2008 Toyota prius 62k miles HV Battery Dead

Unfortunately batteries are chemical based components. Not mechanical components.
Which means predicting any remaining life-span IS very difficult.

In short, in most cases, a battery will work, until it fails. And you can only make educated guesses based on time and usage.

The dealership was selling you a used car. So who knows how sincere or thorough any inspection or evaluation of the hybrid battery they did actually was? Even if it showed signs of failing, it's not in their best interest to reveal that. It's possible it wasn't showing any signs.

My concern or question would be if they are covering this under warranty? Exactly what are they doing for remedy?
The platinum standard would be a brand new OEM replacement, which is also the most expensive remedy.

Everything else and anything else is a degree of compromise, with possible mixed results.

 

Warmer climates is one thing bad for the HV batts, be sure to use air cond to keep the cabin cool when in use. Another bad thing is running the HV battery down, which can happen if you run out of fuel and keep driving on the batt (Gen2 issue). 2016 will be the year when we start to hear more 2008 batts starting to go.

 

welcome! interesting that the dealer gave it a clean bill of health. did you ask them about their testing?

glad you were covered under warranty. certainly, the battery is just one more component that can fail when buying a used car, and especially for those who buy out of warranty.

 

Wow, so now you have another 150,000k of carefree miles. Lots of things might have done the battery in in S Fl, heat and humidity, lack of use for 3 or 4 years, hopefully everything will work out as planned with the dealer.

 

thanks! he might be right about that, many here feel like years are harder on the battery than miles. but it's disconcerting that a battery health check can only tell you that the battery is good today, and no idea for the future.

 

shouldn't be a problem, most get at least 10/150 out of them.

 

Certainly having the battery fail on your new (to you) car was an inconvenience. But now you have what I would consider to be the best case scenario in a used Prius: a late model, low mileage Gen-2 with a brand new Toyota battery. Doesn't get any better than that!
Change the transmission oil, and you should be good for a long time.

 

Yes it's seems to be a little risky if the HV battery is out of warranty, as the Prius does often give some warnings (if you drive it all the time and know what to look for) before it dies. So people might be tempted to sell them off when they notice this happening. Another problem is that when out of warranty batteries fail, many people replace them with cheap (and often substandard) rebuilds just before off-loading the car. And these often fail within a matter of months.

Unfortunately we seem to see quite a lot of cases (here on the forums) where people buy a secondhand prius and the HV battery dies soon after. Personally I don't think this is due to any inherent unreliability of the battery, or that's it's just a case of rotten bad luck either. Rather I think it is due to the timing of the sale of these vehicles as outlined above.

Your case is a little different however, as the battery was still in warranty. Normally in this case someone would just get the battery replaced under warranty and keep the car, so your failure after just two days of ownership might have just been a freak occurrence. But then again it might not have been. When the battery is starting to fail the Prius performance (power and fuel economy) can significantly decline. It's quite possible that the previous owner had noticed a serious decline and (not knowing why it was happening or that it might soon be fixed under warranty) decided that it was prudent to get rid of the car at that point. If this was the case then you actually "lucked out" and the previous owner somewhat "burnt themselves" in this transaction.