Sorry, if this was posted before, but didn't see it on a brief search. I came across interesting US government battery studies in two 2010 Prius cars: http://avt.inel.gov/pdf/hev/batterygenIIIprius0462.pdf http://avt.inel.gov/pdf/hev/batterygenIIIprius6063.pdf the conclusions were: I thought the results were very good, why did they say "below targets" ? Edit: judging from another interesting document, government considers 160,000 miles "end of life" in a car: http://avt.inl.gov/pdf/hev/end_of_life_test_1.pdf Edit2: After reading this for a second time I noticed the Legend for Fig 7 explained why the battery failed DOE targets. Still not sure why those arbitrary targets.
Interesting that the battery degradation toward the end of the test did not effect the mileage. There is also a good breakdown of the regen system.
Thanks for the links. From Page 5: This indicates that at the time of BOT testing, the Prius battery performance was below DOE targets. Yeah, the battery, even when brand new, did not meet the DOE's "maximum power target". I didn't find (or may have missed) where the "target" comes from.
The more I explore the website (BTW, huge amount of info on various vehicles: Advanced Vehicle Testing Activity ) the more I'm confused on the battery testing part. For example, 2006 Honda civic battery seems great on paper but we know it's not that reliable in the real life. According to http://avt.inel.gov/pdf/hev/batterycivic8725.pdf and http://avt.inel.gov/pdf/hev/batterycivic9329.pdf it loses only 10-14% of capacity at 160,000 miles.
