What is killing all my Hybrid Batteries?! 3 batteries have failed.

They are not a problem for mechanics with any brain. The problem is most mechanics want to bang a wrench on something and fix it. Modern cars require electrical knowledge and debug of control systems. Modern cars no longer need a "grease monkey", they need a computer tech. As someone with degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering, the car makes perfect sense to me and is really easy to work on since it gives you all the data you really need to make conclusions.

The days of becoming a mechanic at a trade school are over, and unfortunately we are in a transitional period where most garages are still stocked with people that are computer illiterate.

 

Wow no code for 12v? That sucks. After putting 4200.00$ into the car and still not have it working is about to send me to a very dark place.

 

once you get there, you need to demand your money back from the thieves.

 

The dealership made multiple references to the hybrid specialized technicians and how few he had to work on the car. So in my head he was telling me why they needed 2 weeks to fix the car but they really didn't even fix it and now I don't trust that the ECU was the problem to begin with!

 

The car will never say "Generic Hybrid Battery Code". The Prius will NEVER make that claim. That is your technician's interpretation of what the car told him which could be correct, but unlikely.

The car actually would have told him something like "the Hybrid ECU logged DTC P0AA6 with no other logged sub-fault DTCs". In the Toyota manual that says the car has detected a HV isolation fault. The car is unable to determine the exact root cause of the problem and it is most likely not all these 10+ things but could be anything else or one of those 10+ things if it is damaged enough to not be able to report a sub-coded DTC". The Toyota manual calls this a "generic HV Isolation Fault" but for diagnosis it is very helpful because you know where it is less probable to be and where else to focus your search. Then there are options listed to try and track it down.

In your case without those DTC's, no further help is useful. Call the dealership and have them tell you every code that was logged. It should be in their system. If they didn't log any codes to their system, find a new mechanic.

 

If I can I will put a stop payment on my credit card.

 

Yes Toyota requires their techs that work on the hybrid system to have basic safety training. High Voltage DC is not a joke, it will kill you and kill you gruesomely. The course is mostly safety as in "don't touch the orange bits" and "make sure to disconnect the HV anytime you're near it" and stuff like that. No engineers from Toyota are going over Prii schematics with them. It is a 16 hour online only course and you can become hybrid certified too. It is a certification joke. Even the super special ones that get paid more, it's only about 40 hours of training. And even then, they do not learn how the car works. They learn how to use the Prius manuals and flowcharts. Most are completely oblivious to how a Prius works let alone a hybrid. It is a certification their employer forced them to take so that they don't get electrocuted and the shop insurance pays out if it does happen.

 

So I can ask for a print out of these codes. Is there a way to know for sure if the print out is from my car specific and not some other cars codes?
I drove an extra 40 miles from my local dealership to get to a "better" dealership. Is it possible the independent shop that put in the refurbished battery killed the ECU?

 

Can the ECU die slowly? After the 1st replacement HB was installed the car drove for a month with no problems, then the 2nd HB was installed and the car drove for a week. Then the 3rd HB installed the car drove for a day and when to the dealership where the said ECU was replaced.

 

I think you need to continue educating yourself about modern vehicles. If you are going to pick a fight with the dealership you will need to know your stuff. Not only do most of them have no idea how it truly works, they will very loudly and continuously claim they are correct. You need to be more sure that you are right.

When the tech hooks up the Toyota Techstream to the car it is a laptop running Windows connected via an OBDII adapter into the OBDII port in your car down and to the right of your steering wheel. What the technician sees is like the image I posted. In that image if you look directly above the left-most tree-view control you will see a string that starts with "JTD" and the rest is blurred. I blurred that because that is my VIN. So yes the techstream readout is very easy to match to any vehicle because the VIN is right there.

But then what usually happens is the tech manually copies down the codes read (and usually ONLY the codes ignoring all the other wonderful information) onto a clipboard or just whatever random scrap of writing stuff they can find like the opposite side of a cardboard box that had the brakes for the last car in the shop. Then they go back to the computer and copy these again manually into a dealership computer where they get logged in the system. When the shiny dealer service guy comes over and not the greasy tech that was working on your car, he has just printed off that same page of info. The info on the Toyota Techstream screen is accurate. Then there are 2 people and 2 manual transcriptions where errors can be produced.

So the "print out" you usually get is in no way linked to your car, so no you cannot be sure that it is your vehicle. If you get to look at the techstream's screen, then you can match the VIN and be sure.

Possible? Yes. Probable? Not really. Provable? Not at all.

 

The ECU is a computer. Can your computer die slowly?

The answer is yes. When you get refurbished batteries and even BRAND NEW Toyota packs, they reuse the Hybrid ECU. Why? Because it is super expensive and a pain in the a$$ to pair to your car. The other one the work was already done. The most common types of ECU failures are solder joints and electrolytic capacitors. To most technicians it is a black box. Replace the box if something is wrong, it is not their money.

Also every replacement messing with those connectors it is perfectly possible some ESD shorted something. Or that your bus bars are dirty and causing problems. Or that one of a million things. You need codes.

I am perturbed by your last sentence.

Did the dealership replace the HV ECU? Or did the other mechanic?

As soon as you do an ECU swap, you will have to use Techstream to clear DTC B2799 which is the HV ECU Immobilizer Communication Error DTC because now you have a potentially stolen or at least different ECU. Then you have to register the new ECU's communication ID with the rest of the system. Perform a reset, initialization, and calibration routine for the ECU. If the independent shop actually did this, I'd be surprised. So hopefully you mean the dealer did it. And if they didn't then a non-calibrated ECU can throw all kinds of random codes. It is taking factory normalized trims as gospel on your old car that is way out of factory spec.

 

You may want to put your vin into the Toyota owners website and look at the service records and see if there are any decent notes. While car shopping I looked at the records of probably 40 cars and sometimes they do list good detailed notes that say what codes they found and what they did to resolve it.

 

And that folks, is EXACTLY how a STEALership so richly earns the title.......

As others have aptly pointed out, it is nearly (nay, functionally) IMPOSSIBLE for a warning light to illuminate on a modern vehicle and there NOT be at least one DTC stored in an on-board computer. In most cases, there will be multiple codes stored, because other computers will see that another has a code.

While we(I) certainly do not have the full and complete story about your vehicle and it's history that may have bearing on this concern, based on what we have read, it is pretty clear that everyone working on your car is a parts-changer and NOT any form of industry professional. I say this because ANY "mechanic" who cares about his/her job, will follow the OEM diagnostic procedures and report back every pass/fail for the diagnostic tests they perform. This is not the case here, the STEALership has provided *just enough* information and HOPE to get the customer to approve their GUESTimate(s). You have paid a LOT of money for a REPAIR that has not yet been completed.

 

Thank you that is great advice I was unaware that was possible.

 

2k1, you're confusing me about this "pairing". I've rebuilt several batteries (as complete units), swapped them into customer's cars and never had to do any of this reset, initialization,calibration stuff you speak of. Are you talking about the "COMPUTER ASSY, BATTERY" ecu in the HV battery pack or the "HV CONTROL" module, or something else. Maybe I'm misunderstanding.

PS, Mountain, really hate you had to spend $1900 on that deal if it was one of the modules in my pictures that got replaced. If anyone else needs one, this one is available for $1895. Just kidding..

 

I know I'm resurrecting an old thread, but did you ever get a resolution on your battery issues?