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Prius Battery Replacement Kit (GenII/GenIII) with NEW custom cells

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Main Forum' started by 2k1Toaster, Oct 13, 2017.

  1. chavezone

    chavezone Junior Member

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    I'm not saying that newpriusbatteries.com battery will fail at 2 years, it seems nowadays you are really buying a warranty not a battery that being said how come do you only warranty the battery for 2 years.
    Someone mentioned why not purchase a battery directly from Toyota, I haven't even considered it, I would need to look call around to the local dealers to get prices.
    My original battery lasted 6 years and 120k miles, would any of these other aftermarket batteries last that long is the question
     
  2. Raytheeagle

    Raytheeagle Senior Member

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    Not in the Vegas heat;).

    Go new if you want to keep the Prius (y).
     
  3. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    with a refurb battery, you are not buying a warranty, you are buying problems.

    problem 1) battery keeps failing, you have endless downtime

    problem 2) battery fails, company says it isn't the battery

    problem 3) battery fails, company doesn't respond

    problem 4) battery fails, company is no longer there

    buy a new battery, diy the repair, or trade cars
     
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  4. chavezone

    chavezone Junior Member

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    Yeah this heat is brutal, I really like the new design battery from 2k1toaster I am just not sure how they will perform in this heat
     
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  5. Raytheeagle

    Raytheeagle Senior Member

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    Like new;).

    Because they are(y).
     
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  6. R-P

    R-P Active Member

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    Good question. Greentech seems to have a less than impecable reputation, but maybe their sold numbers are much, much higher.

    But 2k1Toaster probably gets his customers for a large part through this forum. And I assume these people will also know how to find this forum when something goes wrong. So as long as there are no (substantiated) reports of the 2k1 battery failing, I consider that a strong indicator that they work well.
    I would have no hesitation to use his service/battery if shipping wouldn't push his option past a new Toyota battery price for me (Netherlands).
     
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  7. Prodigyplace

    Prodigyplace Senior Member

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    I remember @2k1Toaster posting heat photos that indicated cooling would be better than OEM.
     
  8. 2k1Toaster

    2k1Toaster Brand New Prius Batteries

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    A few thousand. Most have been to shops / fleets. The orders for individual units is sitting around 250-something.

    The reason is liability. I could offer a 30 year 1 million mile warranty if I wanted to. But if I needed to actually make good on that warranty the business would go bankrupt and nobody would get anything. That's the way a lot of those fly-by-the-night operations work. Refurb battery with 5 year warranty?! Wow! Try and contact them 6 months from now when the battery fails, and the email will bounce and the phone is disconnected. So that 5 year warranty is useless.

    To offer a warranty I need to carry insurance. The value of the insurance would be if some extremely high to all of the units failed within warranty period and I would have to not only eat the cost of the stock that failed, but eat the cost of new stock, new shipping, etc. That's a big $$$ number. Evey year the number sold that need to be covered goes up which means the total $$$ for the policy goes up. When the policy goes up, the premium goes up. That premium has to be paid somehow. If I wanted to offer a 10 year warranty I could, but I'd have to charge about $800-$900 extra.

    All that money buys is an insurance company's Hawaiian vacation, err I mean "motivational retreat".

    Batteries follow the same statistical failure rates as other electronics, shaped like a bath-tub and hence called the bath-tub curve. If you were to graph failures (y-axis) versus time (x-axis) you would see a spike of failures near zero time that decays rapidly down to almost nothing and stays there for a long time. Then it starts creeping up again as the time is long enough.

    ht21_1.gif

    At the factory we test multiple charge/discharge cycles and match cells to modules to packs. That's why each pack is individually marked with a unique serial number. The goal of any company is to make those first infant mortality failures internal and the end user never sees them. That's exactly what we do. Obviously it can't be 100% forever, there will always be a statistical escape but so far so good.

    The 2 years is more than enough time to catch any escape we hypothetically don't catch at the factory.

    Another plus to our warranty is that we offer it to fleets which nobody else does. If you are a taxi, uber, lyft, or pizza delivery driver your Toyota warranty or any other warranty becomes void. I delivered Chinese Food for almost a decade, mostly in the Prius and it's a hard life on the car.

