had twice the KM's and more years on my Gen 3 prius, so I don't think it should be worn out yet! However, I know nothing about that hybrid system on that car, but if it's like the Gen 3 I had, that doesn't sound off to me. The ICE runs if it's cold enough, especially if you have the defroster on. I think the gas mileage would be impacted if the battery was having problems...

 

Well, since I bought the car it has behaved in the way I described above, so I guess that fuel economy would be better with a traction battery in good health.

I also used to own a Prius Gen 3 which I bought brand new, so I think I can tell the difference between a good battery and a worn one; only issue I had with the Prius battery was its protection due to overtemp wich happened once; after that single episode I started to force the battery fan with Scangauge, every time it was advisable (descending hills, hot summer and high SOC, etc.).

When I gave up the Prius, the battery was still in excellent health, even because I had adopted since the beginning a few basic precautions: waiting the completion of warm up phase (S0) before moving the car, avoid unnecessary EV drive, monitoring the battery temperature and SOC with Scangauge. I have been doing the same with the RX, which basically has the same battery of Gen 3 Prius, but the damage had already been done by the previous owner.

 

Sounds like your mind is made up already. But anyway, that gas mileage is not unusual for that car according to the specs. It looks like it tops out at 32MPG...

 

I agree, my average consumptions are ... within average for this kind of vehicle.

However, my good fuel economy stems also by low rolling resistance tyres that I adopted, and driving practices: when I picked up the car from the previous owner, the average consumptions on the trip computer were horrible (23 mpg) . And when I see HSD swtiching to "energy waste mode" without any evident reason, I know for sure that someting in the traction battery chemistry has gone wrong.

 

We are on our third Prius all have gone over 200,000 miles and never needed replacement..... In the Boston area there are a couple of rebuilders that will come to your location and swap in a rebuilt for $600.

 

what happened?

 

BUT.....for that price, a "rebuilt" is NOT a new battery. Only part of it is new.

 

Maybe none is new?