Gen III Owners: How Has Your HV Battery Held Up? *poll*

YMMV

 

2009/09 at 85,000 mi.

Under normal conditions I don't notice anything different but when the battery is charged to full 8 bars the battery lines are not discharged linearly, it jumps from 4 to 2 bars in an instant. For me this is an indication that it doesn't hold the full charge. I measured capacity with Hybrid Assitant when I did from 60% to 40% SOC nothing unusual, but when I did it from 77% to 40% there was a sudden drop from 55% to 40% and capacity was estimated at 3.35 Ah, nominal capacity is 6.5 Ah (report in the attachment).

Recently it was also the first time the battery got really hot (63°C) when charged to full 8 bars, I never observed that before.
In winter conditions I also noticed that battery wasn't giving out the full power.

There are indications that battery is not at it's full power and capacity, but a normal user would hardly notice it, even when measuring capacity from 60% to 40% SOC nothing unusual happens. I also didn't notice any drop in MPG.

I still have 2 years warranty on the battery, I will see if it fails within two years and I get the new battery I will keep the car for the long run if it doesn't I will probably sell it.

 

i don't recall seeing many gen 3 battery replacements yet.

 

I started as "yes" then changed to "no"....I read title of thread as, "Has Your HV Battery Held Up?" and skimmed down to <200,000 "yes - it has held up"....then saw the poll had asked if the battery went out...so changed to "no"...

I am assuming the other "yes" was a mistake?

I did have a bad inverter and head gasket @ 150K that caused a "check hybrid battery" light but after replacing engine and inverter it went away...

 

No, but they are starting to appear here.

 

My sister has a 2010 with 202,000 miles. Battery fan went out and caused all sorts of "hybrid errors" replaced it with a used fan and was good to go.

The original hybrid battery still works great! Discharges/charges slowly and shows signs of good health. The engine on the other hand.... used a sh*t ton of oil, then the head gasket started fail to leak coolant into one of the cylinders around 180,000 miles. My Dad and I replaced the engine with a used low mileage 2012 Plug-in Prius engine.

It isn't the battery that we have to worry about in the Gen 3, its the engine! Nobody would have guessed that 10 or 15 years ago!

 

The Gen3 batteries are aging, degrading, and "failing" just like the Gen2 batteries did as they get older:
How do I know if my hybrid battery is failing? - Hybrid Automotive

Our sales of Gen3 Prolong Battery Reconditioning Systems have grown noticeably lately

 

I ran Hybrid reporter again from 80% to 40% and got more then previous 3.35 Ah, now I got 3,99 Ah.

It may be a measuring error or I managed to re-calibrate something or even improve the battery (I doubt). I had an Idea looking at what Prolong Battery Reconditioning is doing and wanted to get to as low SOC as possible with normal driving. When I got down to 38% SOC and engine came on to charge the battery I started to drive in a "spirited" fashion and lower the SOC even further down to 32%, I did that two times. Somehow now I measured 20% more capacity from the battery, any ideas?

 

We have had very few reports of Gen3 HV batt fails in the USA.
European Gen3 taxis were having problems a few years ago, possibly due to less robust components in European models. Even if you say Gen2 2009, not much action so far.

My impression from following this issue closely on PriusChat, I tend to feel we are not hearing as many Gen3 batt fails as we did for Gen2 at the same point. Even a small failure rate for Gen3 would be an avalanche of cases, since many more 2010-2012 vehicles were sold than say 2004-2007 were sold.

An interesting question would be how many say 2006 HV batts have failed? I think it could be 10% or more. In our surveys here on PriusChat we consistently got results in the 15-20% failure range, but we never got too many responses (100+) and the community here will tend to be those with batt problems. Consumer Reports did a survey around 2013 but that's the last data we have.

EDIT: >>Strikes me 2006 Model Year was already up to 3% batt fails in the Consumer Reports data of approx. 2013 So we are 4 years later now, 2010 model year would have be approaching 3% batt fails to equal the 2006 model year. I do not think we are on the same trend line now (reliability doing better), but it would be great if CR could update the batt survey this year (too late probably so next year).

 

Dropped in a brand new battery at about 184,000 miles in a 2013 Prius. Dropped in a brand new battery at 184,000 miles in a 2013 Prius.

 

What kind of symptoms happened, if any.

$2900 on the nose? That seems quite reasonable.

Just technically curious, is that a flatbed scan, then you deleted all the personal info with Photoshop or similar? Looks good.

 

Gas mileage was dropping, it showed little charge even when driving. Took it in for service and got the bad news. It is a flatbed scanner image. Used free paint dot net desktop program to erase boxes containing personal and vehicle identifiable info. Dealership was very generous with price because we had purchased a new vehicle just before. With sales tax it was $3,105.15

 

Did you get the hybrid battery fan checked and cleaned before the replacement? Those are the symptoms

 

Per invoice above, they replaced filter and cleaned fan assembly. Even if it was a bad fan, 184K miles is close to the battery life. Some might last longer but I needed a running car for my 40K miles/year use. I am pretty happy now that it just crossed 200K miles without much else other than regular maintenance and synthetic oil every 10K.