    This was pulling 21A through this module which would be 4.2KW through a pack. You can see the cell differences but the shading is actually really close in value. The metal casing allows the temp sensors of the car to get a more accurate reading instantly. As you use the pack harder, the fan will come on. And as it cools down, the fan will go off. As a bonus, the car "corrects" for the plastic insulation between the module and the temp sensor in an OEM pack which means you will get higher values read back with these. That's a good thing because the actual temp is lower but the car thinks it's warmer than it is. This will cause the cooling to be MORE aggressive that original.

    IR000567.jpg
     
  9. TomB985

    TomB985 Member

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    A big thank you for the detailed upfront response, I am much less concerned about buying a battery from you than I was before. I hope I don’t need your services, but if I do I certainly know where to find you.
     
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  10. George W

    George W Active Member

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    Is there a date of manufacture on these cylinder batteries that the customer can document?
     
  11. 2k1Toaster

    2k1Toaster Brand New Prius Batteries

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    Not really but yes. The first character of the serial is a letter which is the batch its from. And that's corellated to the month and year
     
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  12. Skibob

    Skibob Senior Member

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    He sells them so fast they don’t have time to get old. :)
     
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  13. Skibob

    Skibob Senior Member

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    Man, I forgot how hot it gets there. One time I was at Hoover dam and the window popped out of the rubber track in the passenger side window of the car I was using. I stopped to get some tools to fix it and the parking lot was too hot to put my hand on the ground. Had to sit on floor mats and not touch the pavement.
     
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  14. Raytheeagle

    Raytheeagle Senior Member

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    We got married in Vegas on July 5th and it was plenty hot:eek:.

    Outdoor pictures were a challenge, but short bursts were tolerable ;).

    We ended up doing the Hoover Dam the next day and by 11 am it was 100 F on the concrete :sick:.

    The bachelors party for the fourth of July was a blast. Just wish I could remember more from that night:rolleyes:.
     
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  15. Skibob

    Skibob Senior Member

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    Haha Nevada wedding. I married my wife in Reno week after Valentine’s Day. We used to always go back every year.
     
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  16. George W

    George W Active Member

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    Where's DOLJ complaining about off-topic chat?
     
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  17. dpower

    dpower Member

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    I finally was in a position to have the kit I purchased last July into my 2005 Prius. It has 179,000 miles on it and was still running on the original battery without any nasty codes being thrown but my average mpg has been running in the low to mid 30 mpg quite a bit down from the 48-55 mpg it got when it was new.
    I haven’t seen anyone post installation costs so I thought I would share. I’m not in good enough physical condition to wash my car let alone replace a 70 pound battery that’s difficult to get to. My local mechanic, that has been working on my cars starting in the mid 90’s, crew did the install for me. They normally charge 3 hours to swap a battery out they charged me 4 hours to do the swap and install the kit. As they charge $120 an hour it came to $480 for the install. I’m guessing it probably took them longer than that as they had never cracked open a Prius battery before. So for just under $2k I’ve got a new battery installed with a 2 year warranty. I hoping to get another 10 years out of the car now.
    First impressions are it feels much more responsive to the accelerator. I’ll see how the gas mileage goes over the next month or so.
    I really wanted to do this install my self as I’ve modified the heck out of the suspension to get it to handle the way I expected but I’m disabled and not able to do this kind of work anymore.
    After this my next big expense will be replacing the drivers seat.
    The crew at Autotechtronics ( the shop that has been good to me all these years) had nothing but good things to say about the quality of the kit and the great response they got when the needed a bit of clarity over the phone. They said it was a pleasure doing business with him and they looked forward to having a resource to recommend to their othe Prius customers.
    The heat here in Katy Tx might not be as bad as Vegas but this little car has rolled through months of 100+ degree weather and I’m hoping it will continue to do so.
     
    #617 dpower, Jan 25, 2019
    Last edited: Jan 26, 2019
  18. dpower

    dpower Member

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    Test
     
    #618 dpower, Jan 26, 2019
    Last edited: Jan 26, 2019
  19. Raytheeagle

    Raytheeagle Senior Member

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    Acknowledged;).
     
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  20. George W

    George W Active Member

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    Thank you for sharing. As an older person I like to think I can still DIY on a car, but have to realize my limitations with a project like this. I'm in the market for another Gen2, investing in the right Triangle becomes more attractive with this cylindrical option. Please let us know how your experience matures with this pack.