Re-Involt, 3d party NHW11 battery source

I just sent these guys an email asking if the cells they use are new or used. I'm having a hard time justifying $2,000 when I could buy a brand new one for close to that, or I could buy 2 of the Gen-2 packs used for about $800 to $1,000 and build my own.

 

Well, but the question is.. When you go to a toyota dealer and say "I want to buy a battery pack" at the parts counter, do they charge you $2,400 or do they add shipping to that?

When you add shipping to the refurb pack, then also add shipping to send your old pack to them, the price gap narrows between buying a new pack and buying a refurb. I just got an email back from them and they say they use used cells. They go on to say they "We upgrade some of the less durable parts to prevent some of the problems that occurred with the Toyota design" but aren't very specific. I fail to see what they could upgrade inside the modules themselves.

 

Hey
explain more about doing the DIY option
Like isolating bad cell, buying cells and etc.

 

This company will be at Green Drive Expo in Madison,WI on July 17 & 18.

If you are coming up for the event this year you'll be able to talk with them in person and have a great one-on-one conversation.

 

Just a follow-up to this thread since I see it has gone active again.

I ended up not going with Re-Involt because the cost of the battery + shipping ended up being closer to $17,000. I actually bought a brand-new battery from a Toyota dealer for $1,911 + tax. The really irritating part of the whole thing with Re-Involt was the hassle of both the shipipng and receiving process (you have to ship your old battery back to them)

 

$17,000.00? that is irritating!

 

My dealership quoted me around 3500 with 15 HOURS of labor (another 1500). Is there this much difference between dealerships?

 

The dealerships are independent business men, you can't expect all of them to be honest cannot expect or all the dishonest ones to be caught.
You can get a ReInVolt for the price of the labor in your quote and their labor is $282
01-03 Toyota Prius Upgraded HV Hybrid Battery Pack: eBay Motors (item 130389029879 end time May-15-10 17:56:27 PDT)

 

Sorry, I meant $1,700.

 

15 hours of labor? It would be difficult for even an inexperienced technician to spend more than three hours removing and replacing the battery pack. Get a few quotes from other dealers.

 

I'm not sure I agree. I would say 3 hours would be the minimum if the technician was an expert. Removing the pack alone requires an hour of work, as does replacing it. That means you only have an hour left to rebuild the pack. If you have to do busbars, that is 76 little nuts that have to be removed and replaced.. that takes a while, not to mention the ECU, the vent tubes, the temp sensors, etc.

 

I don't think the 15 hours of labor is for rebuilding the pack, as there is $3500 quoted in the price for a new pack plus $1500 for the labor. I think the 15 hours is just for swapping the pack and of course is too much labor.

 

It's still necessary to move the battery ECU and system main relays from the original battery enclosure to the new. 15 hours is clearly too much, 4 hours might be reasonable.

 

Yes - I was agreeing that 15 hours is too much labor, but I was disagreeing with the fact that JK450 said the process could be done in less than 3 hours.

 

A competent technician who has done the job before can do it in about an hour and a half.

See above.

I said "removing and replacing the battery pack".

I didn't say "removing, rebuilding, and replacing the battery pack".

 

For the record, the 15 hours was for the installation of a new battery, not rebuilding an old one. It's why I plan on going with ReInvolt. With ReInvolt, the old battery case gets reused, the resulting battery is built with second gen cells, and it saves me enough to justify the money in a eight year old car.

I'm still collecting information on ReInvolt, if any of you have had experience with them.

 

Well, the thing is, when a toyota dealership orders a new battery, it doesn't come with anything inside except for the 38 modules. So even if they order all the other parts new, they still have to put the parts inside the battery.

As for Re-Involt, I had several conversations with them. They were nice and helpful. Although I bought a $250 scanner from them because they said it would work with the Prius. But when I received it, it turned out just to be a generic OBD-II scanner.. Granted, it was a really nice one that does live data streams, etc.. but it will not read the hybrid ECU, etc. When I complained, it seemed there was a misunderstanding as to what I was actually looking for. Still, I kept the scanner as it was still worth $250 and it does do a lot of good stuff, even on a Prius.

I also talked with them about buying a battery. The reason I ended up not buying one from them is that by the time you pay for shipping two directions through a freight company (two directions because their price of $1,700 is only good if you send them your old battery back) ended up costing just about as much as a brand-new battery. Plus it was going to be a huge hassle to pack up the old battery and ship it.

Instead, I bought a new one from Toyota and removed all the modules from the old battery and dropped them off at Batteries Plus for recycling. Then I had the old case recycled as scrap metal.