On a Monday my 2007 THC with 66,000 miles kicked into the gas engine right away. I went to pull out and it bogged a little. I had left no light on. I stopped a couple of times and it bogged each time then gas engine kicked in. I checked hybrid battery display and battery was drained. I traveled 20 miles and battery started to recharge. Three days later same thing except now the warning message switches from "Check Hybrid System" to "Check VSC system" periodically. I take it to a dealership and they said I need a new hybrid battery. There is not one in the US so it will take a few days to have it shipped. It has 100,000 mile warranty on battery so it is covered. Is this how long they are going to last becasue Toyota is going to lose money on this situation? I hope new battery comes with the same warranty.

 

Few can answer this as the car is still relatively young (my 2008 has 43,000), but in my time here, I've yet to see this issue come up. The Prius is much older and I don't believe there are too many, if any, stories like this. I read that Toyota offered a Prius taxi cab owner a new car in exchange for his car, which has over 200,000 miles on it, so they could study the battery life. As the battery technology is similar, you may want to bop over to the Prius forum here and ask them.

 

let's not start panic.

miles, your case is unusual. my local dealership told me they had TWO batteries replaced since Prii came out. two. out of thousands of cars out there on the road.

haroldo is right - Prii owners are much better source on this. reports are, those batteries run into 200-300 000 miles, and still work, based on taxi cabs use.

 

I am not trying to cause a panic. I am just trying to find out information and tell people my story. I just recently joined this site because of my problem. As I searched GreenHybrid I did not see many if any people leaving threads about new batteries or battery malfunctions. I also looked for threads in the Prius forum and did not find much. Being an owner of two hybrids a Toyota Camry and a Ford Escape Hybrid, I thought the way to get information is to go to the people who own the cars in a forum. How many people who own hybrids are on this forum anyways, 1% of the hybrid owners?, a thousand people?. I do not know. What I do know is that dealerships are there to sell cars and in this case Toyotas who have recently took a big hit in the public's eye with their owners dying because of gas pedal malfunctions. How many people died? two to ten people who drove those Toyotas ??. Batteries not lasting for the lifetime of their warranty is a concern. You said yourself, your dealer has had only two cases. Is that really all, what if your dealer said that there were ten cases which might be the truth. Would there be more of a concern? Two cases in every dealership in the US of batteries malfunctioning or not lasting for the life of the warrranty multiplied by the number of Toyota dealerships adds up to thousands of Toyotas with the same problem. Ten cases of this per dealer adds up to a more sigificant number and if that got out Toyota sales would surely plummet again. So a panic no, a concern yes.

 

Nonsense. You absolutely are trying to cause a panic.

Battery failure is extremely rare. But, in any manufactured product, there will some defects. When you make a million of anything, some of them will have a defect. The reason they have to order your part from Japan, and that there is not one in the US, is precisely because that part rarely fails and rarely needs to be replaced.

The gas pedal issue that you mention was entirely false. There were ZERO actual failures of the pedal mechanism. Some drivers put their foot firmly on the gas pedal, without realizing it. Some other drivers put their floor-mat on top of the gas pedal, also without realizing it. None of those cases were due to failure of the gas pedal itself.

The NHTSA issued a retraction, months after the publicity had died down. In that statement, they said that NONE of the crashes were due to defect in the cars, and that the recall had been completely unnecessary. None the less, the investigation had revealed that a brake-override system would be a good idea, and so they are going to start a rule-making process to require brake-override systems in future vehicles. See, http://www.nhtsa.gov/PR/DOT-16-11

 

i have to agree with steve. my 1st impulse was - respond; 2nd - ignore; the more i read - yes, you do keep adding oil to flames. no need to. reason you are, hybrid owners took a major psychological leap and chose to trust this technology, knowing well enough, that is may turn very expensive some time down the road. i have no doubt, we ALL here are very sensitive to our cars and, especially, HSD.
so, you informed us of what happened. thank you. we all know it is a unique case. let it be that way and not make any unsubstantiated assumptions.
btw, you can read through my posts here and find out i am a griper. there is many things i do not like in that car. but this? just blowing it out of proportion.

 

Hey if I offended anyone I am sorry. I love my TCH, but its only a car and it should be safe. I am satisfied with this product except with the cheap stock Bridgestone tires that came with the car that I had to replace after 29,000 miles. I have a Ford Escape Hybid and the quality (ride, interior, body) of the Toyota far surpasses the Ford overall. When the information on the gas pedal problem came out I was so doubtful about it that I never even considered taking it in for the recall. But strangely, when I just brought the Camry into the Toyota dealership for the battery problem, the service guy asked if I wanted the recall service on the gas pedal taken care of while it is in. That is strange that a independent governement agency such as the NTSB issued a retraction, yet Toyota is still servicing the recall. Maybe that is becuase it is a government agency, just like those government agencies are saying all the oil that leaked out of the Horizon well in the gulf is gone after it expelled the largest amount of oil in an accident in histroy. Another thing I find strange is that there was no battery in the US. Maybe it is a rare event, so Toyota (who has probably sold more hybrids in the USA than anywhere else in the world) feels why have batteries laying around in storage in the US where we have the highest possibilty of one going out becasue we have the most toyota hybrids on the road there. I do not know or care as long as they replace my battery. But Japan just had its most devastating earthquake in history and are still having aftershocks. Is Toyota back to full manufactuing capacity as of yet? Maybe there has been so many batteries on their cars going out and their factories are not up to full capacity that they can not keep up with the volume. Of all people-- it happened to me, maybe this is why it happened. I have to consider all possibilities, like I said it is just a car. But when I am driving in a car and the VSC (Vehicle Stability Control) goes out becasue my battery fails, I am the one in danger and there is a concern.

 

Miles: Sell your TCH and you will no longer have issues with your Toyota TCH.
The problem that people had with the so called "gas pedal problem" was a driver problem not a Toyota problem.

 

If you actually want to get information, you can start by reading the archives of this site. Then, ask a question. But don't reject the answer that you get, and don't drag unrelated nonsense into the thread.

You had a failure. It was covered under warranty. The dealer had to order the part because that part rarely fails, so they don't keep it in stock. End of story.

If you are really concerned about safety, you must sell your car to a junkyard for $100 scrap value, and insist that they put it in the shredder while you watch.

 

very well said.

and start walking, which is good for health, as there is not a single mechanical piece int the world that will not eventually fail. of course, turtles fall down from the skies either.