I am wondering if it is possible to put a Prius plugin battery into a gen 2 prius? If anyone has any experience with this question or links to relevant info I would highly appreciate the help.
This is not a simple thing to do. The Plug-in has different software and sensors to handle the larger battery. See the old discussions on using the "Engineer" plug in kit for a Prius. JeffD
curious, how much is a plug in pack? anything is possible, and there are a few 'success' stories here adding more battery to the gen II. if you search, you'll find some. none have enough info to help though, you're pretty much on your own. takes a top notch engineer to figure it out. all the best!
Based on what I've seen, I wouldn't want to modify any of the hybrid components without some serious engineering expertise.
I definitely would not try this. First, you are looking at serious safety concerns. If your software overcharges some of the battery pack cells, the entire battery pack could catch on fire, along with the car, your house, and you. Second, it's almost surely less expensive to just buy a new Plug-in car.
I'd hate to be explaining how my insurance company how my heavily-modified Prius caught fire by "accident."
If your objective is a plug in Gen 2 there are quite a few options. To my knowledge the PIP's pack has not been used, but it could be even though there are better options. Steve Woodruff at Prius hybrids sales and service Scottsburg Indiana Has done many different types of plug in conversions of gen 2 prius cars and knows how to make a safe reliable conversion. Steve has done several conversions using cells salvaged from a Leaf creating a 16KW pack. The Leaf and PIP use 3.7 volt cells that are rather fragile, much more popular for conversion projects are 3.2 volt LIFEPO4 cells that are generally considered more tolerant and longer lived. Conversions using LIFEPO4 cells often have 10KW packs. FWIW the PIP pack is only 4.4KW If you are asking because you have a crash damaged PIP, you could do as I did and use it as a parts source to restore a second PIP that had a different type of damage.
I've modified and reconfigured many things in my time, and most of them worked, but that's not the point. Can we really afford the risks when they fail? Isn't it different when we are putting our lives on the line? The Prius is the result of a massive amount of design, engineering and testing by a company with a great deal to lose if things go wrong. That's something, almost no one can duplicate in their garage.
Your first issue is that the Gen II's had Nickel Metal Hydride traction batteries and the PIP has a Lithium-Ion traction battery. The car has built in standards for how it goes about charging a battery and what it expects to see when it "looks" at the battery. I don't know what happens when you put a Lion battery in a NiMH battery charger. Your second concern would be to check how closely the voltage of the one matches up with the voltage of the other. If your entire car is designed for say 200 volts, and the new battery is 300 volts, you're not going to make it work. A third issue is that the PIP battery is huge. You would lose the upper and lower trunk spaces and have to give up the spare tire. Metal bending would be required to fit it in. A fourth issue is the state of charge management. your car is always watching the traction battery and check how much charge it has. There is some minimum below which it is never allowed to drop and some maximum past which it will not go. It does this to insure the longevity of the battery by babying it. There is no good way to tell the car to use a different set of limits if the new battery is different from the old one. There are people who have upgraded the traction battery in a gen II, but I am not aware of anyone who has done it the way you suggest.
