Signs/hints that your hybrid battery was on its last legs

There's so many different scenarios it's hard to say without writing something really long. But basically your charge meter indicating how much battery charge you have barely changes much with a new pack and a realy old pack fluctuates rapidly from full charge to no charge and requires deep cycling to restore capacity. This is a great overview: http://www.hybridautomotive.com/frequently-asked-questions

You can keep your pack going way longer than the Toyota Dealerships wants you to think... Cleaning the corrosion out and inspecting the pack can help prevent lots of failure points. Also deep cycling the pack every 18 months will keep it lasting way longer.

The biggest thing people get wrong is trusting a Toyota Stealership or an auto shop that has lots of overhead, both of which will prefer to replace everything with brand new rather than taking care of what you already got to keep costs down.

Do you or friend or family member have experience working on cars? Because that's going to be the best path forward and PriusChat folks will walk you through all the details.

 

I am very interested in this topic because my battery is in a downward spiral too at 143K. I am now beginning to learn and these are the videos I have watched (or queued up) so far:

Gregg Festo's introduction to refurbishing a hybrid battery pack with the CQ3 charger:

Some very ingenious methods to streamline and make the charging efficient by Fix it Fox:

A three part series on battery charging (step by step), also by Fix it Fox:

2 years after refurbishing the battery pack, again by Fix it Fox:

 

Just editorial: what do you mean by “ETA”? Pretty sure not “Estimated Time of Arrival”.

 

The most important parameter I have observed is how fast the battery is replenished and spent while driving. For me, it happens very fast. Hey, the battery was 80% full just a minute ago, now it's down to 20%. This is a classic sign of poor battery health.

 

There's no such thing as short-cuts! To nail-down an issue, you need to find anything that can cause that issue and start eliminating each issue, one by one - thru testing. Some people here just aim a 'parts cannon' at the car and ask why it doesn't fix their problem. Because they skipped step-one to begin with. IMHO; easy answers is just a guess that someone thinks is a solution. It's up to you to test their solution, because they could be dead wrong - same as some questionable YouTube videos - there are NO editors to validate those findings or conclusions. Telling the most experienced and senior people here; that you don't want to hear from them is questionable.
A one part solution requires some detective work. Those 'mechanics' that just replace parts that the scanner tell them to, will just keep replacing parts and not nail-down the real problem without some detective work. In other words, their fix is just temporary. Those are the cars that keep returning to the mechanic because the same part or something else broke.

Good Luck.