Comments on: Prius hybrid battery fails at 70K miles, Toyota won’t pay for $3700 repair

By: Otis Maxwell

Otis Maxwell — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:20:06 +0000

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?

By: JJ

JJ — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:35:00 +0000

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.

By: Buddy D

Buddy D — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:17:29 +0000

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.

By: Otis Maxwell

Otis Maxwell — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 20:40:24 +0000

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.

By: Brandon

Brandon — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 04:23:46 +0000

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.

By: Chris M

Chris M — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 20:35:45 +0000

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…)

By: Otis Maxwell

Otis Maxwell — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:52:53 +0000

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.

By: Chris M

Chris M — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:08:11 +0000

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…

By: Otis Maxwell

Otis Maxwell — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 14:48:52 +0000

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.

By: Melman

Melman — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 12:48:33 +0000

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?