Prius 2007 battery replacement

Who makes lithium cells?

 

welcome! anything can be done, but no, it's practically impossible. the whole car would need to be retuned. new software, inverter and etc.

 

yes, they operate on different software than the mains battery. but they still require a massive amount of engineering to work properly.

 

if you're talking about replacing the oem modules with lithium, no, no one has ever done it. it wouldn't be worth the time, cost and effort.

 

most people have a hard enough time just trying to replace bad cells and balance everything.

 

okay, yes, i think that has been done, but not since toyota came out with the pip. all the profitability went out of the kits. there are a few people who have done it on their own, and you can find the threads by searching the gen 2 mods forum.

at the very top of the gen 2 mods forum page, you'll see a special forum for aftermarket plug in modifications. it's all in one place. there's a guy from france, planetaria, who has an amazing system.

 

there was a fellow from austrailia who really detailed it out, i believe.

 

Anything is possible with time and money.
If you want to do it yourself for free, it is not possible.
What is your budget?

 

did you look up the threads i pointed you to? you won't get any current help, no one is doing it anymore. they have all moved on to pure ev's.

 

^^^ What Bisco said above ^^^

In addition to what people have said above in regards to anything is possible (given enough time and money), I would counter that with just because you can do it doesn't mean you should do it.

The answer is NO, unless you don't care how much it costs. I think this is one of the times when the cost and effort outweighs the benefit–by a wide margin. The biggest consideration is that to use Li-Ion tech you will need to, either, completely reprogram the Prius HVCU to manage the new Li-Ion battery pack or insert some sort of spoofer to trick the Prius into thinking that the battery contains NiHM modules when it, in fact, has Li-Ion modules.

You would be better off replacing the existing cells with new NiMH modules and then building a separate Li-Ion battery externally and then linking them.

No-one, that I read, did a modestly priced job that worked–there were, however, a couple that did a satisfactory job where the cost was not a priority for them.

You can read all their stories in this forum: Prius PHEV Plug-In Modifications

As Bisco said, you will probably not get any useful answers in this forum as no-one is doing it anymore since there is a factory solution that does this–the Plug in Prius/Prius Prime.

Hope that helps.

 

Can you explain to me what doing this would accomplish/what you're looking to gain? Where would a break even point be, once you consider time, effort, reliability and $$ poured into it, as opposed to just installing a 28 cell pack from a 2015/2016 wreck that would cost about $800?

 

she probably figures lithium is more advanced, and if it can be done cheaply, why not?

 

Use google to look up the phone number and addresses of salvage yards in your area. Then call or visit them and ask whether they have the part you want.
If they don't, ask if they can refer you to a salvage yard that might have it.
Expand your search area as needed.
Repeat until you get the part.

And just for reference, in my region salvage yards do not have packs available for $800. They cost more than that, plus you have to turn in your core or pay a huge core fee, sometimes equaling the cost of the battery itself.
Additionally, there is no guarantee that a pack that went to a salvage yard isn't already filled with random junk modules. It's a roll of the dice.