Hi Peter,

I think it is wonderful that your goal is to obtain long service from your vehicles. That is very wise from a personal finance perspective and is also kind to the environment. I hope that you are able to achieve that goal. I also am a loyal Toyota hybrid customer, owning three.

Think about PCs for a minute. A 20 year old PC probably has an Intel 80286 or 80386 processor. Imagine trying to obtain replacement parts for this vintage PC, which had been built in 7-digit quantities. (Hint - it will not be very easy)

My point is that as the electronics content of cars/SUVs increases, and recognizing that the ECUs are customized for a given model, it will be increasingly hard to keep the vehicles running beyond 10-15 years due to lack of spare parts.

As HiHy owners, we all want our vehicles to have a long service life, either because we plan to own the SUV that long or because a demonstrated long life will increase the resale value when we are ready to trade or sell it. It remains to be seen exactly how long the economic service life will be.

Patrick Wong

 

Excellent insight on the comments on the 20 year old PC. I think in many cases I would agree with you in that light but the analogy is somewhat flawed in this case. I have several of the old HP 100 and HP 200's. Since you brought up the pc analogy I figured you would know about them. I have found there is a whole underground of folks that still use them and you can get parts and software for them. It is just like my HP11C. I can buy like new ones off EBAY today for more then I paid for mine now almost 30 years ago. Even my HP35 (where ever it is in my pile of junk) you can still get parts for it today if you have the money and the internet.

On the other hand, I have a 73 vintage 44 AutoMag handgun that is still and will probably always will be unfired in the box because parts are no longer available. If anything breaks I will need to pay a machinist to start with a block of steel and make it from scratch. Thus it sits unfired as a collectible.

I expect that keeping the 07 and soon to be 08 HHy going will be a problem, but not insurmountable. The question more revolves around my willingness to "putz" with it and to try and find replacement parts.

As a side note did you see the 08's are now priced? The non-limiteds are 190$ cheaper then my 07.

 

Interesting comments from a while ago and the Highlanders at least up until 2011 (not sure about 2012-2013) are still using the same 9.6V modules they did from when they first came out in 2006. Often it is a single bad cell that can bring down a block (all 30 modules in the Highlander battery are paired into 15 blocks and each module with 8 cells at 1.2V......that's how you get the total voltage of the battery 30 modules x 8 cells each x 1.2V = 288V). Unfortunately they don't use the same battery as the Prius or the Camry (both use the 6 celled 7.2V battery, again each cell is still 1.2V) or there would be a lot more options for us to be rebuilding Highlander Hybrid battery packs.

While I don't think it's a bad idea to replace the whole traction battery (esp if you are lacking the skills ability to work on it yourself and cost is less of an issue) I'm not sure I agree with the comment about adding a new cell to the original ones is a bad idea in all cases. It will simply allow the battery to function at the lowest common denominator (ie another module will then become the weak link for holding charge). Providing that all the rest of the blocks are charging well and provide a reasonable current rate, then there's no reason why the battery wouldn't function well for many more miles. If you are replacing the cells with used ones from another vehicle you need to be a lot more careful to ensure that the replacement modules are well matched to the remaining modules but again very doable IMHO. I highly suspect there are several reasons why Toyota doesn't want people/dealers to have access to individual modules and it's not because it wouldn't work well to repair a damaged battery pack.

This test confirms that even a well used pack (160k miles) still has a significant amount of useable life left:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehicles...lander6395.pdf

One thing I did find interesting in the DOE tests was that the Camry Hybrid seems to lose the least (percentage-wise) over the same mileage compared to both the Highlander and the Prius. It appeared to me that perhaps increasing the total number of modules in the battery pack may play a role in this (Highlander=30, Prius III=28, Camry=34) but why that may be I have no idea.

 

Too bad none of the rebuilders seem to deal in the 9.6V batteries for rebuilding the Highlander (hybrid) and Lexus (400H) battery packs.

If anyone has dealt with one that does good experience in this area please post up.

 

Any updates on the "durability" of these traction batteries in the MAJORITY of these hybrids? I don't really care about an individual failure (like the one in this thread) but I AM interested in how long people are going on the factory battery pack. Our vehicle will be 8 years old next July 31st and we are trying to decide if we might want to keep it beyond that deadline and risk having to replace the traction battery in the future.

Also, I know that the original $10K price to change these has dropped to something like $3K, right? Anyone with such details?

 

I am dealing with a failure on mine now and I would say the Highlander hybrid traction batteries by design are more prone to failure at lower mileage than either the Prius or the Camry. The issue here IMHO is that the Highlander's 9.6V (8-cell) battery has 25% more risk of failure (more cells) than those used in Toyota's other hybrids which both use the 7.2V (6-cell) version. The problem is that a single bad cell can cause a hybrid battery to malfunction (it's only as good as it's weakest link). There does not appear to be any set mileage where these batteries begin to fail but interestingly the department of energy tests on hybrid battery life show that the highlander batteries are losing capacity at a faster rate than either the Camry or the Prius under what we were told was similar driving conditions/distances.

When trying to advise someone whether to keep the car beyond the battery warranty period, I would ask what level of interaction are you willing to have with the vehicle. The current list price from Toyota on your highlander battery is around $4,850 (plus labor to install it). Toyota clearly wants to get these back for rebuilding too because the core charge on the part is huge (around $1,400). If you have good mechanical ability you can rebuild/recondition your old battery for quite a bit less (around $400 in equipment and the price of a salvage hybrid battery......usually no core charge on the salvage battery either). The rebuilding process is not for the faint of heart, but that's the route I chose to go and when done right you can continue the process indefinitely.

One major issue I did go through when trying to buy a brand new battery from Toyota is that shipping was difficult because if the batteries are compromised in any way (ie leaking), they suddenly become hazmat and the price of dealing with them skyrockets. Mid Atlantic Toyota refused to sell them at all even though the battery is clearly listed on their website for this same reason. If anyone has found a goo place to buy new batteries from Toyota and get them shipped, please do post up.

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks for the info. Could you provide a link to that research?

$5K to replace the battery would not really be any problem for us but I am a technical guy and do a lot of work myself (Fixed a Plasma TV that the TV repair guy gave up on once).

 

Here are all the hybrid battery tests the DOE did (look under HEV battery testing and each vehicle type was tested twice so there are 2 separate reports so you need to average them):

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehicles...v_reports.html

Each report will show a before and after capacity rating for the battery used in that particular vehicle (thus giving you your % capacity loss over a given mileage).
The Lexus 400H is also the same platform as the Highlander (same batteries are used) so you can also use those reports to give you a relative idea on the highlander longevity too.

 

Thought it might be nice for people to have pics of what the HiHy battery actually looks like from the description above (see attached, this is what sits under the 2nd row seats).

Here's the thread how you repair/rebuild one of these packs if you are very technically inclined:
http://priuschat.com/threads/gen-ii-...cement.125588/

 

so the general consensus is this is a bad vehicle for the used market once the 06-07 batteries go out of warranty even though i have 350,000km on my 2004 prius on its original batteries!

after all this time it is still 5k for these batteries? that really sucks