Master, engine, VSC and engine lights all came up at the same time

Do you do anything special to keep the battery lasting longer? No. I just drive the Prius and don't worry about it. The car has been operated in Honolulu, HI for 3 years, Orange County, CA for 2 years, and 5 years in southern Arizona.

Do you know if the battery is the same as the one in generation 3? The G3 battery has a different form factor but electrically is similar, in both cases the batteries contain 28 modules.

I think the possibility of of getting a battery from a salvaged car is pretty remote considering how few of these cars run in Ireland, but I'll have to look for over in Uk? Yes, you should look as widely into Europe as you can.

What's further disturbing is that Toyota Ireland don't offer any money back for your old battery unlike UK or USA? In the US, the $200 bounty is only paid to dealers, and in any event this is a minor amount.

In my mind that means something longer than the 150k that our poor friend in Ireland has experienced and the OP of the thread. Ramanjit81 reported his odometer reading in km. This equates to 90K miles.

Are these, early, failures the norm now, are we going to tell ourselves that 8-10 years is all you get, that the warranty basically is defining the lifetime of the hybrid pack? ...Should we put aside $1500-$3000 mentally in our cost to drive these cars now? That would be the prudent and financially conservative thing to do. It is far better to have a financial contingency set aside that you end up not spending; than to act shocked and surprised when your traction battery, inverter or transaxle fails, as if you had no idea this could happen to your Prius.

 

just as an FYI, Australian dealers offer a $500 rebate on any "core" battery returned if you buy and install a new battery at a dealer.

they also offer a $100 "reward" for returning a salvaged battery pack.

Jason

 

Roland , i have already been on to toyota ireland and the immediately rejected the appeal though the battery was only 5 weeks out of warranty. there seems to be an increasing failure of these batteries in year 8 especially in Ireland as ireland seems to be the only country where the hybrid battery is only covered for 5 years or 100000 kilometres. I checked that the hybrid system is in still covered under warranty in uk and us for 5 years but the hybrid battery is covered for 8 years which is not the case in ireland anymore. So i guess if your car is 8 years old you should prepare for the replacement of this battery in short while it might happen today might happen 6 months , year but you must prepare for that bus bill in my experience anyway.

GT-I9100 ?

 

Is there any particular reason why the warranty coverage in Ireland is lower than in UK?

In the US, the hybrid system is covered for at least 8 years/100K miles while in California and other states adopting CA emissions regulations, the duration is at least 10 years, 150K miles.

 

No particular reason has been sighted but from my experience i can only think that's probly that it's about time the generation 2 hybrid batteries started failing.

Are maybe just that we Irish are the poor cousins all the time anyway

GT-I9100 ?

 

This is bad to read about. But yes, as Patrick has suggested, prudence would have us prepare for an unexpected expenditure in terms of the traction battery, or other costly component. Sadly experience like Ramanjit81 has had with Toyota failing to step up even with the car having barely survived the warranty period and having only 150,000 kms is not what I bought into when shopping and researching the Prius as my current car for the family.

I suppose in fairness we will have to wait a couple of years longer before we can statistically say that all are going to have these issues around 8-10 years into driving the cars, perhaps with no relationship at all with regards to the distance driven.

Where I live, there are plenty of hills, but the climate tends to be mild, with little road salt. Prius taxi cabs have logged many thousands of kilometers here with little issues. It may just be that running 24/7 is not as hard as occasional use. But I always tended to think of taxi service as being harder on cars than the easy life of personal use. I really am not sure any more.

Roland

 

With regards to Prius traction batteries, I think that taxi service is better because the batteries remain active. I've also been in Prius taxis that have logged 250K miles or more on the original traction batteries, for example in the Washington, DC area. That gave me hope that my 2004 with 170K miles could still see substantial additional service from the traction battery.

Regardless, I am ready for the prospect of having to replace the battery when that time comes.

 

I was prepared for that as well when I bought, but also did my due diligence in research before ordering my car. I had no intention of buying something that had a history of anything other than higher than average levels of reliability.

Truly, my car has been nothing less than stellar in that regard. I've only got about 94,000 kms on it now, and it will have been in service 5 years this coming July. As it is a Gen3 car, it has just had a recall completed that had new firmware flashed to the motor generator ecu and intelligent power module to protect the inverter transistors. This could well be an old issue that was inherited from Gen2 cars for all I know.

This recent update could possibly better protect not only the converter/inverter assembly, but maybe the traction battery pack. One can only hope, and again, time will tell. In a few years if we see more Gen2's having these issues, but not Gen3's, then maybe the firmware updates did in fact achieve a lot, despite the fact that from Gen2 to Gen3 it has been reported that in all the technical changes made to the cars in the generational update, Gen3's over all tended towards having many components lightened up.... Gen2 cars supposedly were over engineered according to some. Such an outcome would tend to support my concern that the ecu programming could have been carried across from Gen2 to 3, despite manufacturing and component updates that can happen even within the same model year.

