battery pack failure

Your dealer prices are much too high. A new HV battery installed at my dealer is $3400. I had a ReInVolt rebuilt battery (see their web page) installed in my 2004 Prius by my Toyota dealer for a total of $2000 (the price would be a bit higher now). Where are you located?

JeffD

 

What is your mileage?
What state do you live in?
You may be in a CARB state that has 150K miles 10 yr warrenty on the HV battery.
Need more info from you.....

 

Art Vandalay is an alias used on Seinfeld when they need to invent someone.

I suspect Mr. Vandalay will not be answering any questions about his supposed Prius allegedly have issues.

 

+1

A brand new member with no post history reports a catastrophic failure. It this is not trolling, you can call me stupid.

If I was admin here, I would track IP addresses of those new posters. You can actually discover something interesting.

 

Yeah, but people do often sign up here because they've just experienced a problem and want to get advice. Also, many people like to use names of TV/Movie characters for their user names, so I wouldn't call troll just yet.

There's also an "Art Vandalay" over at bobstheoilguy. From memory I think he's an importer/exporter or something.

 

More info needed. Location, miles, average MPG, and the EXACT codes the dealer pulled.

Call up that dealer and laugh in their face. They are ridiculously high priced. Unless you live in Hawaii which is not serviced by Toyota Motors USA.

You can. A cell is $5 to $20 on eBay.

Seems silly you wouldn't buy because a cell couldn't be replaced... And again, laugh at this stupid dealer. You can't replace the individual cells in your cell phone battery or laptop battery either. But you can in a Prius so it is moot.

You may want to open the question up to other people as this board is full of knowledgeable people who know more about the solution that the very few that have had pack replacements. So I will give you my 2 cents anyways even though I do not qualify.

A brand new pack from Toyota can be installed in the $2500 to $3500 range. Walk into a normal dealership, hand them the keys and come back when it is fixed. This is always the most expensive fix with any work.

A refurbished pack does exactly what you wanted to do. It takes cells from lots of packs, usually crashed Prii that would otherwise sit and waste away in a junkyard, finds like capacity cells, balances them, and sells these various like-propertied cells as a single module. You can even buy GenI packs with GenII cells. Re-Involt is one of a few that do this professionally. A pack is in the $1500 range. Depending on location, shipping options, installation options, and if you will send in your old core, the price goes up. Installation yourself is easy and takes an hour if you don't know what you are doing. Most of the time is removing interior trim pieces without damaging them. Installation at a Toyota dealership should be a couple hundred dollars.

A salvaged pack is a pack pulled from a broken Prius. Almost all of these are junkyard finds because of accidents. Front end collisions in the Prius are very costly to repair and the car is totalled. The battery pack is in the back. You can find them on eBay for $200 to $500. Installation is the same as above. Free and easy to do yourself, or a couple hundred dollars at a dealership. People have even had these batteries shipped to the dealership itself and you just drive in and drive out like the first option but with a salvaged pack. If you watch local ads, go to Craigslist, or visit a pick-n-pull lot, you can usually find them even cheaper. Better yet, redneck junkyard attenders give them away for free some times. They don't understand high voltage and it is considered dangerous so they want it out of the car. You come get it, you can have it. Most places you have to pay to recycle the battery too, so even more incentive to recycle it.

So worst case, $3500 and you get a new shiny pack from Toyota. Best case, you find a junkyard that will give you a free traction battery from a 2004-2009 that hasn't been sitting for many many months (newer the better) and you can swap it in an afternoon on the weekend yourself for a grand total cost of nothing.

 

have you run it by dr. pennypacker?

 

Art we get a lot of 'trolls' on this site, mostly from MI, hired by frightened car makers to stop the acceptance of modern cars. Most just post one time, trying to throw a grenade. Stuff like "My battery died, and the dealer wants Millllions to repair it" when in fact the battery is cheap compared to other issues.

Remanufactured Hybrid Vehicle Battery Packs

battery 2006 Toyota Prius Base 1.5L in Charging & Starting Systems | eBay

 

Don't take it personal, we've had several "trolls" come on here and make outrageous statements. Normally they post once and that's it.

There are so many ways to fix a bad battery. It is very uncommon for an 06 w/ 131k on it to have this failure. Where are you located? Are you in a hot climate?

You can replace a cell but you have to balance the modules by capacity. There are numerous posts here about what to do with a bad traction battery. Go to Google and search "Prius traction battery replacement" and you'll get more info than you ever wanted.

 

I want to see a copy of the dealer estimate or invoice including their name and address first before I believe this is nothing more than a troll. If not a troll, then I'd look to know which dealer is quoting way above everyone else.

Yeah I'm a cynic, but I've seen it so many times on here before. I too would be soo curious to see IP address clusters.

 

Dude, take a Valium!
Your first post fit the classic TROLL maneuver, the only thing that somewhat redeemed you, is you came back.
We are not here to be your personal maintenance engineers, and or servants. Several of us did ask proper questions, several made suggestions and posted links in your quest to fix your car. You have to admit, 131,000 is a lot of miles on the pack. There are certainly many salvage battery packs you can buy, find an independent Prius repair shop, even eBay.
Seriously, who do you think we are going to respect more, the poster with over 4,000 posts, or somebody with 4! GC is a man with many miles of personal experience with the Prius, he's cool!
When you chill, come on back, we can possibly work with you on getting a rebuilt, replacement battery for your car!

 

(For the purpose of this post I am foolishly going to assume there really is an Art Vandalay with a real Prius who really has a dead HV Battery and took it to a real dealer. It is optional, but I am also going to believe in the Tooth Fairy for this post)

I begin to sympathize with the dealer, all we have from Mr. Vandalay is "I am a victim! I am a victim! You are persecuting me!" If that is also his real life attitude, I would want to make sure my quote was high enough to put up with it, and ideally high enough he went somewhere else.

There are days I regret PriusChat is free.

(I return you to the reality of an obvious alias who has no details, just a single post claiming what non owners think is high ticket damage with no details, then whining)

 

Artvandalay - Im in Michigan too and I'd like to help in any way I can. Im in Macomb County (Harrison Township). Are you close?

 

And we are discussing. There was no promise YOU would control the discussion.

Should you want help, all the codes the computers generated would allow us to second guess the dealer, but we do not have them and can't get them. You either have them or can get them from your dealer.

Without the codes all I can do is propose cheaper sources for the HV Battery, which I have.

Urban Dictionary: troll