Hello

We have about 70,000 miles on our TCH now and it has been the PERFECT car! We have NOT had ONE problem with it. Yesterday, we just returned from a 800 mile trip from Denver to Durango and back and got 40.2 miles per gallon in mountain driving.

I was curious about the expected Hybrid Battery life for the Toyota Camry Hybrid battery. How many mile can we get out of the battery? Do we have any first had experience here with it? What does it cost to replace the battery?

I am not sure this is something to be concerned with. The battery might last the life of the car.

Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks a Bunch!

Bill

 

No one has a definitive answer, but a few years ago there were articles about Prius taxis in Toronto (??) that hit >200,000 miles. Toyota bought them back (exchanged new ones) so they could study the longevity. I think it's safe to say...they'll last a long time. In addition (not an engineer), I believe the battery is a series of cells, so if a few cells fail (or when they do), one might be able to replace the bad ones.

 

Hi Haroldo

Thanks for the post! I wonder what is the highest milage TCH in this group? They might know more. We plan to keep the car for the long term and we are getting close to paying it off now. I think this is a good question.

Bill

 

153,000 miles so far on my 2007 TCH (bought July 2006), seems to be running great with no problems, battery included.

 

I was talking to the toyota tech here in town a few years ago. I stopped in to buy some oem oil filters. I asked a similar question about the traction battery's life. He said he had two Prius that he had to replace the traction battery's due to a few weak cells. One Prius had 245,000 and the other at 248,000 miles. I had to ask how much did the new traction battery cost. His reply was $1500. I forgot to ask about labor or if the TCH battery might cost a little more as its probably some larger.

I remember the first few years the first Prius came out. This same tech told me then they used plug-in cell combinations to make up the traction battery. That is any of the cells inside the 6 cell pack went out, then it would be rather cheap to replace.

Toyota abandoned that idea as the plug in sockets could not handle the maximum amps the EV motor could pull at full throttle. Toyota then went to a spot weld type connection between all the cells and were then able to put out full amps on a full charge.

No doubt with so many hybrids now on the roads the traction batteries prices should keep falling. Panasonic made all the traction batteries till the 2012's came out. Those I understand are made by Toyota here in the United States. I did read the new 2012 traction battery pack is smaller and lighter, but puts out more amps than the earlier models.

 

How do you know if your battery is doing well? Does the dealer or garages have something that can test the battery? I'll be honest, I'd have no way of knowing if my battery was operating at 95% of peak efficiency or at 10%.
I know the car drives, but that's about it.
How do you check the health of the battery?

 

Your question is not directed to me but I may have the answer. Each traction battery has a small chip included that's like a tiny computer-scanner. It continually scans each of the cells to report a ok or fail signal. If it sees any single cell below a minimum voltage, it will report it to the mfd readout.

Yes, each toyota dealer has a traction battery tester. It can charge and discharge the battery for any problems.

 

Isn't traction battery under 150k mile warranty at least in some states like CA and NY?
And even if it fails after warranty, it's probably similar in price to rebuilding automatic transmission and I never owned a car that survived much past 100k-150k before total transmission failure from Chevy and Nissan to Honda and that's the only type of major failure I've ever had.
So I just hope PSD lasts "forever", since there is really not much there to fail except for short in windings and bearing failure and if that was the case, then seriously I rather change traction battery than transmission in all other cars: for starters I could see replacing battery myself, I don't have a lift to even begin to think about replacing transmission on my own.
Also, I could actually see myself finding and replacing just the faulty cells, instead of the whole pack.
BTW from Prius tests it seems the aging of the battery pack and subsequent lowering pack capacity doesn't affect MPG that much, until total failure.

 

thanks, good answer!

 

Just because you hear some one live to 100 years does not mean that you should expect to live that long. The life expectancy of hybrid car batteries is about 125K miles, told by a dealer service manager.