Best new/refurb battery option - and where are these mythical $2000 OEM batteries?

Prius Hybrid Battery Reconditioning "How To Properly Repair A High Voltage Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) Battery Pack For Hybrid Vehicles"

the hybrid guy

 

Of all the options, If I was going to go secondhand, I would buy a NiMH battery from the newest wrecked car I could find. Batteries are hard to find as most wreckers will remove the battery (supposedly to make the car safe) and separately pass them on to one of the big battery "reconditioning" outfits.

For you though, I would try leaving your 2006 battery undisturbed and try charging at a very low current (no more than 325 mA) with a grid charger. I wouldn't care about the low voltages as long as your battery was in good health.

After that I'd do 3 reconditioning cycles with the charger and a home made discharger made with incandescent light bulbs – 240 V rated bulbs, if you can get them, make that an easier proposition. You can use 110-120 V rated bulbs as well, but you need to serially connect two together to make a 240 V unit, which you can then parallel to vary the current. You can also make a charger for under $100 (search that term) or buy a ready made charger from Maxx Volts or Hybrid Automotive.

After that, I'd install it in a car if you had even voltage (+/- 0.3 V per block, with the voltage the 210 to 235 V range) and run a capacity test using Dr. Prius.

I'd hazard a guess that you can restore your 2006 battery to near 80% - 90% capacity, if it was healthy before its furlough.

YMMV.

 

When I said, " I would buy a NiMH battery from the newest wrecked car," I mean the newest virgin OEM, not a secondhand battery. Nevertheless, you are where you are now.

I wouldn't hold my breath hoping that Greentec will go the distance, but at least it buys you some time to work on your 2006 battery.

Good luck in your endeavors.

 

It sounds like a good game plan.

I'll add a few considerations.

As you have time, I would look at making (or buying, if you prefer) the charging and discharging gear now, and use it on your Greentec regularly to help it last as long as possible. Then, when you're not using the gear for your daily driver, I'd look to doing the regime I mentioned in post #22 on your unmolested 2006 OEM pack. You might find it is all it needs to get it back into usable condition. Whatever you do, if it has low voltage (i. e. less than 203 V) or is unbalanced (i. e. wildly varying voltage and/or capacity between modules/blocks), do not put it in a vehicle and try to start the car. That is sure to damage it. Another way to damage it is to use high current (i. e. above 325 mV) when the pack is not in the 210 to 230 V range. Within that range, you can probably use up to 50 A without a problem.

You will need to make a cooling system for your bench rig so you can recondition any batteries on the bench.

I hope it works out for you, good luck.

 

Alibaba. $900

https://www.alibaba.com/x/xEKYkhH?ck=pdp

https://www.alibaba.com/x/xMHwg27?ck=pdp

For gen 2

https://www.alibaba.com/x/xqn9gmS?ck=pdp

I have done several gen 3s so far. Batts lasting good too the oldest of my replacement jobs is 4 yrs so far and 100k miles. All still work no comebacks

 

So you're having no trouble using the newer round cell conversions from China seems to be working well I know the earlier ones were a real flop with these newer ones no problems and their nickel metal hydride?

 

Define "older ones" and define "newer ones"

Please explain "real flop"

Please fix Grammer "these newer ones no problems and their nickel metal hydride" so I understand what you are trying to say.

Please use technical specs and years of mfg to define which batteries you speak of.

Please tell me where the wisdom is from, ie, collective wisdom from forum, person experience, etc

How would one identify said "flop" batteries?

 

Over the years here on Prius chat where these post reside It looks like in the early years of Prius chat whatever you'd consider that to be when people tried to use the round cell conversions I don't know what year it was they didn't seem to do very well The people that physically tried them and bolted them into their mess they didn't last very long I don't know what that was 3 years something whatever it was nothing like the original Panasonic prismatic modules racked up properly from Panasonic then a few years later coming up into the now all of a sudden these around cell conversions are somewhat the thing so I you know don't know still the longevity of these newer round cell conversion with several places now sell. How long they will last so you've had yours in for 4 years now five something? What I saw a few years ago say four or five years ago was people were getting a few months or a year something and then back to red triangles and battery codes and other failures was this necessarily only a battery issue Good question as you well know from internet forums things can get very gray very quickly people's processes and methodology very greatly so it gets even more difficult to determine but anyway I want to see it all work to be honest about it I don't see any big deal you have X amount of volts racked up with X amount of AH you should have X amount of energy where you put the positive and negative terminals to or something but it seems way more complicated than that apparently so there you go. I'm only reading basically what's in the archives here and other places where I've read about the prismatic to round type conversions specifically for the Prius and at the time that was the generation 2 Prius as the three wasn't here yet so this is quite some time ago when this started. And then there was a swedish guy or I believe he was swedish that made the plug-in conversion that the guy in Maryland has I'm sure he'll be along in a minute so apparently with a little thinking things can happen with the batteries in these cars so there's always that I was looking to just have twice the MAH on the same voltage platform like a battery with twice the rear end behind it versus the 85 pounder that came with it and everybody looks at me funny. In this day and age all the modern battery technologies since 2008 I would think we should be able to come up with a battery that's slightly bigger quite a bit more powerful than all that but apparently not.

 

That would be some Gen 4 trims. I know the 2016 & 2017 Prius Two & Prius One (NOT Two Eco) had NiMH batteries. I had a 2017 Prius Two until it was wrecked.

They changed the model trims later in Gen 4 and I did not follow them.

 

It is apparently always cheaper to order parts online from a Toyota dealer than to call in or just show up at the desk. By a lot. Even for things like fluids or oil filters. The only time you might want to call in is to get some information for why a part is out of stock on their web site.

Before Toyota broke their parts site it was stupid easy to look up a part on the main site and then click on the dealer links to get their online prices. That is, to comparison shop. Now the main site will only link to a small subset of the dealers. Why just those dealers? Who knows. In my area one dealer is usually the lowest of the closest half dozen or so, but for an expensive part like a pack I will definitely check them all. When we replaced the pack it was another dealer which was the least expensive at that time, if I remember right, by $200.

 

I'll play. We had a 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid I with an IMA pack built with Chinese NIMH sticks similar to the ones you linked. If I remember correctly it even used the "larger capacity" ones, don't recall the value, more than 6500 though. On paper anyway. This would have been 2017 or so. It lasted about 2 years. This was the car's 3rd battery pack. Admittedly that was a different car, but the layout of the sticks in that IMA pack was very similar to the one in the picture in your link. This was before Honda went over to the bizarre "conjoined sticks" battery module format.

So coming up on 10 years ago. Maybe the sticks are better now. Given that this market seems to consist mostly of a bunch of "never heard of that company before, bet it's gone in a year" manufacturers, betting on improved quality would be a suckers bet. Also I had a long conversation at one point with a guy who researched NiMH battery chemistry who said straight up that the prismatic cells were superior to the cylindrical ones.

 

I might have to consider changing mine out soon, and I plan to keep this car until it disintegrates.

In the past I'd heard good things about GreenBean too, but are they still a preferred source?

 

They're reselling the same ones you can get directly from Alibaba without their markup

 

Good points! I think going with a short term, cheaper option, is going to be the plan. At least until my financial situation is more stable, and I can ponder a long term replacement when needed.