Newsweek on Hybrid batteries

Sorry if this is a duplicate.
Hybrids: The High Cost of Low Batteries | Newsweek Voices - Keith Naughton | Newsweek.com

"Toyota says its out-of-warranty battery replacement rate is 0.003 percent on the second generation Prius that debuted in the 2004 model year. That equals about one out of 40,000 Priuses sold, says Toyota spokesman John Hanson. That's a vast improvement over the first generation Prius, which had about 1 percent of the batteries fail after the warranty expired. Hanson says today's Prius batteries are designed to last "the life of the car," which Toyota defines as 180,000 miles"

" .... Still, hybrids don't hold their value as well as their gasoline-powered siblings, batteries aside. ...."


Thats not what I've observed lately. I've seen Prius with salvage title sold for almost the price of a new one - on ebay and on craigslist. I've seen dealers asking $25K for a basic 2007 Prius with 23K miles on it. I've also seen a Prius with 98K miles on it sell for about $15K.

So hybrids seem to be holding their value remarkably well.

I realize thats not the point of the article - but this part of the article is just plain wrong. Otherwise I think its an interesting/informative article. Thanks for sharing.

Posted two comments:

Rob

What a goofy written article.

The writer initally makes a "No Buy" judgement based on nothing but a human emotion, unsubstantiated fear. He makes no attempt to believe the truth and when presented with the tiniest sliver of an someone's opinion that favors his initial impression, he grabs the bull with both hands and runs with it as validating his judgement.

I did a quick Yahoo Auto used search within 300 miles of this writer and found:
The median price on a used 2005 Honda Hybrid Civic was: $14,600
but the average price of a used 2006 Honda Hybrid Civic was: $20,610

Seems he used the wrong year (2005) for his opinion of low resale value overlooking the 2006 and later. 2006 is considered the 2nd generation for Honda.

He uses wild examples (like the 350,000 car with bad battery and buyer KNOWS this) as a prop for his article.

Despite the advice of Toyota, Ford and others, he still believes there's an unknown monster hiding under his bed (figuratively speaking)
So he's not ready to drive a hybrid, he's convinced himself, just don't spew that misinformation to other serious buyers Mr. Writer. C'est la vie.

ZC1

I had not seen battery failure rates from a Toyota source before.

Very few passenger vehicles depreciate as slowly as Prius. Mini Coopers and some of the diesels are in the same range.

I completely agree that conventional automatic transmissions could be considered an analogous 'soft spot' to NHW11 batteries. Perhaps similar failure rates and unit repair costs. Because that vehicle fleet is nearly 200 million in the US, it has spawned an entire secondary industry - transmission fixers.

With only about 50 thousand NHW11 in the US, and salvage vehicles appearing faster than problems are developed by the 'survivors', the battery rebuilding cottage industry has not appeared yet.

a 2007 package 6 with 4000 miles sold on ebay for over $30000.
a 2005 with 19000 miles sold for $29000.

thats not 'depreciation', thats 'appreciation'.
once gas goes $5-6 or more, the used car market will get really wild.

Excellent! I have suspected the best battery replacement is to use NHW20 modules.

Bob WIlson

Anyone know the one unlucky NWH20 owner with the bad battery?

I'm wondering whether the 1% out-of-warranty NHW11 traction battery failure rate makes sense. Is it possible that this measures only dealer-replaced batteries and excludes failures that were not repaired by dealers (such as DIY repairs, or independent mechanics installing salvage batteries.)

53,000 NHW11 were sold in the US. The average age of that fleet is six years old. Assuming 12K miles is the average mileage per year, the NHW11 fleet has an average of 72K miles.
"US Passenger Car Fleet Average Miles Per Vehicle Per Year"

For the sake of discussion, we need to estimate the number of NHW11 with an odometer reading over 100K miles. I'll put out my guess: 3,000 cars. Hence a 1% traction battery failure rate implies that only 30 out-of-warranty failures have occurred.

Now, let's guess how many of the 53,000 NHW11 have been salvaged so that their traction batteries are available for resale. Over a six year period, I think it is reasonable that at least 0.5% (or 0.083% per year) of those cars have had a serious accident that results in a salvage declaration. This results in 265 cars being salvaged over six years.


