Should I Hang On to My Old (Good) Core Battery?

Welcome to Prius Chat .

Some questions:

• You say the core from the wrecked one is less than a year old, was it a brand new battery from Toyota?
• How many miles on the new Prius?
• Any history on that hv battery pack?

Good luck and keep us posted .

 

Your mechanic is correct... Do you have lots of friends and family with Prius? The happiest of happy you could make someone with an offer to give 'em a loaner hybrid pack at the first sign of trouble on their own pack... After much learning this Summer, I'm convinced that if you immediately pull a hybrid pack when the first error code comes up the likelihood of restoring that pack is way higher then when first warning gets ignored and the owner keeps driving it because they think the only option is replacement. Catch is, having an extra hybrid pack lying around requires periodically charging up each individual module with an RC charger, or the whole pack at once via a Prolong charger.

If I were in your situation, I'd swap out the packs with each other every time I changed the oil... And spread the word that you're an aging Prius owner's best friend!

 

If the battery is 1 year old, swap it into the 2007 you bought

 

If you can't use it, and can't take care of it, pass it on. It WILL deteriorate. ALL NiXX cells naturally discharge. Old, high performance cells discharge faster. You let it die....it's toast.

 

If you know what you're doing, with very little effort you can have that battery charged and ready to go for when the day comes when a friend or family member needs it. And with all this hot weather blowing hybrid battery warning lights up, it won't be sitting around for long. But again, if you know how to maintain a hybrid pack this could be held on to for years without any damage or deterioration.

 

Take the offer...

 

So if my understanding is correct, you purchased a brand new OEM hybrid battery a year ago and since then you had driven about 20k miles before the car was totaled?

If that's the case, it would be a no brainer to me....I'd definitely swap it out and then sell the core from your "new" 07. You should be able to sell that battery for $500 or more. As you can read on these forums, a low mileage Prius does not correlate to hybrid battery health.

 

Yeah, the OP was vague. I think if they had indeed spent $$$$ for a new Toyota battery a year ago, they wouldn't be asking this question as it would be somewhat of a no-brainer to swap out a 12 year old pack for the 1 year old.

 

$1600, take the money

Or swap it in to the 11 year old car