Just swapped my ’22 Prius Limited (non plug-in) w/21k ODO for a brand new Prius Prime XSE Premium. Yes, at my garage I can charge overnight, and my daily commute should be covered with full EV driving. Now… how disposable is the Prius Prime? (first time Prime owner, so bear with me please…) I only ask because based on my 3rd Gen ’15 Prius (also non plug-in) that I still own and love, the HB battery was getting a little tired at about 120k, no codes yet but I went ahead and sourced a brand new OEM battery from Toyota Dealership for a little over 2k OTD, and swap it myself which is a lot cheaper than having them swap it, needles to say the car drives like new again… I figured the 5gen regular Prius would be something similar, BUT… In the case of the PRIME, with its 300lbs battery at about $9k, liquid cooled and with its under the car location, it will definitely be a NON DIY for me, plus the cost will probably total the car, 2k is nothing to keep a good car running, but 9k + labor …. IDK. Will the Prime traction battery last longer than the Non Prime? I might be getting buyers remorse, thinking the regular Prius would have solve this potential issue. Yes, Yes… I know Toyota warranty covers 10y/150k miles, and I know the battery should not fail, but after a couple of years … Am I gong to start seeing range degradation? (degradation is not covered by the warranty) ? I know the 5gen is new, and the previous Gen4 was air cooled and half size battery so, nobody really know, plus who knows if I’m going to keep the car for that long but…. This is a long shot thought, at the end of the day, we buy Toyotas for the long lasting service. Any long term PRIME owner that can share experiences? Thank you!
There is no known reason why the 2024 Prime traction battery can't last the full length of it's warranty. The car's battery management algorithms keep the drain on the battery to reasonable. It also does a good job of keeping the battery temperatures down to safe and reasonable levels.
120k is a little early for the battery on a 2015, are you sure? Gen 4 primes are going strong at 9 years, so I wouldn’t worry about it. The hev should be fine for a long time as well
Well, the 2015 was my very first Prius, and the one “who started it all”… I am the second owner, short after I got it I discovered the HB battery filter completely clogged, like really bad… so I believe the previous owner that had pets did not maintain the filter, battery overheated and the rest is history… Over the last couple of years I’ve experienced a battery level drop after the second top bar, so the first two bars lasted long time but then it will drop to the last two almost immediately. A copy of Techstream showed module imbalance, DR Prius app detected 7 bank weak, and eventually I spotted a P0A80 code, it did not throw the cell yet, but it was under pending trouble codes, so yeah, it was imminent so I swapped myself before it became a problem. I really hope gen5 with the most advanced thermal management would do the trick. Hope not to see huge battery degradation (less range) any time soon.
It is my opinion that you should run the PP in HV mode one day a week. Keep the ICE engine, gasoline fuel, oil well conditioned. The Traction Battery should last the 150K miles/10 years as waranty covers it. All Lithium batteries loose some SOC capacity with time. But it should retain at least 80% SOC capacity for its warranty period.
Liquid cooling is much better than air cooling, so I'd expect the gen5 batteries to be less suspectable to heat related issues than an air cooled system - better temperature management. The early demise of your 2015 traction pack was caused by neglect of the air cooling system. Since you replaced it with an OEM pack, you should see a good 10-15 additional years out of that car, assuming something else doesn't break in it.
For city driving, the Prius PHEV is good in the BEV mode, but I wouldn’t regularly use the BEV mode for freeway/highway driving—occasional freeway/highway driving is OK. The cycle life of the battery could be as long as 2,000 cycles. You get about 40 miles per cycle; so, that is only about 80,000 miles of BEV driving before you experience serious battery degradation—this is exactly why you should use the BEV mode only for city driving (occasional freeway/highway driving when needed is OK). One good thing about the PHEV vs. the HEV model is that the PHEV model will still work even with a seriously degraded battery owing to the large capacity of the battery.
I trust that the Toyota engineers did a good job in designing the traction battery for long life. They have limited the usable range such that the battery is never fully charged or fully discharged. From what I can tell, it charges from about 15% to 90% of the maximum cell capacity. There are a number of things you can do to extend the life such as charging to a schedule such that you start driving shortly after the car is fully charged when possible. Slower charging is easier on the battery but the Prius Prime is very conservative even at its maximum Level 2 speed. I have found that 8 amps at 120 volts is very inefficient and probably unnecessarily slow. Pre-conditioning the car by starting it with the APP for 20 minutes before driving should also be beneficial. As mentioned, high speeds in EV mode are also harder on the battery - 80 mph in cold weather can discharge the battery in 20 to 30 minutes. Compared to 4 1/2 hours to charge. Also, long term storage at full charge should be avoided.
