[UPDATE for new readers: Toyota has now paid for the replacement battery. Details here.]
Last week our 2001 Prius started acting strangely, and today SF Toyota gave me the bad news. The hybrid battery is shot and a replacement will cost just under $3700, tax included. We’re a year and half 8 months out of warranty, it turns out, so the repair cost is 100% our responsibility.
Our 2001 Prius in happier times. Photo courtesy sfgate.com.
This is a vehicle that was on the front page of the SF Chronicle in 2001, as a poster child for early adopters of green technology. We’ve bought another Prius since then and I’ve been looking with interest at the lithium-powered next generation coming in 2012. But this changes the equation. If you can expect to pay for a $3700 repair at 70,000 miles, the car suddenly becomes much more expensive as well as less reliable… what happens if the failure occurs elsewhere than in a major city?
I remember the naysayers when we bought it: “the battery’s going to die and it will cost you a fortune.” The reviewers scoffed at this: batteries don’t last forever, but it is unlikely to fail in the driving life of the vehicle. Too bad that’s not true. The $3700 new battery is warranted for 12 months. I guess that tells you something.
News like this could have a chilling effect on hybrid sales, just when we need a nitty-gritty, ready-right-now antidote for energy waste and climate change. (I love seeing the MPG on our 2006 Prius creep over 50, combined with the fact that the car has actually been made less efficient in order to come close to zeroing out the emissions.)
Toyota needs to fix this. I’ll update if they do.
22 comments ↓
[...] Read More About Toyota Hybrids! [...]
[...] are two pieces I wrote on my own blog about this experience… please comment there if you like: Prius hybrid battery fails at 70K miles, Toyota won?t pay for $3700 repair | Otis Regrets… or Not Early Prius owners get screwed on battery warranty | Otis Regrets… or [...]
Batteries wear out? OMG! Ipods never had that problem. Guess all those engineers were right…
but hey, $300/month isn’t too bad to save a few gallons of gas.
Not only all that gas you saved, but think about how much cleaner the environment is going to be your green technology batteries seaping into the environment.
Ever been to a battery plant. All Greenies should go! Green Technology my aSp.
Can’t wait to see what goes wrong next.
Go Green – Buy a Horse!
Not only all that gas you saved, but think about how much cleaner the environment is going to be your green technology batteries seaping into the environment.
Ever been to a battery plant? All Greenies should go! Green Technology my a$$.
Can’t wait to see what goes wrong next.
Go Green – Buy a Horse!
Your warranty is EXPIRED. Is that so hard to comprehend? You should have purchased an extended warranty of you wanted them to cover it past the original one.
That battery is going to do FAR more damage to the envrionment than a regular car would.
Whay can’t you people understand that? I agree with David above, go to a battery plant and see just how green they are.
You now need to pay your “stupid tax” and the amount is $3700. Me = ROFL @ you.
So you are complaining about $300 per year? You save this much a year in gas, at least. Guess you thought you could have your cake and eat it too. Nine years for a battery seems pretty good to me. You wanted “Green”, so now you need to pay for it.
Cracks me up, people expect cars and trucks to last forever. Maintenance and repairs are necessary people, you still have to feed the horse.
Ouch, guys. Color me naive but when we bought the car we just didn’t think about a battery warranty. The salesperson implied the battery would last the life of the car and we were so excited by this green experiment we didn’t push it. It wasn’t until the failure happened that I discovered there actually was a limited warranty and it was only 8 years.
Also, hybrid owners did and do pay a premium up front for the battery and the technology which more than offsets any gas savings. We really are trying to do the right thing, though you’re right we should probably just buy a horse.
(But those pollute too, though in a different manner. I’ve read somewhere that there were serious air quality problems in NYC during the years when it was full of horse drawn vehicles.)
By the way, a lot of my new readers seem to be coming from this site: http://forums.corvetteforum.com/off-topic/2530590-the-prius-backlash-starts.html . I used to do some work for the Eckler’s catalog of Corvette accessories. I come in peace in other words…
With the problems Toyota is having atm I would think they would be bending over backwards to try and help people with problems like these. Shouldnt be buying imports anyway, yeah I know built here blah blah blah but the money still goes to the home country of the import.
I have been a GM man since the 80′s but since they are now 61% owned by the .gov I will be switching to Ford, I refuse to reward incompetence.
Why does “Toyota need to fix this”? The battery is old. It is “out of warantee”. HP doesn’t give me a new battery for my laptop just because it dies out of warrantee. I don’t know how anyone could not be aware of the impending battery cost on a hybrid, or any other battery operated device for that matter. The Prius battery replacement cost was well publicized at $4000 or more. Since it is “only” $3700, I would count yourself ahead of the game. Just don’t buy an electric car next time. The replacement battery cost is over $20,000. This is a good reason why not go to gung-ho into a technology without checking things out (unlike the California Air Resources Board).
[...] my original post about my dead Prius battery has become one of the most-read articles ever on this blog. Lots of new [...]
Why did you buy another Prius if the experience of a failed battery “changed the equation” for you? I assume you traded the 01 in for the new Prius; what did the dealer give you for it?
Melman, I had an 2006 we bought long before this happened…that was my second Prius. The 2001 was sold to a private party who was happy to get it for low Blue Book with a brand new battery. So that’s the story of my Priuses, and I’m looking forward to learning more about the 2012.
I said “changed the equation” because you pay more for the hybrid initially but you expect to have better mileage and a car that lasts at least as long as a regular car. In my case this was not true until Toyota made it right by paying for the battery.
As a fellow 1st gen prius owner I want to know — Did Toyota pay for the replacement in the end? You imply that they did in your last comment. My 2002 (140,000 mile car) is probably ~just~ out of battery warranty, and I’m about to drop $2000-3000 K on gas engine related repairs (fuel pump, fuel injectors, sensor, water pump, etc…), but that will make no sense if I need to also replace the $3000 battery in 6 months or a year…
Yes, Toyota did eventually pay for the repair but it wasn’t a slam dunk… read all the posts on this topic for the full story. At one point the Toyota customer service people had implied to me that the battery failure was my problem because I should have had it checked out when it was under warranty. I think this was a bureaucrat blowing smoke because I don’t think there is any easy way to do a battery evaluation without taking the car apart, but it’s worth asking before you do your other repair.
At any rate, the consensus seems to be that Prius battery failures are few and far between so if you don’t have trouble at 140K, you probably won’t have trouble in a few more months.
Thanks – I will look at the rest of the posts. They say they’ve checked and there’s no indication of a problem with the hybrid battery, but of course no guarantees and I am ~very~ close on the end of warranty period (which they claim is now 150,000 miles or 8 years…)
I find it odd that the battery died 8 months out of warranty. You say it was warrantied for 12 months… Does anyone else find it odd that this is wrote 9 years and 70k miles later? I hate to inform anyone here, but dealerships jump at warranty work… that is how they make money… Toyota pays dealers to do the repairs. Thats how it works.
Brandon, the 12 month guarantee is on the replacement battery. The original was the one that died soon after its much longer warranty. Sorry if I wasn’t clear on this.
I think the toyato prius is a great car, easy to work on, and very dependable, and save me much money, we need more of them on the road.
From what I understand, Toyota recycles 100% of the batteries and will pay the dealer (or you) $200 to return it to them. Not sure those of you who said that the Prius battery is not ‘green’ because from what I’ve read they recycle all of it.
JJ, thanks for this info. Good to know. The battery is pretty difficult to get to, so I imagine it would be recycled as part of a swap-out replacement or else removed when the car is parted out for salvage. Correct?
Leave a Comment