A $10 vs $4000 Battery Repair Camry Hybrid

Personally I would like to see 3 or 4 depots level centers that collect, salvage, and resell refurbished traction batteries at a discount. Failed parts go to recycling. But this would be in a perfect world.

Bob Wilson

 

I think that would only work out if a standard cell was being used, otherwise there wouldn't be enough profit in it.
Plus, Tesla and maybe Toyota want the old backs back for onsite peak shaving and UPS purposes.

 

Sure...but high voltage mistakes can lead to learning about the "After Life".

I'm all for Trial and Error, but I try to avoid Trial and Death.

 

There is a big difference doing safely "controlled" trouble shooting and "life ending" ill conceived events of foolhardy tampering.

 

Interesting aside, yesterday a friend road in my car, and when he saw it was a prius, asked the year. One of his friend's gen II battery had died early and he had checked all cells and replace the few bad ones. I asked why he didn't simply buy a rebuilt one, and he said he was fresh out of college and didn't have much money. Nice! Maybe skill levels don't have to be that high. I think Bob Wilson should know.

Ok now for the interesting next interesting tidbit. The car was a hand me down from his dad, who works for exxon. Exxon had a program where prii were very cheap for employees. Then we discussed how some large evil corporations aren't all evil.

 

There are surely instructions or videos on the web on how to do it. The only skill beyond 'don't touch the bare terminals' needed is soldering. The biggest hurdle I think for someone mechanically inclined might be getting a decent multi-meter. The individual batteries of 6 cells seem to be readily available for hybrid packs. At least the cylinderical ones are from an unrelated search that stumbled upon them.

 

Would it be beneficial to rotate the cell positions: move the ones at the centre out to the ends, and so on?

I'd concur: a decent digital multimeter is good to have, lots of applications.

I think the most serious shock hazard is with fully assembled battery touching terminals of the two outboard end cells. Danger much less handling individual cells.

 

interesting tidbit (if true).