Replacement Battery Pix

Good choice in my book. Same thing I bought last year. Can't remember the date on it, measured 13.0 volts straight out of the box.

Good luck on the install.

 

Hi Kris,

Thanks for posting the three photos. In the center of the first photo, there is a six-digit number to the right of the J13 sticker. That six-digit number is the actual manufacture date in DDMMYY format. Can you please look at that number and post it, since there is some glare on the photo?

Did you see a label on the battery or box which shows country of manufacture?

Good to see that the battery has the TrueStart label showing an 84 month pro-rated warranty. That is much better than prior practice where the battery had a 24 month warranty.

Note that the TrueStart label appears to have been added on top of the existing labels, at least on the top of the battery.

Nice to hear that the battery voltage of 12.88V shows fully-charged. Was the box sealed when you bought it, or had it been opened (perhaps by the dealer's parts dept to charge the battery prior to your purchase)?

 

Thanks, Kris. You are a very brave woman, to be peeling stickers off a new battery - since at some point in the future you might want to take advantage of the battery warranty. Hope they can be restuck onto the battery.

Here is my interpretation of the stickers:

The battery was made by GS Yuasa in Japan, on June 1, 2013. It slowly made its way to the West Coast via freighter and sat around in the Toyota distribution warehouse in southern CA for a while.

In October 2013, someone charged up the battery and stuck the J13 and TrueStart stickers on, which shows that the battery had some attention paid to it in October 2013 and the battery qualifies for the 84 month pro-rated warranty which is similar to other batteries with the TrueStart label (which generally are produced in Mexico). At that point, the battery was placed in the individual packing box, ready for shipment to a dealer.

Then the battery made its way up to Oregon and sat in the dealer's stockroom for a month or two prior to its sale to you.

So the price of $175-$200 which you were quoted by your local dealers isn't bad considering that the battery was produced in a very high-labor cost country, traveled 5,500 miles across the Pacific, got a boost charge in Los Angeles, then traveled another 1,000 miles to be available to you in Oregon.

The MSRP of the battery in the past had been $139 (during most of the prior decade). I was wondering what justified the substantial increase to $175-$200, and now suppose the main justification would be the 7-year prorated warranty which is now offered.

Given the PC member reports logged about 12V battery life, it is fair to say that many owners who buy the TrueStart labeled battery will have an opportunity to make a claim under the prorated warranty after 4 years or more. This is basically just a marketing tool to encourage a repeat sale at a somewhat discounted price.

By the way, when I bought Prius 12V batteries in the past from the dealer, they were packaged in two boxes with a layer of absorbent material in between the two boxes. So it looks like the packaging has evolved to a more tree-friendly method now.