Fair to say we as Prius owners may have enjoyed a better track record with batteries than say the folks who went to Honda Hybrids. Hybrids from other firms are also using batteries using different chemistry and construction methods... they have not been around as long as Prius as yet... again, time will tell. Hoping for the best.

Roland

 

Hopefully the development of grid chargers for these vehicles will help simulate more active use (topping up) similar to what taxis might see.

 

That "lifetime" is quite an arbitrary time, of course. There are wide differences in how the pack ages due to the variation of the terrain which the cars cover. A cool flatland car, driven mostly on the highway, will have much less battery stress than a car in a hot mountainous area.

 

Roland, You can't base all those assumptions on one case. What about all the other cases of batteries that haven't failed like my 01 with 129k miles (original battery) and my 05 with 153k miles (original battery). This is a site people come to with problems. So you have to temper what you see on this site with that in mind.

 

As part of the EU your guarantee should be the same as the rest of Europe under EU law. Early gen3,s "2009 till mid 2010" only had a short guarantee "GrumpyCabby" will tell you all about that, but that was the same all over the EU so was legal. I would challenge Toyota on this.
Has the car been serviced at Toyota recently and if so did they offer you the free extended battery guarantee.
Was the car bought new in Ireland or was it imported from the UK or Northern Ireland.

John (Britprius)

 

Unfortunately the car hadn't been serviced at Toyota the last two of the total 9 services to date.

I bought the car used and the dealer who did it did the 8th service- 1st outside of Toyota network and then the next one I went to my usual mechanic who is the foreman of a Kia main dealership.

The car was originally bought in Ireland and is not an import.

Also the reduced warranty doesn't apply to my car only the newer/current ones.

Mine was 5 weeks out of the 8 year warranty when the battery failed.

Do you think I still have some recourse?

GT-I9100 ?

 

Hi Raman, have you established for certain what the hybrid battery warranty period is? Here in Australia it was originally only 5yr 100k km, but they retrospectively upgraded it to 8 years on 160k km in about 2009. They even sent me a letter to to tell us that our 2005 Prius had the warranty upgraded. I'm past that now though, at about 205000 km and over 9 years right now.

BTW. Have you got a quote for a new battery from the dealer yet. I'd be really interested to know what they're charging over there if you could let us know.

 

I've read this complete post (all 4 pages) several times now.

I believe the op or even the previous owner is a victim of the dealer inverter pump recal/replacement done improperly (dealer didn't bleed air out of inverter coolant system).
"Inverter shows the bubble" WHAT?
'I've been told to do a coolant bleed"

Her ig-on and ready voltages seem backward.
I'de hope an overheating inverter/dc-dc converter would throttle back the battery charge voltage/current to 12.4 rather than cut off completely. I believe she mis stated the ready voltage at 11 volts.

After she has a new 12 volt battery installed everything is good for a short time till air bubbled inverter/converter overheats.

Could the low hv battery codes (reported from the dealer) be from overheating inverter/converter refusing to charge hv battery.

I don't know if a rebulit 900 dollar battery from napa or from anybody is worth the effort to install.

She should get with previous owner and determine who didn't bleed the air out of inverter/converter system and let that person/dealer pay for everything!

 

I'm going to work very hard to purge that very concept from my psyche.

Well it shouldn't matter. But I think I'm going to pretend I know a lot more than I do, with the 22 year old beauty queen. Does that make me shallow? To answer my own question....

Yep, I'm pretty sure it does.

But the 70 year old Social Security Pensioner can.....Use The Search Function.

 

The battery replacement in Ireland with labour costs 2300 euro. The warranty for the generation 2 Prius was 8 years or 160000 km whichever occurs first and mine failed 5 weeks past the time although still only had 150000 km on the clock.

Assistance from Toyota Ireland had been flatly refused.

GT-I9100 ?

 

Too bad you don't know anyone that could help you install a new module and then you could go and pay for the battery test each year after that (as britprius suggested) in order to continue your battery warranty indefinitely. Installing a grid charger setup (once they are available, should be very soon) would also help prolong the battery life as well.

 

@MTL - i don't think that would work now as Toyota already have a record of the battery on my car having gone bad.

I can install module myself that is not a problem, the problem is i don't have the time or the money to buy the chargers all the equipment then wait for a month as this is the only car we have in the family and i use it to get to work and back and forth everything else around as well .


GT-I9100 ?

 

Unfortunately you're right in that case......I would probably just go for a used pack recently removed from service as you suggested in the other thread.