Advise Please: exploded hybrid battery on road trip (outside of Louisville, KY)

I'm NOT promoting fear. I'm promoting caution. BECAUSE AN EXPLODED BATTERY COULD BE DANGEROUS.
I think misinforming people is telling them a high voltage, toxic chemistry based component that is in some unknown state of being is likely to be perfectly safe. THATS misinforming and NOT being helpful, perhaps even dangerously damaging.

If it turns out the battery is safe to be around and handle?
I'm fine with that.
BUT from the description from the OP of what happened and what she smells? I'm not going to GUESS it's OK and tell her that caution shouldn't be applied.

 

Thanks I agree.
Plus in this case, we're not even talking about a someone trained or trying to do DIY work. It's a person with a Hybrid Battery in really unknown condition.
In a case like this, I'm going to easily default to be as safe as possible.
Bottom line, unknown condition and dealing with high voltage and a component with toxic chemical components, someone describing an "explosion" and smelling chemical smells? Yes...be safe it COULD be dangerous.

I'm not trying to chicken little the OP, but there IS a reason Toyota puts a dozen warning stickers over all the Hybrid Battery components, and from their perspective they treat it as pretty much NOT a user serviceable component.
Hybrid Batteries can be dangerous if damaged. or mishandled.
This battery is damaged, and we don't know what that damage is or to what extent. That's reason enough for IMO extreme caution.

 

Toyota’s Emergency Response Guide (PDF) and Dismantling Manual (PDF) for second-generation Prius cars discuss the serious hazards of high voltage and NiMH battery electrolyte. These hazards can be managed, of course, with adequate training (or self-study) and personal protective equipment.

If you don’t know what you’re looking at, and which parts might give you an electric shock or chemical burn, however, it’s best to stay away from the HV battery and the high voltage cables and devices, most identified by an orange color code. Even the auxiliary (12 volt) battery can cause grave injuries if mishandled, though the AGM type used in older Prius cars is safer than most.

If the HV battery has failed and won’t be replaced, the important thing is to dispose of the car responsibly, with the least risk of personal injury, environmental harm, or liability for towing bills or parking fines. As others have kindly suggested, a charitable donation or a sale at a low price as a non-working parts car may be good options; a junkyard might also agree to remove the car at no cost in exchange for the title.

Depending on where the car is parked, the clock may be ticking: in many places, vehicles left for more than 72 hours (or some other time limit) are deemed abandoned, and towed and impounded at the owner’s expense.

 

OP, there is some merit to the safety procedures and high voltage warning posts above.

We don't know your mechanical skills.

Still, I'd think you would be safe removing the carpeting, covers and seats to have a visual look at both the 12V and Hybrid batteries.

OP; also curious if we have all on this site have offered you a "game plan" to help you through this tragedy. What did you decide?

 

Thanks for posting basic facts & instructions for a potentially dangerous situation... I just read thru them and didn't find much of anything I didn't already know, but reading these materials is what every hybrid repair person needs to do periodically... Knowledge is power!

 

Remove the Prolong adapter. You can either use it on your next Prius, or sell it to interested folks here. Altho, an exploding HV pack is not a ringing endorsement to be associated with their system

 

Prolong makes it very clear that if you have a failed cell their trickle charger can't fix that... I'd appreciate if you'd not reach for defamatory speech against Prolong. They're a great company providing a valuable product that's heped many, many people when Toyota would not!

I don't know why the word "explode" has brought out so many trolls, but this is normal Prius battery stuff that happens when you don't replace a failed module and keep driving it. It's not some terrifying thing, it's just another post on here that's not much different than others, with exception of some descriptive words, which has really let the dogs out.

 

I wasn't intending to 'troll'. The OP mentions the 2 items in the same post.

I wish the OP would have given some more background as to what circumstance caused the installation of a Prolong adapter. I also be interested to learn how it was decided that the HV pack was viable enough to benefit from it.

Usually when folks make the investment into the Prolong system, they exercise routine maintenance in the use of that system. They don't deplete the pack to a point of hard failure.

Something doesn't jive about the use of the Prolong system and the hard failure in the HV pack

 

Based on what I know about NiMH, and multi-cell batteries in general, I would think that just about any battery pack can benefit from the Prolong system (particularly a balance charge once in a while).
According to Prolong, even a failure light doesn't necessarily mean it's too late:
"The next phase of battery failure is a failure light on the dash and cell failure. Our products can still help vehicle owners in this situation, but the success rate depends on how long it has been since the failure first appeared."
Note however, that popping sounds would surely indicate a mechanical failure (of cells or otherwise), which would certainly require mechanical repairs.

I would agree with the dog hair theory, though maybe/maybe-not in the fan. When I installed my Prolong harness, I took the extra time to take the cover off my battery pack to see how things were set up in there. Note; that when I bought my Prius there was dog hair in every crack and crevice of the car. Anyway, dog hair had made its way through the fan and into the pack, and had piled up on top of the cracks between the modules. The fan (blower) itself was somewhat dirty but had no dog hair or considerable deposits in it.

I concur that assuming that the failure in this case was in the cells, someone with the DIY knowledge could probably just swap out a couple of modules and be good to go. Which is what I plan to do when my '04 Prius battery decides to drop a cell.