Realistic battery life

Mine threw a code that the battery was going bad at 73,500 (118300 Km) and I got the death code at 78,000 miles (125,500Km)

I get the impression that life is around eight years, mine started dying at eight years four months and went into I'm dying at nine years two months. In my opinion mileage has little to do with the life of the battery. Time and environmental conditions seem to affect the battery more than mileage.

 

Our 2010 Prius II with 187 k miles (purchased August 2009) has the original battery that I maintain with the Prolong equipment and it is running strong.

When the dealer told you the first issue, did they read the code?

Do you have a way to read the codes?

Good luck and keep us posted .

 

welcome!

you are in a warm climate = strike one.

500,000km is fantasyland but for a few cab companies in mld climates.

we don't have any statistics on battery longevity.

you probably are a bit unfortunate to be at the lower end of 'average'.

what you read about '2 batteries in 10 years' sounds way, way off.

don't forget to call toyota customer care and ask for goodwill warranty help, if and when you get the bad news.

all the best!

 

Chances are the Op being in Mexico, a bit above Mexico City, is seeing a shortened traction battery life because of the daily, yearly hight temperature, is there any law against the Op driving to Texas where by prearrangement, and hopefully a cost of no more than 3,000$ US, getting a new one installed?

 

A little more knowledge about the OP's climate conditions might be useful:



Temps are more like those found on the West Coast than anywhere else. Battery should never be under stress from ambient temperatures given how cold it gets at night. I think the worst conditions are on the East Coast in the summer where it never cools off at night. I would look for some other reason the battery appears to be dying a premature death. I'm betting the fan was really clogged when the dealer finally cleaned it.

 

In my experience, in Oregon/Washington, these batteries live 12 years on average in the 2nd gen. With the 3rd gen it depends on whether it was used as a cab or just a daily driver. I'm not seeing any particular pattern yet with 3rd gens and have only been fixing cabs/ubers and courier cars with 200-300k miles, once we hit 2021-2022 I expect most 2010s will need a new battery.

 

5900' of elevation, ah, so a moderate temp, good point.

 

They are talking about the HV battery ECU, correct? Apparently it is quite common for the connectors to become corroded or covered with what is called malachite, at least on the earlier generation cars. Take a look at some of the pictures here: The battery fires at ECU sense connector thread | PriusChat

It's possible the 3rd gen cars will also be affected by this problem, most of them just haven't been on the road long enough to develop these kinds of problems. Perhaps you can ask to take a look at all of the HV battery components once they've got everything pulled apart. If you see corrosion on any of them, you might be well advised to be proactive about replacing some of them that have not failed yet, but will soon. That said, I certainly sympathize with you in your situation. You would not expect to have these kinds of problems in a car that is barely out of warranty with relatively low miles.

 

You don't have to change the ECU with the battery. You can but it generally isn't required. The Gen-2 and Gen-3 requires no ECU update. This was more common on the Gen-2 because there were some ECU fire/corrosion style problems that over a decade made it either too fragile or broken.

Most likely they are either too lazy or incompetent to swap over the electronics. Or worst case, they are planning to re-sell your old core as a rebuilt.

When you replace the HV battery with a Toyota battery they ship you a brand new shell plus all the battery modules installed but without the electronics. Your dealer then transfers all your old electronics to the new shell with new batteries. Then returns the old shell with the old batteries for a core refund.

There is a second more expensive option which is just the whole battery electronics and all. That one you just drop in. and return your core. As far as I know, you get no credit for the electronics, it is the same $1350 USD core.

It could just be they do so few Prius battery swaps down there that they are unaware they have to swap over the old stuff.

 

By temperature gradients you mean differences between operating temperatures and ambient temperatures, correct? As I understand it, the HV battery does best at an operating temperature of about 35 to 40 degrees C. If ambient temperatures are below that, charging and discharging will warm it up to that range and the Battery Management System provides for this. If the fan is not working correctly or is clogged or the temperatures inside the car become too high, the BMS may not be able to keep the battery temperature in that range. The battery will start to degrade if is forced to operate at temperatures much higher than that, individual modules may expand and even explode if the temperature gets too high. At this point, I should mention that our car's middle HV battery sensor actually hit 54 degrees C climbing a mountain near Las Vegas last summer, and the car is still running fine with no error codes. I wouldn't think it would survive a temperature much higher than that, but as they say "Your Mileage May Vary". Low ambient temperatures should never be a problem as the battery will always heat up to the proper operating range.

"OP" stands for Original Poster.

 

I'm not sure where I got the information in the file attached, but it might help. Hopefully, it will have what you need, but if it doesn't contain a code they give you, you can always do a search on the internet. Also note that my file does not contain any information on sub codes, which I understand may be essential for digging down a little further into what's causing an error code. For proper diagnosis of a sub code you may want to access an online Toyota Repair Manual at https://techinfo.toyota.com, which will cost you $20 for 48 hours access, I believe.

 

When mine started to die last year the car threw a P0A7F code. Hybrid Battery Pack Deterioration.

Nine months later last month, it threw the dreaded P0A80 code, Replace Hybrid Battery Pack.

Without the codes you have no idea what you're dealing with.

 

FWIW, I thought I read some specs that if any battery temp sensor hits 55 degrees Celsius, the HV system shuts down? There was also,a,shutdown temp for the engine coolant temperature, IIRC.

 

Don't yah love acronyms. Probably it meant "Original Poster".

 

Do a search, plenty of us said this before. I’m one That repeats this over and over that battery life 8-10 years.