Edmunds dealer partner, Bayway Leasing, is now offering transparent lease deals via these forums. Click here to see the latest vehicles!
The Great Hybrid Battery Debate
This discussion has been closed.
Popular New Cars
Popular Used Sedans
Popular Used SUVs
Popular Used Pickup Trucks
Popular Used Hatchbacks
Popular Used Minivans
Popular Used Coupes
Popular Used Wagons
Comments
MODERATOR /ADMINISTRATOR
Need help navigating? kirstie_h@edmunds.com - or send a private message by clicking on my name.
Share your vehicle reviews
Almost all replacements done to date have been under warranty, and they have been miniscule in number considering the number of cars involved.
Many owners do not participate in Car Forums. And those that do particpate is probably not an accurate statistical sample!
We don't know the costs.
we don't know how many Honda or Toyota covered or did not cover.
We don't know how many poeple reported or did not report their problems.
We only know what owners who particpate in car forums have entered. The miniscle number may not be accurate, because I would venture to say that the number of car forum participants is miniscule compared to the number of cars involved.
And miniscule divided by miniscule is a meaningless measurement, Just as John's declaration of "the need for replacement is unlikely", implying zero problems.
On a lighter side, where did RailroadJames go? His comments were always upbeat and interesting.
YMMV but I shift,
MidCow
If the Japanese thought it was a problem, they would be discussing it on a national scale and WE would certainly hear about it.
That's not speculation on my part, it's absolutely a fact. Hybrid batteries, it they do ever become a problem, will not fly under the USA radar.
In fact they do. On the Toyota website Hybrid>>>FAQ they state that the batteries are expected to last for the life of the vehicle. As the questioning poster noted Toyotas often go well into the 200K mi range. I've had 4 that have done so.
I will Keep you updated on the Prius. At 45K mi/y I will reach 225K mi in 5 yrs.
It is TOTAL speculation, based on little or NO facts. The Japanese are not an open society like we are. We spill our guts on everything. Anything that looks negative is squelched in Japan. Can you link an automotive forum similar to Edmund's coming out of Japan?
1. Japan is an information society.
2. Japan has the largest per capita hybrids owned.
3. Japan has blogs and websites where people discuss their lives just as every country does.
4. Japan has newspapers.
I could find you blogs and forums in Japan if I spoke the language and had the Japanese fonts installed in my browser, which I don't. But you know they exist, don't play dumb....
So if you cannot read Japanese how do know if they are even discussing the ownership of hybrids? You are speculating pure and simple.
This is 2006, not 1980, Gary. People outside the USA discuss technology which is interesting to them.
See Diesel and hybrids.
We are straying from the battery debate, which is far from over. Give it a couple more years and the complaints will overwhelm you.
Interesting point of view.
Let's see.. gagrice or Toyota? gagrice or Toyota? gagrice or Toyota? Ill have to give Toyota the benefit of the doubt until shown otherwise.
You don't think that Toyota is risking a lot with Hybrids? They are betting the batteries will last 10 years or 150k miles. Someone that puts a lot of miles in a short period of time will probably not have a problem. The guy that keeps his cars 15 years and drives 8-12k per year may be in for a big surprise. If the batteries go out after 10 years which is more than likely, the owner will be faced with a big repair bill or a worthless trade-in. Maybe it is a moot point as a lot of other stuff could go bad before the batteries.
Batteries going , Charge is running down, ............ . . . .
MidCow
Those that think the price will go down are dreaming. I just bought a new battery for my 2 year old Dell laptop. They were $99 two years ago now they are $143.
Someone posted that the Toyota dealer gave him a price of $195 per cell. If all 204 cells go out that is $39,780.
me: Pretty bad timing with that comment ; you didn't hear that yesterday their stock market was shutdown because it is antiquated and couldn't handle a slight increase in trading volume? http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2006-01-18-tokyo-ap_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA
me: you're kind of insulting everybody by stating the obvious,; when the point was that people rather have 4 systems instead of 5 systems that fail; especially when system 5 is very expensive.
Also I have seen some posters concerned that the manufacturers are not covering a battery that is weakening slowly. Is it true the warranties don't kick in until the battery is completely dead? I would like to see a manufacturer's statement on the specification(s) on what the condition of the battery is when they will replace the battery under warranty.
Actually no I dont think they are putting themselves, the market or anyone at risk financially. Hey I plunked down $22K based on the fact that over the last 15 years and nearly 700,000 miles none of my/our Toyotas has needed anything major ( strutcaps on one Camry and an water pump on another under warranty ). Having been involved on a daily basis with them since 2001 I would have heard from someone who was having major problems. I've sold nearly 100 of them. If there was anything going on out there the customers always want to come back to the origin ( me ) of the problem to let the sales person know.
