Replace Hybrid Battery Questions

That sounds very sane to me. Most batteries start to deteriorate the minute they are first used.

 

I am happy that Mike has found a solution and his car is going to be back on the road, but I think there is a bit of a misconception that I would like to bring attention to. SageBrush, you are correct that ANY aged battery that is refurbished once and never again will return to a degraded state. If the pack was degraded before refurbishing because the cells came out of a core traction battery pack, it probably will fail again in 6-24 months. If someone was to use our products to refurbish their battery only once then never use them again (perhaps because they rented it), they would experience the same lack of long term results that buyers of these refurbished batteries and people who paid for the expensive "refurbishing" service at their local hybrid garage are experiencing - a mediocre roll of the dice. Even the DIYers on this forum who are pulling their packs out of the car and refurbishing module by module are experiencing this 'return to degradation' result. This would rightly seem to cause everyone to question the refurbishment process as a viable solution to extend the life of ones hybrid battery. However, all of these scenarios assume a single refurbishment process that is not repeated on any regular basis. What GregP507 said is absolutely true, batteries do start to deteriorate the minute they are first used. NiMh batteries will return to a degraded state after being reconditioned. On a really weak pack, this process normally takes somewhere around 6-24 months, which is why the refurbished battery business can exist.

This logic that a single refurbishing session will add (only) around 6-24 months to the life of an aged battery pack is the same foundation that our products are built upon. Imagine if those battery re-builders offered a free reconditioning every month that you owned their battery for the rest of the life of the car. Suddenly the risk of buying that refurb pack would drop considerably. Or, imagine that the $1,500 preventative maintenance "refurbishment" service your local garage offered was for a refurbishment every 6 weeks for the rest of the life of the car. That would be an investment that a lot of people would be willing to make. When using our systems as preventative maintenance to refurbish and rebalance the battery every three months, or every six weeks, or even monthly if needed, they regularly add multiple years of life to a hybrid traction battery. They just do - for the same reason that a single refurbishment will add 6-24 months of life to an otherwise dead pack. If the battery has just started to fail by throwing a red triangle only once, significant gains are still very realistic.

Once purchased, our systems provide unlimited zero cost battery refurbishment services for the rest of the life of the vehicle. This is why we are different. This is why they are a viable preventative maintenance alternative to battery replacement. Why spend over $1,000 on a used refurb battery with an unknown history when you can spend less of half of that on a battery that you know the history of (because it is the one you already own) and have unlimited battery refurbishments for the life of the car.

 

^^ Imagine if you had the data to back up your story telling.
However, I get the substance of your post. You want to sell a charger to one person only, and not have them shared. So you now disclose that up to monthly use may be needed to possibly prolong battery life.

---
Here is an alternative without weasel words and salesmanship: a new, OEM battery will outlast the car, and costs about $2000 for a DIY'r. The monthly cost is battery_cost / residual_car_life.

Five years left to the car ? About $33 a month for the replacement battery, and no risk of premature failure of the refurb, no messing with or messing up the battery with charging routines. Heck, you can even go on a long road trip or climb a mountain without fear of battery failure.

 

Over a thousand systems sold and hundreds of testimonials doesn't come from weasels, but they are cute furry little animals ;-). We've helped wise hybrid owners save thousands of dollars each and avoid dropping the $2,000 that seems of so little value to you. Not everyone is so casual with their money, those are the people we are marketing to.

People with seriously dead batteries use our system to keep their battery on life support. Most people use them once every two to three months.

We have many re-sellers that are already selling just our car harnesses and offer routine refurbishment services using our systems to their local customer bases. We don't offer rentals because we are a manufacturer not a rental company and we are not going to complete with our largest customer base - trained professionals who are already actively promoting our products to their customers.

Five years using our systems according to your math is $7.50 a month. Heck, even if you only get two years our value proposition is still almost 50% better than what you are proposing.

We'll be doing a discharge tests on our 2005 Prius in a couple weeks, which will be three months after the prior data logging. We'll be sure to share the data with you and the rest of the community

 

Many rebuilt or "reconditioned" batteries are failing within a year of install, I've even seen some of the ones with the "3 year warranty" fail within a very short period.

Best advice is to make sure whoever you buy it from IS LOCAL and they will stand behind their warranty. If you buy one from out of state and it fails it will be hassle to remove, ship and wait for a replacement and have your car out of service during that time..and even more painful if you have to pay the labor and shipping.

A warranty is only as good as the company behind it.

 

What about recycled cores with new cells? Any comments on how they're holding up?

 

It's the cells that matter, they are the wear items. if truly new cells are being used, the increased life cycle would be commensurate

 

These "new" cells are of unknown quality. I bought a "new" battery for my laptop and the quality was really poor. Although new, it was really no better than my used up battery that it replaced.

