PIP Battery Replacement Cost

Sorry to necro this thread but I think it's even more relevant now a year later. I too am curious as I've had what I consider to be about 30% degradation in the battery pack. When new, my car said 12 mi of charge (this was after it got used to my driving). Now it doesn't go above 9 ever (8 with the HVAC on). Car-Part.com appears to have a few available (mostly through LKQ) for about $1100. I didn't look into shipping costs though.

 

trent, i'm surprised you're using the guess o meter for degradation rate. have you done any road testing, or tried measuring the actual charge?

 

Lol. The charge level seems to be consistent between charges. If I disconnect the battery ecu or the 12v battery, it starts from the default charge level which is 12 or 15 miles (I forget which). It quickly drops and levels out around 8-9 over the next few days. Here's another factor. I've owned the car 4 years come October and it was charged at least daily sometimes twice a day. That's 1400 cycles IF it was only charged once daily.


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That's why I think it's considered shot or xx% loss of capacity but unfortunately I don't believe Toyota warrantied against lost capacity.


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...brings up a good question as far as I wonder how many spare PiP batts Toyota made before they shut down the line?

 

I don't think that's an issue, I mean, they discontinued the entire pack but not the internal sections or rows of cells. You can buy one for about $1200 new and an entire battery pack consists of 5 rows or packs of cells


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I've owned my PiP for 4 years since April of this year. I've charged mine almost 1500 times, sometimes as many as 3 times in one day using both L1 and L2 EVSEs. The best way to determine if you have lost capacity is to read the 4 battery voltages via a OBD II transmitter and app. I've yet to notice a permanent drop in any of the voltages. And to verify if it is indeed a voltage loss then the next step is to read the three internal resistance readings with the same OBD II app. The computer (ECU) reads and records the total and duration of stress (heat, amperage use, SOC drop) and determines the best mileage you'll see on the next trip. And oh by the way this could also signal you may have to replace the 12V battery soon since if they can't hold a charge for long, they'll request more from the traction battery via the DC-DC converter.


Unsupervised!

 

i think the best way to read charge capacity is with a watt meter, telling you how much it takes from empty to full. there's a spec for new. the 'meter' on the dash only tells you it's full, but full just means it won't take any more charge.

fwiw, i have charge around 2,000 times, 28,000 miles of ev, and my capacity is down 5-10%.

 

Oh you mean a watt meter as in, between the charger and the outlet? Is the HSI kWh indication while charging accurate?


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not sure, to tell you the truth. how does it read now, compared to new?

 

I honestly didn't take note of it all the time but I seem to remember with 240V it would charge in an hour when new and now it's under an hour. I believe it used to say more than 2.0kwh and now it says 1.7, that would be as soon as it's plugged in, 1.7 to completion. I will have to verify when I get home and also the total charge time


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there are some specs here somewhere, by people who have taken measurements all along. for instance john1701 has all his charge point stats. i'll look around and see if i can find anything.

 

I guess I will have to get out the Snap-On scanner. Should I measure it with EV fully charged?

I have not had any problems with my 12V battery going dead. I am losing range on my key fob though...time to check the range on the spare one I guess


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Yep. Total battery voltage is about 212 - 214 when on and fully charged. Under load it'll range quite a bit.

You will. And it will be rather abrupt. Good one day, nothing the next.


Unsupervised!

 

The Prius, like any car, has a lot of parts. Four of these parts are really expensive: The engine, transaxle, inverter and traction battery. A failure of any of those will lead to a "fix-or-sell" decision. There's no point in worrying over it.

What I'm hoping is that when the traction battery reaches 50% or even 25%, I'll still have a perfectly useful hybrid. Time will tell. I think Toyota only sold around 35,000 PiP's and we haven't yet heard of a single battery failure.

 

Actually they've sold about 75K PiP worldwide and about 47K of those in the US. And nope no dead batteries that I know of. Batteries are like ICE. They can be rebuilt and several companies have sprung up to do just that. Who knows, in a few years when you want your battery rebuilt, those third party companies may suggest a Prime replacement instead. How? By swapping out the cells and/or modules with Prime cells and/or modules.


Unsupervised!

 

We can only hope. But I'm guessing the Prime hard parts (motor, transaxle) are different too. What I wouldn't give for more range though. I did see a range expansion kit with its own BMS but of course it took up the cargo area


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I get 42339 PiPs USA (13000/yr and then phase out)
Monthly Plug-In Sales Scorecard

 

For starters, Californians get a 10 year, 150,000 mile warranty on that battery. After that many miles, it depends on the cost, and nobody knows.

Of the Big Four repairs, the Plug-in HV battery is probably the most expensive by far. I think we might need to see laws written which ensure that EV automobile batteries are designed to be rebuilt, because now, they are not. At least, I don't think Toyota publishes any official procedure for repairing or rebuilding the HV battery. While that may be ok for the standard Prius traction battery, it's not ok for a battery that's 4x+ capacity/cost.

But, anyway -- if I need any Big Four repair at 150,000 miles +, I will probably buy the part from a wrecked Prius and try to replace it myself.

 

Toyota has discontinued the entire HV pack but apparently you can still get the 4 or 5 (I forget which) sub assemblies of cells that make up a pack. So I guess they have an unwritten thing about rebuilding the pack then.


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