Hello everyone. We bought a great 2007 Toyota Prius with no issues, except the stink from the hoses. I have verified that the battery hoses stink really bad. I tried to order some off eBay, but they also stink. I heard Toyota did away with these hoses in third generation Prius batteries? does that mean I’d have to upgrade to one of these types of batteries to get rid of the hoses? I take it? I can’t just remove the hoses from my current battery? what are my options to get rid of this smell? Any in all Help appreciated.
After the first year or two of Gen3 (2010-2015) they instead relied on the hybrid cooling fan to evacuate the gases from the battery module vents. This is most likely due to so many people complaining of that classic Prius electrical stink that you can smell in the battery air intake vent in Gen2. The source of the smell is caused by the minor amounts of vented gas that interacts with the plastic chemicals in the vent tubes. In your case it would be safe to remove the vent tubes to eliminate the smell, or better yet upgrade to a sodium-ion pack that doesn't use those tubes. Also because venting happens when pack runs in high temps, like rush hour traffic after being in a hot sunny parking lot all day, you'll want to run a phone app via an OBD2 reader to run your hybrid battery cooling fan more often. Hybrid Assistant app is particularly easy to use to control that fan speed.
This is a real thing ? Hmmmm I get no smell even wen I overcharge an ole crappy pack by semi accident . No smells not even a external shop fan on pack . I'll have to look out for that smell never noticed . Me thinks some of these things built into later gens of folk . Kinda like the gluten business or .
Yeah, some of those tubes have a nauseating hospital/urine odor. I replaced mine in 2015 with silicone tubes. Pretty easy to punch in the holes. I'm sure there are a few threads on priuschat detailing the process. It still took at least a year for the smell to disappear as it had already permeated the car. Not all vent tubes had this smell so very likely a specific supplier issue.
Here's a pic of my silicone tubes when I switched them over to my new battery. I had read somewhere that these new battery cells didn't even vent and I think I recall the vent nipples being closed, but I still installed the tubes.
