Traction Battery slowly going bad

Get the grid charger with discharge ready harness and simple discharger from hybridautomotive.com or priuschat shop and fix it before it fails. You will spend about $500 total including shipping and be able to save and keep your battery going for a long time to come.

 

If you buy a rebuilt battery from a local shop what do you think will happen to your old battery? And where do you think the core for the rebuilt came from originally?

You would always be better off with 28 matching original modules reconditioned with a grid charger and discharger than a rebuilt consisting of who knows what mixed together. Any local shop that offers rebuilt batteries could install the grid charger for you. I'm sure there are members in your area that could assist.

 

In all honesty, given the circumstances you've outlined, I would have a new battery installed by Toyota.

Just think of it in the same way you would about having to have your auto transmission overhauled.

 

Your symptoms seem a little different from standard battery degradation. Old battery with low capacity would both charge and discharge very quickly. It might be worth ( for somebody experienced) to open the battery and check the oxidation on connecting bars.
As for remanufactured batteries, they are just a temporary measure.
Same about grid charger, IMO. If your battery was at 150k miles, grid charger would be able to help. But at 300k and a price of 1/6 of a brand new battery ..... does not feel economical

Alex

 

I had symptoms of increasingly rapid charge and discharge (none of the others you list--I think you might have other problems, too) and started looking into replacement. My solution--I found a guy on Craigslist parting out a wrecked Prius with 60K miles on it. I bought the battery for $800 and pulled it out of the car (takes about 1/2 hour). That was 30K miles ago and it's working great.

Back on Craigslist a few months later, I found someone looking for used Prius batteries and sold my "core", still nominally working, for $300. I was thinking of refurbishing it myself as a "spare," but it was hard to pass up the cash and free up some space on the workbench. So I got an apparently decent battery for a net cost of $500, and the car stayed in service.

 

I'm not a fan of the grid chargers because they are expensive for what they are: a good idea but no solid data or warranty to back them up.

You are stuck with expensive options without a DIY component: either trash the car or pay the $3k for a new installed battery. In your shoes I would buy a new battery if the rest of the car looks like it is good for another 50 - 300k miles.

 

In all honesty......and especially since you suspect other problems.......I don't think you should nurse this vehicle along any longer.

Regardless of the make and model, they tend to become "money pits" after 10 years and 150K miles or so.
Is it using any oil ?
Any signs of coolant leakage ?
Any looseness in the suspension ?
Any evidence of impending body rust problems ?

Since you are honest in your assessment of your own capabilities, a good long term fix is likely to end up costing you around $2,000.
I think that money could be better spent on a new (to you) vehicle.

 

I don't think that is a useful generalization per se, and even less so for the Prius. Your follow-up questions are the way to go.

There is maintenance that comes up in the 100 - 150k mile range, but it would probably also come up in a used vehicle after a year or three of use.

 

What generalization would you use for a Prius ?
200K ?
300K ?


It's a crap shoot and the odds get worse as the time and mileage adds up.

In addition, it sounds to me like he is really just guessing that the HV battery is most of his trouble.
Spending a hunderd bucks or so on a professional diagnosis and maybe even a second opinion would probably be money well spent.

 

My suggestion is to not generalize.

 

So, like many who have responded to this initial question, you favor completely ignoring the age of the vehicle in question when determining the best course of action ???

Sometimes generalizations are useful, sometimes they are not.

 

Yup. My wife and one of our sons manage to coax me up a local ski hill more often than I'd like. I don't know which is harder on the car, the climb or the descent, but it seems tough on the battery for sure.

 

Pretty much, although I am not talking about extremes.
Car age would make me think of different things to check but I would not presume life left based on car age.

Similar to tyres

 

300k miles is a lot on a car. I personally wouldn't throw any real money at it and retire it for a new 2015

 

If $3000 is spent on a new battery and it delays the purchase of a different car by 50k miles it cost 6 cents a mile.
What about the other things that can go wrong, you say ? That is why you think long and hard about the overall condition of the car, and check the common repair/failure points.

 

There's 3rd gen thread going: someone's looking at $1700 to replace the gasket on their timing chain cover. Likely the best approach with an expense like that is to just let it drip. But just to illustrate: everything's steep these days.

Tough call though, with 300k miles.