The Green Bean Experience Thread-I Did It

Interested to hear more updates at the 2yr mark. Gonna go the same route and hope for the best. Thanks for sharing your direct experience

 

I’d look at OEM of you can afford it and are keeping the car. Prices for new cell rebuilt GreenTec, which is much better than GreenBean are climbing while prices for OEM are not, yet. Who knows what prices will do next. Stay away from GreenBean or any other used cell battery unless you just want to dump the car.

 

I purchased a "rebuilt" HV battery from a vendor on CL (Alex CL vendor from 917 area code). Two and a half years later, my 2006 Prius is still going strong. I am getting 45 to 48mpg in winter and 50+ mpg in late spring, summer and early fall. I paid $800 for HV battery with I believe a six month warranty.

I drive a lot - about 30k/year. What I have noticed is that the HV battery has improved over time. Initially, the HV battery only had capacity to stay in only electric mode for about 5 to 10 seconds (IOW, not very useful initially). Over time, my pretty much daily 120 mile commute on the interstate over rolling hills with cruise set at 61mph has improved the battery performance. For example, the HV battery now has capacity to stay in only electric mode for about 5 minutes and goes to green four or five times during my commute. Whereas, initially I would go to green only once during the same commute.

Moral of the story: I have had exceptionally good luck with my "refurbished" HV battery. However, based on what is reported here, my experience is the exception (rather than the rule) with refurbished HV batteries. IOW, if I had to make my decision again, I would likely choose a brand new HV battery. Because, refurbished batteries are generally too much of a crapshoot.

 

Being lucky is a big part of it. Finding a quality refurbishment is not impossible just not easy.

 

What often happens in a dealership is that you go in for one thing and the rep comes back and says when we opened it up we found three more things. For what you’re up against time a price wise, I’d get a small shop opinion. Explain to them that it is for a short period of time that you intend tend to own it.

 

Bought a green bean for 1200. Great experience.

 

Sounds about right. We paid 699 or so for a rebuilt from hybrid doctor Fairfax VA.. he sells online too .. it takes a shop and equipment to do this work with quality..

 

It takes knowledge and experience to do this work with quality.

 

For $1200 hopefully you got a happy ending also.....

 

Did you have to send them an actual picture of the scanner? Autozone only gave me a printout and now the car doesn't run to take it back.

 

I'm in the same boat. I have a 2007 with 203k and my battery just died. I might go with the greenbean with lifetime warranty. The lifetime warranty is $275 more but I've read some ppl say that that the changed battery dies in 3 years. I wonder if each replaced battery has a 3 year warranty...

 

Yeah alot of subjective info . Read the fine print. Remember these are probably Franchises. Things can get real tricky in these times .you can bet you will be holding the bag here. Most won't have a Prius in 3 years. Is the reality.And fks who will aren't paying upwards of 2300K for power storage.this kinda stuff is for the quick trigger pullers. The reality catches up with ya when it over . They bank on this.

 

Any updates re: GreenBean experience and how long / well the battery performs?

 

I have a green bean in this 07 green car that I bought about I don't know 4 to 6 months ago now It's been running okay with that battery and I'm taking it out right now and it's going to go in another car I'll check the date on it but I think it's like 3 years old and it still seems to be doing fine I don't really use Dr Prius but I use tech and it looks pretty decent in tech

 

I have heard that GBB no longer offers a lifetime warranty.

I bought a used Prius with one of their batteries with a transferrable warranty. I am still having trouble sitting after not being able to transfer this warranty because I missed their very important 7 day window by two days. No exclusions. Even in the event of someone like me being pissed about this forever.... and threatening to always comment on their customer service when I see a thread about them.

Ahhh... still hurts.

Follow what others have said. forget the high priced refurb companies. Go with a local installer that conditions the batteries (same thing for < 1/2 the price) or go new Toyota for a little more.

I made it a point the other day to contact a seller that listed a car with a lifetime battery. I said is it GBB? Yes. Follow through on getting that transferred ASAP. They don't want to support this and are looking to eliminate all warranties/costs.

 

And if you would have thought about that for a minute all you had to do was just call and tell him that the thing was acting up and use his name Tell him you're at a different address whatever You move to another state whatever the case may be or you just wanted to transfer the warranty but there was nothing wrong at the time but when there is something wrong use the old customer's name seems to work unless the technician knows the customer personally which is highly unlikely.

 

I think there was a zero percent chance GBB would have serviced it for me even if I was at the previous owners house and he cooperated in the scheme. They wanted all kinds of paperwork just for the transfer. Things you wouldn’t normally have in all cases. Bill of sale (probably notarized) and previous owners registration. The list goes on

 

That's why it's not going to get transferred generally speaking even in the week. Usually these things are scams if you want to call them that or whatever they make the hoops so hard to jump through on purpose if you read the nonsense most people wouldn't bother You're going to pay 11 to $1,300 for that holy Christ bite the bullet and pay the $300 or 350 more for the real thing for the 10 years. What it is is people think they're going to be out of the car in 18 months because they got a good job and they're going to go buy a generation 3 and ride off into the sunset. Exactly.

 

Just my 2 cents. Had a breenbean battery installed in my 2005 Prius with 160K miles. 5 years later and now at 195K and it's still going strong.