Some owners faced with a failed traction battery will buy new from the dealer. Others will try to buy a salvage battery and arrange local installation or DIY. If you do an eBay search, you will not see a large number of NHW11 traction batteries available for sale. You would then have to conclude that either:

• NHW11 drivers are really careful and get into serious accidents at the rate of 0.008% per year
• or my guess of 3,000 cars over 100K miles is understated by a factor of 10x, which is not supported by the population size and the average miles driven by the population
• or the 1% battery failure rate is wrong

If I'm correct my salesman said there was a 10 year 150,000 warranty on the battery. Is this right, because the Toyota website has 8 years 100,000. If that carries over to a second owner then the purchase of a high mileage Prius wouldn't be as risky.

It depends on where you buy the car. California and other states that adopt California rules get a longer warranty then the rest of the country.

Put Florida in the 10 year 150,000 warranty list.

When shopping, I took battery life off of the list of things to worry about.

Bob

Re: Patrick's. We have been guessing at this failure rate for years. If Toyota's version of the story is wrong, then we *still* don't know.

As far as NHW11 batteries appearing on ebay, I'd say there were more a couple of years ago than at present. One (of several) possible interpretations is that there is still a flow of crashed batteries into needy Prius, but it proceeds through channels other than ebay.

I don't remember who originally made this suggestion, but supposedly some large proportion of those crashed batteries were purchased for non-Prius purposes such as full electric vehicles. Thus a further complication; while there is only one 'source' for the batteries, there may be several different 'sinks'.

As far as the odometers of the fleet, perhaps my other ebay spreadsheet would be of use. Last updated march 2007, posted in Yahoo's sat1 files, it includes the model year, dates of sale and odometer of 387 Prius. Based on the assumption that these vehicles fairly sample the 'miles per year' of the entire fleet, we could model that forward and get todays odometer distribution. MRV's monthly sales data would better constrain the model. If somebody felt like doing it.

For the NHW11 in US, is it correct that those sold outside the CARB states had 100k battery warranties as well?

There was a link somewhere in the PC archives about phone companies buying up NHW11 batteries like crazy to use as phone site backup batteries. That's one "sink" that would swallow a lot a batteries below the radar.

Does anyone have a list put up by Toyota listng states with 10 year 150,000 mile warranty

..which begs the question: "If I bought one in CA, but I live in IN, would I still have the longer warranty?".. Would make financial sense to do so if you were planning on keeping car for a long time.

Without doing the legal research, I would assume you get the longer warranty. CA law would only really be able to apply if it turned where the vehicle was purchased, as opposed to where the vehicle was driven. Otherwise, the warranty would not apply if your battery failed while on an out of state trip. That cannot be the case. The law probably applies to "all hybrid vehicles sold in California" as opposed to "all hybrid vehicles present in California."

I see a fundamental error in these numbers, or more accurately, how people are interpreting these numbers. Of course the Prius II has a lower out-of-warranty battery replacement rate -- they are newer cars and less of them are out-of-warranty. These numbers do not mean that, over the life of owning a Prius II, there is only a 0.003 percent chance that your batteries will fail. These numbers don't even prove that the battery replacement rate is lower on the Prius II, considering just how few of those cars are out-of-warranty at this point.

We will need to wait a few more years to get an accurate representation of how much the Prius II improved battery reliability over its predecessor. Everyone -- including me -- assumes that it is much better, but these numbers don't prove that.

Hi,

Having read the article, I found it a fair evaluation of what remains a risk factor for many buyers ignorant of the batteries. If someone lives in an 100k mile state, buying a used Prius with 50k makes a lot of sense. If they already own and work on a Prius, this does not apply. But if the Prius is at or over 100k and they are risk adverse, yippiee, a low cost Prius!!!

My investigations show that the NHW20 batteries are head and shoulders above the NHW11 modules. If someone wanted to replace their NHW11 traction battery, I would suggest getting two NHW20 batteries and assembling a new NHW11 battery pack with 38 of the NHW20 modules. This works because an NHW11 pack of just NHW20 modules would have superior life and corrosion avoidance.

I am still working on the problem of NHW11 battery refurbishment and having some success. But I also realize there are hard design problems that still need resolution. Still, a refurbished NHW11 battery is better than none and refurbishment costs about $5/module.

If someone is risk adverse, the Prius battery 'bug a-boo' in as useful as any other to keep the ignorant away from the market. Since I'm likely to buy another Prius in the future, lower purchase prices are in my self-interest. As for my Prius, I plan to drive it until the wheels fall off and the battery is dragging behind it ... or someone rams it.

Bob Wilson