Just saw this post on ebay. The person is selling a 2001 Prius Item number: 140023331415: Approx. 94,000 miles. One owner. Southern California car – no rust. Full maintenance records. All maintenance by Toyota. Original owner’s manual.-- Carpool lane access stickers included! Use California carpool lanes when driving alone! If you drive a lot in Southern California, this is an unbelievable bonus. High voltage batteries replaced at 88,000 miles. $4,000 value. Hybrid drive still under 100,000 mi warranty.
Just found another that had a bad battery on ebay Item number: 180024501035, another 2001 this one has 107,112 miles Car has new battery(Main Electric power battery) Airconditioning was just serviced by Toyota and works great. Car runs smooth and gets up around 52 miles to the gallon gas mileage
There have been less than a half dozen failures reported in general circulation and on the net. No way to tell where these fit in. At this point only Toyota knows how often it occurs, but word gets around. I would guess that the "general' information is ball park.
There could also be other reasons for the replacements...there were issues with corrosion on the classic and, perhaps, when the recall came out for that issue some were found with serious enough corrosion that it was felt best to replace. It would be interesting to see some solid numbers though....X number of failures at 50k miles, X number at 75k, X @ 100k, etc. out of how many on the road.
I was at an event last weekend where we got to take apart a 2001 HV battery that had *had* the sealant recall done. Guess what? the bus-bar contacts were corroded *again*. Not badly enough to really start cutting into current-delivery ability, but if let go much longer I think it would have eaten into enough metal to make a difference. I seem to remember hearing that Toyota wasn't doing those recalls anymore due to too many lawyers or something -- just replacing the entire packs [or at least the 7.2v modules] instead. . _H*
Don't forget how much more often Classic owners ran out of gas, then continued to drive without. That type of battery-pack abuse was rather disturbing, so much so that Toyota changed the behavior of the gas gauge. Now people complain about how much sooner it warns you to refill; however, understanding why is easier. So it doesn't surprise me at all that a few reveal symptoms that could be evidence of accelerated aging.
Why do classic owners run out of gas? I has a pair of '02 Pri's and have never come close to running out of gas on either. In fact, even when it gets down to one flashing pip I have never taken much more than about 10.5 gallons.
It is hard to know how to interpret ebay sales that say the HV battery had been replaced. I inquired about one previously, and after a couple of email exchanges with the owner, he said "No I guess it was the 12 volt battery that was replaced, after all". A few of us may end up looking at "module swapping" eventually. Refilling the electrolyte seems to be manageable. Testing the modules individually for capacity is within the province of sophisticated battery analyzers such as by Cadex. Home-brewing bussbars, assuming they are not available from Toyota, might be tricky.
the 1 HV battery replacement DH's shop has done was in a classic, the owner ran out of gas and drained the battery beyond ability to recharge. just reinforcing john's point.
