You can research as much as you’d like, but when it comes down to it, fixing the battery is pretty simple.

1. Check the voltage of all the modules
2. Load test the modules
3. Identify any suspicious modules and remove them
4. Order at least as many replacement cells, perhaps one or two extra
5. Purchase a battery charger or two
6. Make a power supply for the battery charger
7. Discharge/charge cycle each module 3 times
8. Balance the pack
9. Put it back in your Prius.

Here’s a link to a PriusChat forum that covers it nicely: PriuisChat thread.

Purchasing things should be done ASAP, as some of the pieces can take a bit to ship, and being out of commission for as short a time as possible is ideal. Based off my experience, I think if I were totally ready to go and had everything sitting around, it’d be roughly a week minimum. Pieces that can take a bit of time:

• Battery modules
• Power supply (could be scrounged, which would be a nice way to cut the price of repair)
• Battery chargers

Everything else is pretty easily accessible, so can be purchased locally. Ebay seems to be the place to get the replacement battery modules. I just searched for “2nd generation Prius battery” and poked through the plentiful results.

I got 2 HiTec 44169 X4-80 4-Port Multi-Chemistry Charger as the chargers. They were $120 each, which sucks, but I was in more of a rush than I was broke at that time. If you’re not in a rush, everything can be done with only a single charger – it just takes a lot longer.

I also purchased an EVGA 500 watt PSU (~35$) as a power supply for the chargers. With all of this ordered and shipping, a bit of the stress of the unknown is off.

I opted for the “no” on paying 3500$ to replace the big ol’ hybrid battery in my 2004 Prius. I had also grown increasingly uncomfortable with it holding up while (perhaps stupidly) driving it the ~45km from my house to the dealership. Now that I wasn’t going to have the dealer fix it, somebody had to…

To that end, step one was getting the car home. I was really not that pumped about driving it back, I was genuinely worried about doing irremediable damage to the battery by draining it or charging it when it’s screaming at me to stop. I don’t even want to guess how much a tow truck would cost to get the car home. While talking to friends, someone mentioned that U-Haul rented automotive tow dollies as well as full on auto transport trailers. The fact that Cailyn has a Toyota Tacoma plays nicely with that. I don’t remember exactly what the quote was, but essentially it came out to ~20$ difference or something between the two options. Finally seeing an opportunity to splurge, I reserved an auto transport trailer.

I can safely say I have never had such a bad experience with such clear communication before hand. First of all, I tried to do everything online. Wanting to be sure, because I had to coerce Cailyn to be around for the whole ordeal, I called the location I had supposedly reserved the trailer. Turns out U-Haul’s online inventory is not even close to accurate, with some of the locations it directed me to telling me they have never even had an auto transport trailer. After calling my third location with no hits on a trailer, and none of the staff able to help me, I called U-Haul’s reservation line to do it over the phone. Apparently they have information their online service isn’t privy to, because the option I was given didn’t even appear in their online franchise (dealer?) network when I looked. Either way, all good, reservation confirmed.

Almost immediately after booking the reservation, the U-Haul franchisee called me directly. There is a bunch of information you have to fill out when you show up, and he wanted to do it over the phone to expedite the in-person process. Works for me. Made an appointment for 4:15 on a Wednesday or something. The franchisee stressed that they close at 5:00, so don’t expect to pick up the trailer if I show up at 5:00. “No problem”, I said.

I spoke on the phone, to the person I was picking the trailer up from, at ~noon on the Wednesday to double confirm everything. They again stressed they close at 5 sharp. “Yep, got it”, I said. I showed up at ~4:20 (5 minutes late, I know) and the location was closed. At first I didn’t really understand, I thought maybe I was at the service entrance or something. I walked around and asked neighboring businesses, but no luck. Not just “Sorry, we just pulled the little dangly chain on our fluorescent open sign” closed, but “doors locked, lights shut off, building looking rough, exterior a mess as though they’ve been closed for a couple months” kind of closed. So that kind of sucked.

