OEM hybrid battery vs newpriusbatteries?

I believe the main advantage in going the aftermarket route in your situation is no core charge. So you could sell your existing battery modules if you wanted. Also, newer battery tech is typically better, and cylindrical cells are supposed to allow for greater airflow.

 

There is really no technical benefit. That's the whole point, the batteries are functionally equivalent.

Many people find my pack easier to install, and we do have better airflow and report artificially higher temperatures (due to metal enclosure vs. plastic) which turns the fan on more and should also extend the battery life.

If you can get an OEM pack for the same price, that works. Do keep in mind that we sell our packs for $1600 and there is no core. Meaning the actual price if you sell your old modules is between $1100 and $1350.

 

One thing to consider is the future of the car as relates to warranty and repair and what you or future owner would have to deal with... An OEM battery pack that needs to be replaced before warranty expires (never heard of that for OEM replacement pack) could easily be done in any major city, but a New Prius Battery pack would require more challenging logistics. Of course odds of brand new going bad before expiration of warranty probably makes this concern moot.

 

Truth is that after installation both batteries will be new and hopefully last another 15 years.

The OEM battery is already assembled even-thought you still need to transfer some parts. The cylindrical cell modules need few extra steps to install them.

The OEM purchase has a risk of not getting back your core deposit if core is not accepted as is.

The OEM has proven its reliability for many years and hundreds thousand miles.

The OEM is definitely more expensive considering that you return your core.

It would be an apples to apples comparison if the cylindrical cell seller would offer a pre-assembled battery option while taking back the old battery core, keeping the good modules for resale and adjusting the price accordingly.

 

symmetrical cells were a bit of a flop in the Hondas, going off their size I doubt they would hold anywhere near as much electrolyte .. personally i would stick with the prismatic but only time will tell i guess

 

Toyota 20 year proven record with a nationwide warranty vs. 2k1's tiny Colorado biz with only 3 year history.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

The OEM pack and my pack have the same amount of DIY required. For Toyota you get the modules pre-installed and you have to move around all the electronics. In my pack you keep all the electronics where they are, and put in the modules. Of the people that have installed both, 100% have said installing my pack is easier and less work.

And like you said, overall we are cheaper if you sell your old modules.

I don't expect anyone to read through thousands of posts, but this is wrong.

Hondas eat through modules, any modules, because the ECU trashes them on purpose. Toyota beat Honda in efficiency with the Prius over the Insight and Honda was caught surprised. So very late in the design cycle, they increased the depth of discharge. This worked on paper, they got their numbers up for the EPA. But it killed batteries very early. Our Civic hybrid needed 3 batteries under warranty. Al original. There are replacement batteries with cylindrical modules for Hondas and these are actually not a bad idea. Because the batteries are going to die in 3 years or so anyways, buying a battery that is only good for 3 years is fine.

As for our batteries, ours are cylindrical but that is only the shape. We do actually put 6.5Ah per cell and they are just as good as the originals. That is the whole reason our batteries exist. If I could buy a YABO pack and do zero work and get the same result, I would have. My time is valuable.

 

will be interesting to see what happens as time goes by, they may last longer guess we have to wait and see, i hope you are right! .. do the cylinder cells have vents

 

They do but not ever needed. Because they're metal cylinders they can take pressures way higher than plastic rectangles. If it gets to a danger point where it needs to vent, everyone inside the car is already long dead or the damage is done to a place where a vent wouldn't help.

Prismatic cells are not good from a mechanical standpoint to withstand pressures.

 

Nice one, that's not quite correct though, they definitely need vents that's why they have them!

good luck with it, im not enough of a risk taker to justify the risk at the current price point however i guess that will go down over time.

i admire you're initiative

cheers

 

Yes it is correct.

The only time a vent is needed is when the internal pressures are higher than the casing can take. The internal pressure is mostly related to temperature. Volume doesn't change much, pressure changes a bit but again not much. It's temperature. And in normal temperature ranges, no venting. With excess temperatures that are harmful to the pack but possible in the Prius, still no venting most of the time with prismatic packs. No venting ever with my pack because I can hold the pressures MUCH higher than the plastic rectangle. It's just physics. By the time the vent in my cells open, the temperature needs to be so high, it's fatal. But they exist.

 

lol no worries I will leave it at that! i still like my vents

 

So when you say "artificially higher temps", do you mean the inside of the battery temps are the same and the metal distorts what the temp sensors pick up/read out? Shouldn't 105F be 105F weather one measures plastic or metal?

 

I mean the temperature the car reports will be slightly higher than the module is. Because right now that's what they do to account for the insulator properties of plastic. So if the sensor measures X, the car reports X+Y over the CAN which is a good guess as to what the plastic module's temperature actually is. When you measure on metal, you're getting a much better picture of what the module is because it's thermally conductive. The car doesn't know what you've done, so it still measures X and reports X+Y which is artificially high.

 

You realize you are arguing with a rechargeable battery professional who works commercially? The newpriusbatteries packs have been available for several years with NO issues due to pack failure.

 

OK, got it, the readings are artificial, not the temp.; that's a relief. So if one charges a single module of the plastic prismatic OEM pack it needs to be done with pressure applied to prevent distorting the case. I'm assuming one of your single modules would not distort under charging, is that right? The other question I have, is my own OEM battery lasted up to 161K and I'm assuming the majority or new Prius batteries are good for an easy 100K miles. Yet Toyota's OEM replacements battery warranty is only 1 yr. 12K miles. Other than they rather sell cars than batteries, are there reasons the replacement batteries would go bad at a faster rate i.e. like all new electronics/components matched to a new battery?

 

The warranty is not an indication of longevity. The one-year/12,000-mile warranty is the standard Toyota parts warranty. This just reflects the statistical likelihood that a new part with a defect will fail in the first year.

For the hybrid vehicle battery, they do extend the warranty to three-year/36,000-miles if they install the new battery themselves.

 

Correct that you need to apply pressure to prevent distorting a prismatic cell. You can also keep the charge rate very low and monitor closely, but you're playing with fire. With a metal cylindrical module such as ours, no external pressure is needed. This goes back to the vent question before. The metal cylinder is structurally robust to withstand charging and extreme overcharging without venting. If you look at our packs, there is no pressure plate requirement. They can be charged sitting on your table. When installing, they don't require the plates to be squeezed against them. And even if you do, you're just squeezing the plastic mounting hardware. There is a physical air gap between all adjacent cells.

As dolj said, warranty doesn't correlate with product quality. There is a bathtub curve where failures will occur very quickly after installation (or during). If the install is done properly, it shouldn't fail. What we do see is if shortcuts are taken, most notably incorrectly torquing the terminal nuts, you're going to have to go back in 6-months to a year later and do it right. We make this known in the email we send out, in the instruction manual at the very front and again on the pages where we tell you to torque it. Yet people still ignore all the warnings and are surprised when it does exactly what we say will happen.

It is likely that the new battery will have higher strain than the older battery because everything in the car is older. An engine with 160k miles on it may need more help from the battery than it did at 0miles. This isn't the battery wearing out quicker, it is the battery being cycled more. The inverter being used more. That sort of thing.