My friend asked me about the battery and here are some things I couldn't answer!

1) Does anyone know if the Prius battery's capacity decreases because of use?

Now, I know this situation would be a long time from now but...
2) If the Prius' battery needed to be replaced, what would happen to the dead Prius battery? Where would it go? (Landfills?)

the best answer i could give him would be... you wouldn't need to replace the whole battery and probably just individual sections of it. that way it wouldn't harm the environment as much.. but I dunno

 

flare,
I know that the first generation Prius batteries were Panasonic nickel-metal hydride batteries which can be recylced. So I am assuming the 2004's would be able to be recycled, too.

 

Hey there,

The 2004 Prius also uses NiMH batteries which are recyclable and according to HybridCars.com Toyota (as well as Honda) have said they would recycle the batteries of their cars.

It is unlikely that individual cells will be replaced in the battery pack. Instead the whole pack will probably be replaced at the same time. This has to do with the fact that as batteries age they will exhibit slightly different performance characteristics and you generally want them all performing alike.

For the degradation over time Toyota claims to have run the cars out to 150,000 miles without performance degradation of the NiMH batteries and they warranty the batteries for 8 years/100,000 miles see Toyota FAQ. I can't vouch for this number with outside info about NiMH. I saw a figure of 10,000 discharge to 60% cycles (which is equivalent to 3.5 discharges every day) for the prius battery before significant performance degradation but I didn't see any data.

So, short answers: 1) The batteries are recyclable and Toyota says it will do so and 2) The batteries may last out to 150,000 miles without significant performance degradation.

Hope this helps
Christian

 

Christian,

The 150,000 mi warranty that I recall (as required to achieve the emissions rating) is for the "hybrid system", not including the battery replacement?

 

I did a little more investigating.

Here is the Toyota FAQ entry about the warranty. See above post for link.

This includes the Hight Voltage (HV) Battery. Looking at my owner's warranty booklet I see that in the great state of California (also Maine, Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont) the coverage extends out to 10 years/150,000 miles for the battery and 15 years/150,000 miles for the rest of the emission control equipment (p.20).

Federal regulations for Emissions control is considerably less than the state specified ones but I think the Warranty in the Toyota FAQ comes from the Toyota Warranty of the Hybrid System.

So I'm pretty sure the battery is covered and the extent of the coverage will depend upon the state.

Christian

 

So I wasn't crazy!

 

Great info! Thank you very much!

 

Thanks for the info. I just knew the battery capacity will decrease in time. All batteries do. But never thought that it can be recycled.




___________________
Get some cool Orange Electronics.

 

First, let me say I'm talking of the 2004 to 2009 model, and we call the battery the "traction battery" to distinguish it from the 12V lead acid one. The earlier model is only slightly different, but it is different.

Because the Prius battery is operated between -about- 40% charge to -about- 80% charge it lasts a lot longer than similar batteries would in other uses. The loss of capacity is mostly caused by loss of electrolyte (in the real world), and the above cycle limit is there to prevent that.

With entropy being what it is, the cells do deteriorate over time and use speeds this up. Eventually one (or more) cells will deteriorate enough that they will reach a capacity 40% lower than the average of the others. At this point they will completely discharge during use and reverse charge. This will destroy them. The battery electronics will eventually detect this and will complain (set codes, turn on lights, and otherwise bother the driver ). There are a lot of cells in series, in groups of 6. You can replace them in groups of 6, and Toyota has announced they will start doing this. They have to match the replacement module with the ones in the battery, so they will be keeping a lot of batteries in their rebuilding plant.

Toyota wants you to sell your "used up" battery back to them. There is a guaranteed price for it. I leave it to your imagination why. The batteries are not really toxic. They contain nickel and potassium hydroxide, with a little sodium hydroxide, and water.

How long before you have to replace the battery? There are taxis with over 350,000 km on them still running the original battery. Your mileage may vary.

How much will it cost to replace the traction battery? Toyota has just dropped the retail price, to $2000. It was in the $3000 to $4000 range before. That's for a new battery. A rebuilt would be much less.

 

I realize this is quite an oxymoron but since I really love sportscars but I'm considering buying a Prius bcus I'm sure gas will go back up to $5 a gallon or higher in 2009 I am considering buying a Prius before this happens

So is there a sportier Prius ? Which year model is quickest ? Which has best mpg ?

Thanks