Hi all, new Prius v owner

I called my dealer up and they do not recondition. Only replace. A replacement pack will cost about $3.5k total including labor and tax.

 

Unrelated but for reference. The Tesla Model 3 battery pack cost $32k to replace. I will be curious to see how their Model Y, the wagon/hatchback version turns out. Target showcase for that is late this year. But I still can't get myself to own a Tesla if a pack will cost me $32k to replace.

 

As a user and poster on the Prolong system, I’m familiar with its operations .

As a leader of a multi-million dollar operation, I’m also familiar with costs and preventative maintenance along with planned outages and coordination of resources .

The Prolong reconditioning process is no different .

While you claim the costs are high, it’s a time and money equation. I know what my downtime is worth and I can work around having our Prius unavailable for 60 hours.

Babysitting is a minimum with the Intelligent Discharger as you pick the setting you want and it takes it there (it also alerts you when it is there and shuts the Discharger off). Charging is also a non event as all you have to do is walk out to see where it is occasionally and then turn it off when satisfied .

As for the lone member you cite (sorry @jerrymildred as here comes the bus), jerry admitted he didn’t follow the instructions, so is that the equipments fault?

Thanks for pointing to threads I’ve participated and shared my data in.

 

Personally I would like to give my pack a deep inhale and a deep exhale once or twice a year to get it's lungs refreshed. Because we all tend to shallow breathe during much of our day (and night), a deep breath inhale and exhale once in a while would be a good thing to get the lungs "familiar" to their full capacity once in a while. Yes batteries are not lungs, but you have 168 cells that are all working in series in a Prius pack. Some will work harder than other, some will stress out more than others, some may be on the verge of dying because they don't know how to get back into sync. The idea is that by having all of them slowly exhale and then all of them slowly inhale, they can all slowly get back into sync. I don't know if a Prolong system will do the job long term, but I understand what it's trying to do.

 

I'm sold on the Prolong system, 100%. However, I would never use it on a battery still under warranty. For one thing, it won't improve performance. And, if it won't make the car run better or protect you from an expensive failure, it's a waste of money. So I advise holding off till the warranty is about up, which is a long time down the road in CA. Who knows what technology will be available at what price by then.

No worries on my "example." It's valuable for those who see it for what it is; a reminder to follow the instructions whether it's a Prolong system or a jack. How many people have actually DIED from cars falling on them because they didn't use a jack or jack stands the right way. Those must be bad products, too. Not going to engage in further discussion with the person you refer too unless he wakes up to the difference between "use" and "misuse."

 

+1 to everything above.

The reason I engage is to avoid fake news and the spread of mid information .

 

I agree. Thanks for pointing out what really should have been obvious.

Could be. I have heard of tires pulling to one side or the other. I'm sure you already checked that the pressures are the same.

I also seem to remember someone saying that he thought the Toyota specs were broader in latitude than they should be. {edited to fix a typo}

 

My apologies if I said that you were unfamiliar with the operation of the product. I didn't mean to say or imply otherwise. What you call a "time and money equation" I call a "cost/benefit analysis." I think we are in agreement on that. I do think people tend to undervalue their time and neglect to factor in the fact that their considerable effort may yield no benefits.

The user who failed his battery did admit fault and I never claimed otherwise. As a design engineer, I would not personally release a product to the general public that made it so easy to destroy your battery pack. Obviously all consumer and companies have their own risk tolerances.

Purchasing the automatic discharge option increases the cost side of the cost/benefit analysis in essence covering a larger portion of the cost of the replacement pack. Hopefully it does reduce the risk side of the ledger.

You're welcome for the thread pointer. Or maybe you were being sarcastic. I admit I have a hard time telling sometimes especially when each paragraph is terminated with an emoji.

Just on the off chance someone (definitely don't mean you) is taking this discussion personally, my only intention is to present an alternative point of view. I think some people here probably get a great deal of satisfaction by spending their holidays running back and forth to the garage. That's a harmless enough pleasure. I can think of a lot worse! I don't think your average Prius owner would enjoy it so much, but I definitely could be wrong. Which emoji goes with that?

BTW, if the allegation of fake news is directed at me, then I stand behind my statements but welcome any factual corrections.

Farmecologist, sorry for responding to the discussion. Other posters keep responding to me and in this last case an apology was in order since I apparently gave the impression that a member was unfamiliar with the use of his product.

To Jerry, please see the point above about the design of the product. I would also refer to the complaints about the quality of the documentation. The risk factor for your average Prius owner seems way too high for my comfort level. Others may disagree. The Arrested Developer Corn Baller comes to mind as a product with high user error rate that could have had a better design.

Finally, to everyone who interprets what I'm saying is that the product has no benefits, your interpretation is incorrect. I would not use it myself, nor would I recommend it based on my own cost/benefit analysis. I judge that the benefits are too low compared to the costs and risks. I have no problem with your point of view. I only expressed my surprise. It's not personal.

 

Have you hit any curbs or anything like that? Sometimes, if it's the right angle, it might not take much. The roads where we lived in Honduras were absolutely brutal. I bent stuff there and had no idea I what I'd hit that did it since I hit so much just battling my way up the hill to the transmitter site in my 4WD truck. Car's aren't nearly as stout, but then the roads aren't nearly as bad. Here's a picture of my wife demonstrating the size of one of my favorite ruts. That's our truck in the background.

 

When you do the rear hub, be mindful of the plastic clam shell design of the speed sensor protector.

If not careful, you’ll split it where you don’t want to.

Slow is fast.

Good luck and keep us posted .

 

I’d go to the salvage yard or look at an online catalog like http://www.toyotapartsdeal.com

I’m missing one of the trim pieces you point out, but I said “meh” when it flew off of the I-5 freeway at 80 mph .

That’s a lot of corrosion in the initial pics too.

Happy I moved to the California every time I see those types of pics.