How many Gen. 2, still have the original Hybrid Battery? Soon there won't be many...

O.K. Normally, I would suggest taking this to FRED'S, but since this is one of the many SkiDive's nothing posts....

When I first came to PriusChat, I posted that I WON my car in a raffle. A bunch of friends and I were out one night, sipping some of the Pacific Northwest's ample supply of wine and somehow we realized that a whole bunch of places (five or so...??) were selling tickets for Prius cars. All sorts of charities were trying to get cash from auctioning off a Prius.

From Portland to Eugene. Was there some sort of Toyota thing where they gave dealer's points for giving away a Prius?

Anyway we all bought tickets, spending a couple of hundred bucks, on chances from Portland to Eugene -- except for me as I was the poor mouse of the group. I ended up buying one ticket from one local group. My ticket won. Amazing. It was a really boost to the household, except, I found out taxes needed to be paid. And, no, no one else of the group won a car.

Anyway, taxes were about $7300, more or less. Again< I posted about this way back in 2009 or so. So, around that time, about a dozen folks in Oregon got a Prius for around $7000.

Oh, my ticket was $20.

kris

 

Chalk that up as a win, which it was! But....you weren't so much "good at haggling" as lucky, then. And definitely outside the norm of prices paid for a new car.

 

Way back in the day.....some person on PriusChat could not leave it alone that I won the car. She attacked me in every way imaginable. Including the "fact" I should not have a Prius because I lived in a rural location and a Prius was an urban car.

She disappeared from the forum a few months later. Don't know. It is not the first choice for where I live, but it has worked fine -- except in the cold rain and snow. LOL>

Oh, and the haggling came about with the finance person. Because, even though I did not owe the dealership a dime, I still had to meet the finance person.

He would not let me go. I HAD TO BUY AN EXTENDED WARRANTY because it is a hybrid and it would cost thousands to repair.

 

2008 Prius Tspirit (UK), presently with 124.5k miles, and still on original HV battery. 12v battery was also replaced at 7 years old.

Bought used on 29th June 2013 at 55k miles - still rolling effortlessly.

Water pump replaced at 99k miles - otherwise it’s just the usual wear and tear items only.

Catalytic converter stolen once in Nov 2018, replaced with a £150 non-OEM by insurance. Extra cat protection installed nonetheless to prevent a repeat theft by some drooling moron who can’t tell the difference between an OEM and non-OEM cat.

Recently managed 68.1 mpg UK - (travelled 641 miles) on a tank of fuel (actually 42 litres) - during the recent London UK heatwave.

Love my “Spaceship”....!!!


iPhone 6s +

 

You know there has to be someone inside Toyota asking this same question. They theoretically have OEM battery packs that they can sell to people as replacements... but how many and when should they be created?

I have a feeling that the entire factory lines for these old prismatics have moved to non-Toyota factories in China... and so you have to wonder how Toyota deals with the entire issue. Do they contract with the company running the line like most other consumer products, where a high quality production run is sold to Toyota and branded for them, while the off-hours or night shift run is sold to some other brand, like the prismatic replacements you see on Aliexpress?

But then where do you keep them? They are basically perishable, apparently dying after a few years of not being used, and also this is affected by the weather, so you would ideally want climate controlled storage. Sounds like expensive inventory...

Maybe this is the reason that Toyota builds their modern hybrids with an electronics system that can easily be swapped between Lithium and NiMH... and they sell some cars with Lithium and some with NIMH. if the highly unpredictable market conditions for NiMH replacements in old cars makes it hard to sell them in that market, they can use the NiMH excess production packs in new cars.

 

i don't know how they manage it, but they manage it. i don't think anyone inside toyota is asking the question, because it has already been answered.
they don't theoretically have packs, they actually have packs in the supply chain.

you can get one from your local dealer

 

I have three Gen2 Priuses in the family.

2005 200K, Original Hybrid Battery, replaced 12V, Wheel Bearings, Inverter cooler, coolant, cat converter (stolen), put on $130 after market and $50 Denso 02 sensor.

2005 253K, Original Hybrid Battery, replaced 12V, Wheel Bearings, Inverter cooler, coolant, front and rear brakes. This week I will replace the cat converter $130, and then sell the original instead of waiting for thieves to steal it.

2009 249K, Original Hybrid Battery, replaced 12V, Wheel Bearings, Inverter cooler, coolant front and rear brakes, cat converter (stolen), put on $130 after market and $50 Denso 02 sensor.

It seems as long as you continue to run the prius, and don't let it sit for weeks the hybrid battery remains strong.
-andy

 

2004 Gen 2 here - finally having to replace/fix the hybrid battery (after it sat during the lockdown). 209k miles. never had an issue. 12v battery, did coolant pump on a recall, was burning oil for a while but mobil 1 high mileage stopped that.

the car sat for weeks at a time without being driven when the virus lockdown hit in March. I regret not realizing it needed to be driven with some frequency of charge/discharge cycles to keep HV battery healthy - thus 2 bad modules reared their heads - found with Dr. Prius. Now I am navigating replacing those modules - or buying a refurbished/new battery.

Has been a wonderful car - commuting and road trips - 16 years of super reliable, efficient performance.

 

Mine is a 2007, with 190k+ miles get between 50 and 60 mpg routinely. Original HV battery, no issues that I know of. When I run Dr Prius free edition, what should I be looking for as a heads up on doom? Change 12v battery every four years.

 

I don’t know about the app, but if your HV battery is starting to have problems, it will be noticeable elsewhere as well. Poor fuel economy, rapid charge cycling (from pink to green and back to pink on the central display), and unusually low power going uphill are all indications the big battery will likely need to be changed.

Even though the thread was started last year, there are still a lot of Gen 2 Prii out on the roads doing fine and probably mostly on their original batteries. It still surprises me how often I see another red 2nd gen Prius in the same parking lot as my car.