 

As of Feb 2015 NOBODY OTHER THAN TOYOTA is selling proven NEW virgin cells for Toyota Hybrid batteries.

There are a couple Chinese vendors that claim they are close. The only source of NEW "zero mile" NiMH cells that are compatible with Prius is Toyota. (Panasonic who makes them for Toyota will only sell them them to OEMs.) The Chinese samples that are out there may or may not last, only time will tell.

Everything else in the market is simply used Prius modules being "refurbished".
There are varying degrees of quality and capacity, YMMV etc, that is why you should only buy from a local vendor with a good warranty.

 

Green-tec auto has been advertising "new" cells on their batteries. I wonder what would be the ramifications on such bogus claims

 

They may be buying new Gen1 batteries from the dealer and moving the modules into Gen2 chassis.
This will work and cost less than buying Gen2 batteries from the dealer.
(Gen1 batteries are cheaper and have 38 modules instead of 28 so cost per module is considerably less).

Or they found a Chinese vendor that nobody else has found.

Or they are lying.

I cannot think of any other scenario.

Their web site says:

Are these batteries as good as a new battery?
Our batteries are in a lot of ways better than the factory replacement batteries. These cells have been reconditioned through our proprietary processes and must pass durability testing before being placed in one of our battery packs.

There is no way a reconditioned battery can be better than a new battery.
Absolutely no way. Talk to any chemist or battery engineer.

 

Actually they've changed their site now, their "new" cells are remanufactured.......crazy. People have probably confronted them about their "new" cells and they have to change their wording. Still quite misleading in using "new" for newly remanufactured.

 

I'm sure there are plenty of replaced batteries going to disposal with perfectly good cells in them. That's why reconditioning is a good idea. Of course you're not getting a new one, that's why it's called "remanufactured" or "reconditioned." Someone with a comprehensive understanding can be invaluable for giving you reasonably good value in a reconditioned battery. It also does the environment a bit of a favor by reducing waste.

 

It's not comprehensive understanding, it's called a lie. You can't say you are giving "new" cells and have reconditioned the batteries to be "better than new". That's to trick the general public into buying something inferior for $2299 with a 4 year warranty, when Toyota sells New for $2500 with a 1 year warranty.

 

Toyota will not sell a battery to a private individual. Toyota dealerships resell the battery, at prices that seem to range from $1900 to $3000

 

I'm not defending fraudulent misrepresentation of the facts. And neither am I defending the wasteful and exploitative practice of discarding batteries that could be remanufactured. I think it's a great that someone knows how to salvage a valuable component, and making a business from it.

 

Toyota recycles the battery's nickel, so I am more than comfortable choosing the route that gives me best value per $.
Consider the two general choices:

1. $2000 for a brand new battery we can expect to last 10 years
2. $1000 - $2000 for a rebuilt battery that seems to most often last 4 - 24 months

This decision in my not so humble opinion approaches a no-brainer, except for the EEs amongst us who are fixing the battery as much as enjoying their hobby. Again.

JC,
A new battery from a Toyota dealership costs say $1950 and has 28 modules, or $70 a module. IF a pack could be brought back to a state where it typically lasted 36+ months after replacement with a couple $70 modules, that would be a fantastic business. Unfortunately that has not turned out to be the case as JeffD and others have taught us, many times.

In fact, a used module that matches the pack in terms of resistance, Ah and voltage is a better choice than a new module. It may be that the rebuilder you mentioned has simply cottoned on to this fact. I have wondered about using new modules in pairs, but I'll have to defer to the experts.

 

If a battery pack has reached 10 years, those modules are just worn out. If you replace a few pairs, the ones not replaced with fail shortly afterwards. The rebuilding business was a reliable alternative when the gen2 cars were only 6 - 8 years old, the modules would still be good for a few more years. However with the gen2 cars being over 10 years old now, it's crazy to rebuild them. Saving resources (recycling marginal modules) to save a few hundred dollars will end up being a waste of time and money (long term).

Just imagine how much you would have to spend if you have one of these batteries with a 3 year warranty fail while you are on a road trip? You have a false sense of security/reliablity from the 3 year warranty to really mean it's good for 3 years. This mistake can cost you more money than buying a new battery from the very beginning.

 

Ah .. . No

You propose that a customer sink $400 into a charger. Those in the 'ah heck' category then have a dead battery in two years and then either scrap the car, buy a crappy rebuild or spend the $2000 for a new battery. Sound money wise to you ?

 

Battery rebuilding is best compared to having a flashlight that takes 4 batteries. When the flashlight dies, you replace 1 of the batteries and the flashlight works again. However it will die shortly afterwards. This scenario doesn't have the $300 installation charges and the breakdown scenarios that come along with rebuilding a Prius battery.