So right around this time last year our Prius became a paperweight with wheels. After reading the codes, you guys helped me reach the verdict that I needed a new traction battery. I bit the bullet and bought a $1400 reconditioned gen 2 battery with gen 3 cells. Fast forward to just under a year later and ~10k miles, I'm dead in the water again. I'm still under warranty for the battery, so I contacted the seller and he suggests sending me a new cell to replace the bad one. I asked him about balancing the rest of the afterwards and he said there was no need. I thought this seemed a little shady... What do you guys think?
It's not shady, it's just how he fixes his batteries. The original one you bought for $1400, that's basically what he did and sold it to you. That why you have a failure in such a short time. These batteries are high voltage and are quite dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. By simply sending you a replacement "cell" and calling it a warranty service is crazy. Do you send him the hospital bill when you get electrocuted?
Heh, that sounds like the definition of shady but I won't argue semantics. :-P So I'm probably even worse off if I ship him the battery back because it's going to take forever and he's just gonna swap the one bad cell anyway...
I think we only recommend dealing with battery refurbish companies within your local area, that way you don't have to ship the battery back when you need warranty service (which you always will). You're in a bad position if you are trying to save money by not shipping the battery back. Also without properly diagnosing the problem, how do you know only 1 module failed? There could be a number of things wrong with that pack.
maybe find a local mech who can diagnose the bad cell(s) and replace them for you, and ask the battery refurbisher to pay him? how will you know which cell to replace?