Nothing.. nada. Seriously. In this market the buyers are doctors, NASA engineers (4), Navy nukes, and a wide variety of very very opinionated people. Nothing. Several have 're-upped'.
But even if there is an upper limit I'm comfortable with it being in the 200K to 300K range which is what I'm looking for out of the Prius. It's what I drove all my other Toyota's. They have won the right in my experience to tell me it's so and I'll believe them.
That is a lot of miles. I would be happy getting that out of any car. The most miles I ever put on a vehicle was a Dodge van. It was 10 years old with 107k when I had the engine and transmission overhauled. I sold it 2 months later for exactly what I spent on the overhaul. It is the 10 years I am most concerned about. I may never keep a car that long again. It would be nice to know that it would last that long with no major problems. I will be skeptical until I see the Prius without battery problems at 10 years.
Compare that to the MSRP of $3200 for a new automatic transmission for a 2005 Camry. Or $2800 for an 2005 Avalon automatic transmission.
Obviously labor to install the new battery (or a new transmission) is something to be considered. But it's apparent to me that the replacement cost of the hybrid battery is not nearly as expensive as some have stated.
I browsed the following 2 sites to get prices
www.toyotapartsales.com
and
www.1sttoyotaparts.com
Tiny URLS pointing to the exact pages:
http://tinyurl.com/9nsq5
http://tinyurl.com/9gj2d
Moreover, the industry types aren't talking about total battery life. Will they actually last 100,000 miles? How will this affect resale value? Will the systems stay at full efficiency, or will they slowly drain power as they age or operate under heavy use? These are questions that remain to be answered, understanding that storage batteries, be they dry cells in your flashlight or exotic Ni-MHs, all have finite lives and store less power with age.
This brings up an undiscussed issue: At some point, all these hybrid batteries will die and have to be disposed of somewhere, somehow. These are hardly biodegradable items like spoiled vegetables. They are in fact self-contained toxic waste dumps. How and where millions of these poisonous boxes will be deposited in the new hybrid nirvana has yet to be considered, much less resolved.
And speaking of the environmental component (the glamour issue centered on the brave new world of hybrids), a number of EMT and fire crews have announced that they will refuse to rescue victims trapped in such vehicles, openly fearing electrocution or fatal acid burns.
As with the now-defunct electric-car miracle, where it was quickly realized that the national power grid could not energize millions of vehicles without massive expansion of horrors—nuclear generation—the dark side of the hybrid miracle is now beginning to surface.
Hybrids??
Toyota says it will recycle the batteries, though I haven't seen any details.
The EMT scare was temporary; the high voltage cables are brightly colored and run under the floor, hardly a likely location for "jaws of life" cutters to hit.
The first issue, battery life, is the big question. Toyota maintains that, because they keep the batteries between 20 and 80% charge, the batteries will last "the life of the car". Not too sure myself.
Hi Gagrice,
Brock Yates is jumping the gun on non recycling of NiMH batteries, there is probably not enough business to warrant a major recycling plant for them yet. In the meantime I think legislation is needed first to persuade merchandisers to collect used Li-ion and alkaline cells at point of sale like they do in Scandinavia. Established technologies such as lead-acid batteries have in lead the highest recovery rate of any metal, about 80%.(Cominco Ltd).
I am more concerned that battery warranties don't spell out what minimum performance is required to get replacement. I hope that there will be an aftermarket of partially aged batteries to replace packs with a dried out or shorted cell. No-one wants to put $3000+ into a 10 year old vehicle just to take it another five or six more years. I too dislike the notion that some unsuspecting person would suddenly find themself owning a vehicle with a large negative value.
T2
As with any car, the age/milleage of the car needs to be taken into account along with those items that typically need to replaced at that age/milleage. And with the case of hybrids, we don't know yet what components will need replacement. I'm pretty confident that the hybrid components will last the length of time that I own the car. And Toyota seems to think so too, based on the length of the warranty for those components. Given that I had my RAV4 for 8.5 years and 147K miles, I'll easily be covered here in California (where the warranty is 10 years/150K miles).
I wonder if these same kinds of concerns came up when new technology like disc brakes, fuel injection, and automatic transmissions started showing up on cars.
Sure they did. And the early adopters were many times rewarded with big repair bills when the warranty was up. In the case of the mandatory emissions warranty on the hybrids you can feel a little safer. It would be nice to know that the HSD or IMA portion is covered under that additional warranty. There is about 35% more parts to break in a hybrid than a non-hybrid car. Not all of it is covered under that mandate.
Ther have been significant improvements in features, technology and safety in the last 8-10 years. And, even carefully maintained, 8-10 years driving on a car takes its toll and begins transforming it into a junker no matter how much TLC is applied.
The jury is still out on Hbrid components especaily the traction battery. There are already some reports that the batterys haven't delicne enough to warrant free replacement, yet the vehicle owner is beginning to suffer decreased performance and decreased battary charge time.
