High voltage battery $3500

Failed traction (HV) battery, what to do? - Prius Wiki

 

ReInVolt would sell you a rebuilt battery for about $2000.

Remanufactured Hybrid Vehicle Battery Packs
2004-2009 Toyota Prius Hybrid Battery Pack. | eBay

If you are nervous about do it yourself, there is an installer in Ohio. But it is easy if you have 2 strong people to lift the battery.

http://www.cincinnatihybrid.com/

 

Wow. That's a great Wiki. It does a nice job of quickly covering the options.

I would personally go the salvage option- much less costly than either ReInvolt or OEM. Just make sure the battery hasn't sat for a long period of time. Besides, last I checked the price on the OEM should be more like $2500.00.

 

Toyota sells the dealer the bare battery cells and the dealer has a great deal of labor with sense wires and bus bars. ReInVolt sells a complete battery, you just muscle it in and connect the exterior cables to the inverter.

So $1000 in labor at the dealer becomes $300 labor for the Rebuilt battery.

 

Before you go replacing the HV battery (I would go Reinvolt if I needed one), be ABSOLUTELY sure it is in fact the HV battery that's bad. Having a low 12v battery can throw all sorts of error codes...even ones that indicate the HV battery is going bad when it's just fine.

 

The battery backorder problem is one that has caught Toyota/Panasonic off guard, much like the inverter cooling pump problems affecting 04-07. I imagine that '07 warranty failures in CARB states, where the warranty is to 150,000 miles, has totally swamped them. It may take them a while to catch up.

Battery failure depends on time, mileage, interior condition (always carrying backseat passengers), terrain (lots of hills), and climate (hot).

 

Not quite. The Toyota supplied battery is complete except for the battery ECU as they expect that your old ECU is still good. The extra labor is then opening up the old battery, removing the ecu and installing it in the new battery. This adds about an hour of labor. Some dealers always want to use a new Battery ECU and that is one reason they quote a noticeably higher price.

My CT Toyota dealer installed my ReInVolt (drop shipped from NC) for me for $400. It helps to have a long term relationship with the service department.

JeffD

 

Thanks! Anyone w/correct or useful information on the subject or other Prius subjects can feel free to add/correct info there.

I only have so much bandwidth and motivation. Besides the HV battery stuff, there's unfortunately, a big gap/lack of info on the PiP, Prius v and Prius c....

(And, no I don't bother adding/editing stuff at [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius"]Toyota Prius - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]. I did at least once before, long ago. But then some "genius" decided to label the Prius models XW10, XW20, etc. This results in newbies sometimes posting here saying, I have a XW20 Prius.

Toyota AFAIK has NEVER referred to the hybrids by those designations. It's NHW10, NHW11, NHW20, ZVW30, etc. Unfortunately, fixing those has a lot of other repercussions/stuff that needs fixing and might be all wasted effort if that genius/someone else decides to undo them.)

 

Just got off phone with Toyota Sunnyvale parts mgr. Yes, 'hybrid batteries' are on national backorder and according to him, have been for a 'week or so'.

To be honest, I find it a little disturbing how quickly things are pointed to aftermarket, salvage or 'repairing' their own hybrid batteries.

....

just got off phone with Luscious Gargage ... gal said parts to go into aftermarket batteries are becoming less plentiful, so many of the times they have customers go with a Toyota battery replacement. They charge $2900ish for the Toyota unit parts/labor.

She did say they are replacing hybrid batteries 'regularly'. I think she said a couple times a month or so. Also said they have not had problems getting the Toyota hybrid batteries.

also said must do a full diagnostic because 'bad battery' codes can be thrown by the 12V and 'electric motor(s)'.

 

National back order means more are failing than toyota planned. I assume these are mainly gen II, which means the bulk of these failures are less than 8 years old. Does anyone have good statistics?

I know toyota made a big deal of the 400K mile taxis, but these batteries were not old, just high miles.

 

The OP's post was "Wow batteries are expensive!" I only can have two replies to this.

1) Suck it up.

or

2) Here is a cheaper way.

I chose 2) but I showed installers to put it in, as well as suppliers and prices. I did not recommend self install, done wrong you can kill yourself with 201 volts DC, but if his Prius does not run at all, he may need to do self install. I did not recommend he start swapping cells at random. I pointed him to a reputable rebuilder with a 'nearby' installer. (about 85 to 100 miles away)

 

We should also note that if you are unlucky and your battery fails just out of warranty, the cost of a new Toyota supplied battery is still only 2 cents per mile and that is about what you pay for tires.

JeffD

 

I'll be happily surprised if actual failure numbers are available.

The only indirect measure I can think of is that used batteries come from totaled cars. Increasing prices implies that currently the rate of failures is exceeding the rate of car totals, and shrinking the available batteries for sale. Since the used battery market is actually really small, it would take very little over the total rate to see the used prices jumping.

The other possibility is that salvagers decided it was not worth their effort to put the used battery on the market for the price they were getting, and we are just seeing an equilibrium re-established.

 

Not to mention transmission problems in conventional cars.

We do not have any real indications of a big absolute market for battery repairs, just reports of demand/supply imbalance. The former would have a silver lining of encouraging repair businesses like Seilerts to open, and perhaps jump start the non-oem plug-in business.

 

Prius are just as prone to transmission problems. According to Luscious Garage's blog entry, 200-250k is typically when death occurs on the 04-09 transmissions.

MB860 ? 2

 

I think it's a good idea for people to know all their options because each person's situation can be different. Who knows how many miles is on their Prius, how many more miles/years they plan to keep it for, how much they're willing to invest, etc.? IMHO, on a very old out of HV battery warranty Prius w/very high mileage and low remaining value, it doesn't make sense to pay the full Toyota price. I wouldn't.

But, I strongly suggest those who have no experience w/dealing w/high voltages (myself included) not muck w/trying to repair their own HV batteries, esp. if they don't have the right equipment.

 

link ?

How many 200k+ mile Prius do you think LG tends to, or have repaired ? Think a moment about what that means for statistical confidence intervals. What fraction of transmission repairs go to LG of the total in the Bay area ? How many high mileage Prius make up the group ? How many of the transmission repairs are G1 Prius, which have markedly different ATF wear patterns than later generations ?

Lastly, look at the repair records of CR for the largest Prius ownership survey group. Compare that to average LOL

Addendum:
OK Critic, I read the blog. Carolyn says LG has handled "dozens" of transmissions failures, but obliquely points out that the lion's share are taxi cabs. You will have to explain how this data in any way extrapolates to Prius transmissions having similar failure rates to conventional cars.

By the way, what is the frequency distribution of transmission failures by mileage in non Prius taxi cabs ?

 

Question.

If you have a battery replaced through your dealer, is that battery one that was produced "new"?

If so, I don't think the back order is necessarily a sign that Toyota has more HV batteries failing than they expected. It could simply be tied to growing demands on production on the manufacturer based on the success of Prius V, Gen 3 Prius, and now Prius c.

Toyota and Toyota's battery manufacturer's priority #1 has to be to produce batteries for New vehicles, of which the number has increased dramatically in recent years.

I can't imagine Toyota doesn't have a pretty good idea what failure rate to expect. If there is a temporary inbalance of supply and demand, I'm going to blame it on production demands as a whole.

Toyota certainly doesn't want the reputation to build that getting replacement batteries is a problem.

I suppose I am also assuming the same vendor/supplier that produces batteries for current Prius, is also the same vendor/supplier that produces replacement batteries for older Prius.

Tell me if I'm off base here. I won't be insulted.