But again to each his own, we need some pioneers to find out how long it takaes for a hybrid to become a junker ?
Cheers,
MidCow ( Could not make the Hybrid Sacrifice at this time!)
I hate to break the news here, but wouldn't your '96 already be outside of such a warranty ? :=) But go on.
"I don't think it's unreasonable to spend a few grand on a 10-year-old car. Even if I only got another year or two out of them, that was still way cheaper on a month-to-month basis than payments on a new car."
Look Devsienna, and please don't take this personally, but if I was presented with the choice of replacing a $3000+ battery or investing in a similar 10 year old beater (which comes with a good battery) to drive around for a couple of more years then I would have to decide whether I should ever consider myself to be a genuine candidate for buying a new car in the first place. A pending $3000+ spendout on such an age'd vehicle would be my cue to place such money into a new vehicle and start the cycle again. My Corolla went almost 14 yrs and I unloaded rather than invest in replacement of a new muffler that in so doing could compromise an already corroded fuel line.
T2
I hate to break the news here, but wouldn't your '96 already be outside of such a warranty ? :=) But go on.
Heh. Good point. Good thing I sold the RAV4 last year (got 4 grand for it, too).
"I don't think it's unreasonable to spend a few grand on a 10-year-old car. Even if I only got another year or two out of them, that was still way cheaper on a month-to-month basis than payments on a new car."
Look Devsienna, and please don't take this personally, but if I was presented with the choice of replacing a $3000+ battery or investing in a similar 10 year old beater (which comes with a good battery) to drive around for a couple of more years then I would have to decide whether I should ever consider myself to be a genuine candidate for buying a new car in the first place. A pending $3000+ spendout on such an age'd vehicle would be my cue to place such money into a new vehicle and start the cycle again. My Corolla went almost 14 yrs and I unloaded rather than invest in replacement of a new muffler that in so doing could compromise an already corroded fuel line.
I don't take it personally, and yes, your points are very valid. And more than likely what I'd do, too. But it would partially be determined by how "invested" I was emotionally with the car. And how compromised the other components might be in the car. In the case of the RAV4 and the Grand Caravan, the cars were only about 5 or 6 years old at the time when I plunked the money into them, so they had plenty of life left in them at the time. And at the time, replacing either of them wasn't doable. So we extended their life a little bit more until we could replace them.
I highly doubt that the battery will be 3 grand by the time it actually needs replacing. A lot can happen in the next 7 or 8 years before I have to cross that bridge. Battery technology can improve a lot. The car could get totalled. I could win the lottery and buy a Hummer. :-)
A 3 grand repair bill on a 9 to 10 year old car is gonna make you think twice about keeping the car, whether it's a conventional car, hybrid, or a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.
I've seen some of those same anecdotal reports, too. As I recall, they're mostly Honda Insights. The one report I saw about a Toyota Prius indicated that the battery-pack was replaced without question and presumambly sent back to Toyota for a full tear-down and analysis of the failure.
But again to each his own, we need some pioneers to find out how long it takaes for a hybrid to become a junker ?
I'm willing to be a pioneer in this regard. I believe in the company that produced my Prius and I believe in the generous warranty they are providing to gurantee that the hybrid components will last the life of the car or at least as long as I own the car, which will probably be the same amount of time.
If everybody followed the advice of "Don't buy a new model the first year it comes out" or "Wait until other people have bought the car and seen how good it's reliability is" or "The new technology is unproven and you shouldn't buy it" then a lot of advances in cars and technology never would've made it out of infancy and we'd still be driving manual shift cars with carburetors and drum brakes and no emission controls to speak of.
Car makers have gotten a lot better at perfecting the technology before it's released to the public, and they're willing to back it up with better warranties on that new technology. Taking that leap of faith is a lot easier to do these days. Is it perfect? No. Will there be problems? Of course. But I think things are in place to mitigate the problems. Certainly better than they were 30 or 35 years ago when advancements like the automatic transmission, disc brakes and fuel injection came out.
The car got a clean bill of health with at least 95% capacity left.
I've never not yet had the IMA do a battery recalibration, but it is a concern as I hope to take my car over 300K miles.
At 60K miles the car runs, drives and performs as if new.
http://www.evworld.com/blogs/index.cfm?page=blogentry&authorid=12&blogid=226&arc- hive=0
Toyota and Honda are both gambling that the hybrid batteries will last as long as the government has forced them into guaranteeing it. I will repeat myself. A battery starts decaying the minute it is charged and starts to discharge. It is a calculated risk on how long a given battery will last. I have laptop batteries that are 5 years old and still carry a reasonable charge. I have one Dell battery that barely lasted one year. Plus all batteries are not created equal. You can buy some real cheap replacement batteries that are near worthless. Most not warranted past 90 days. It will be interesting to find out how well these hybrid batteries hold up over 6-7-8-9-10 years. I don't think so good. I believe Toyota is going to have some massive replacement costs in states that require 10 years on the warranty.
What tends to kill most rechargeable batteries these days is deep-discharge/full-charge cycles. Toyota's battery management system is setup to avoid that by keeping the battery in a state of charge that is between 40% and 80% of the total capacity of the battery pack. Given the fact that there are Prius' in Japan that are over 8 years old, I think Toyota already has a good idea of how long the battery packs will last in the cars.
I've read where some Prius MiMH battery packs have been tested for over 300,000 miles. These are not the 100 year old lead acid technology used in battery starters on internal combustion vehicles. It's a new world, welcome to the 21st century.
Sooooo, you're saying my cell phone batteries and laptop batteries are a whole new world. They're not your father's lead acid batteries any more.
We'll see.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
We know that Insight has had several battery failures. Try finding it online. Toyota is not going to advertise their battery failures. Forums like this will be the only record of failures.
The manual transmission Insight "assist" hybrid allowed deep discharging of the battery-pack. That behavior is well documented to be a major contributor to shortened battery life.
The "full" hybrid design doesn't allow that. In fact, most owners have never even seen the charge-level below 40 percent. That's a dramatical difference intentionally ignored in the comment above... to make you think all hybrids could suffer the same fact.
THEY ARE NOT THE SAME! Quit portraying hybrids as a single design. Also, stop exaggerating by using vague words like "several" and not including any detail (like odometer reading) at all.
JOHN
I don't disagree with you on the charge discharge. I disagree on the life of any battery. 10 years is a long time for any battery to maintain it's capability. There is already some questioning the percentage of charge on their Prius. What is acceptable as a minimum capacity? I hope you are not telling people that the battery will maintain 100% throughout it's life. That would be totally false. All Toyota is doing with their light charge and discharge is prolonging the life of the battery. Which is good for them with a 10 year warranty. I don't think the person that puts 150k miles in 5 years will be the victim of the battery failure. It is the person that puts 50k miles in 10 years with a lot of garage time that will suffer.
Quit portraying hybrids as a single design.
Far from it. I consider the direct engine to generator to electric motor the only TRUE hybrid. Only a battery to start the DIESEL engine. The rest inkluging HSD are overly complex systems, with too many parts that can and have gone bad. I do not ever see HSD as a mainstream solution to our fossil fuel problem. In spite of the less than great batteries available, I still would prefer an all electric vehicle. Very simple and perfect for at least 75% of the driving public. Then of course we would need massive nuclear power plants to power them.
"Quit portraying hybrids as a single design. Also, stop exaggerating by using vague words like "several" and not including any detail (like odometer reading) at all."
Your love for HSD have blinded you as well...even to print vague blanket false statements against Honda's system.
Honda's don't generally get under 40% discharge either, unless in heavy mountain driving etc in which I also know some Prius drivers who's pack reaches at or near zero.
For you to insinuate that IMA allows deep discharge is like me saying the PSD is prone to failure.
Both are false.
You can buy a Prius HV battery pack for $2,150. That's cheaper than getting a Camry 4-speed automatic transmission for $2,304
Prius HV battery pack has warrenty for 8 years, 100,000 miles (10 years/150k in CAFE states). How about the automatic transmission? How long will it last? Get my point?
Dennis
Bingo! You can run up 300,000 in a lab in just a few months. Real testing should be done over time. NiMH batteries start going down hill from aging after 2-3 years, and will suffer a significant number of cell failures afterward. By 5 years, probably 50% of the cells will be shot. NOW,,, maybe there is new NiMH cell technology that I do not know about. Maybe Toyota has found some extra terrestrial battery technology!
So how many failures have there been on Prius and Camry Hybrids?
Amazing that probably up to 40,000 generation one Prius cars in Japan are still going strong on such "shot" battery systems, some of them having been sold as early as December 1997 !!!
And that was 1995-1997 battery technology !!
PS. They had sold 37,000 Japanese Priuses before the first one sold in the USA.
I guess I'm a good test subject. Many people on here are streching their dollars and hybrid seems like a risk to them. Me, I just want to save gas. I have traded cars every year and a half and lost $6000 to $12000/year in depreciation that I'm so used to getting burned that my thought on the Camry Hybrid is: if I keep it three years and drive 90,000 muiles it saved me two trades. Since it's only 60% of the price of the cars I usually buy then I look at this almost as a throwaway after three years.
If the battery is still good and the car still clean (I take good care of my cars) then I might be able to get 50% of the cost back and THAT will be the best car deal I've ever made.
If I have to junk it (doubtful) then it's no worse than my other automotive adventures and I dirtied up the environment less along the way