I can safely say that after having safely said I’ve never had such a bad experience with such clear communication beforehand, I have never had such downright atrocious customer service over the phone. Calling U-Haul’s phone system, I had two people talk to me for about 3-4 minutes and then transfer me back to the root of the phone tree. Yes, I did want to start all over again with the same options I was frustrated by previously but once again ending up with someone who has no context, thank you. I then had 2 people HANG UP IN THE MIDDLE OF MY ISSUE DESCRIPTION. Two distinct individuals, in the midst of fulfilling their job responsibilities, just… didn’t. “Hi, it’s 4:45 and I’m standing outside a U-Haul where I have a reservation to pick up a trailer and there doesn’t seem to be any… hello? @#%!$#@$@!^%@#$”. I couldn’t believe it! That’s never happened to me before ever. How can someone not get fired for that?! I believe this is the part where Cailyn pulled out her e-reader and let me rage out in an empty parking lot for a bit.

I dropped Cailyn off at the beach to play some volleyball while I continued to be in a great mood and have lots of fun. After about 20 minutes of phone-tree roulette, I ended up with a kindly older Texan who was determined to help me. He was really sweet, and really reassuring, and really wanted to help, but just didn’t have any authority. He tried to transfer me a handful of different places before saying my best option was to call the next number, and immediately escalate and have them look at my file (which he had made descriptive notes in). I don’t remember his name now, maybe Walt? If you’re out there Walt, I appreciate the effort. You’re a nice guy. Your co-workers are dicks though, so maybe make friends outside of work.

Calling the head-office number and escalating ended up working, and I was eventually connected with someone far more head-office-y. I should have written this a month ago when it was still fresh, as I also forget her name, but we’ll call her Sarah. Sarah had both the authority and the righteous indignation to get shit done. She didn’t promise anything quickly, but she promised that I would get an auto transport trailer that night. I stayed on the phone with her for around 45 minutes while she began knocking heads, but eventually she started to get a little discouraged. I told her it wasn’t a huge deal, it just really sucked to have wasted a whole evening and not be any further along. We dropped the call, (this is around 6:45 now, or after about 2 straight hours of phone shenanigans) with the understanding that she’d call back as soon as she had something to talk about. I went and ran an errand downtown, and around 7:30 Sarah called me back. I don’t know exactly what happened, but there was going to be a trailer waiting for me in the east end if I were to drive over that night.

Go pick up Cailyn from the beach; head out to the east end of the city; go to an equivalently seedy looking location behind a gas station. The attendant there seemed to have been totally clued in to my situation – it sounded like his boss had been brought in from home to get things sorted out. Sarah – I’m sorry you had to go to such lengths, but thank you for making U-Haul suck less than it apparently does. Maybe give Walt a call, you’d probably get along.

It was starting to get dark, but it was done. Prius on trailer.

Trailer on truck.And home we go.

The dealership was very prompt with their service, extremely accommodating with my schedule, and generally nice to deal with. I definitely appreciated it, because they have something of a captive customer base when it comes to hybrid issues. Online I’ve seen a couple hybrid servicing shops pop up in the states, but nothing around Ottawa. It may have even been the same day that they got back to me. At first, all they said was “your battery needs to be replaced”. I was extremely not that satisfied with that as an answer. I followed up to ask what exactly the issue was, but the person I was speaking with didn’t really know, he only had the report that had been passed to him, and the quote for the “fix”. I’ll get to that part though…

Although reluctant, the person I was dealing with wasn’t actively unhelpful. They charged me an hour’s labor, 119$ + tax, to apparently plug their computer into the car and press *go*. I expected more than “it’s broken”. Why does it have to be a pain to get information? Are they afraid I would take what they tell me to an independent mechanic? So far as I know, nobody does that sort of work anywhere around here. I don’t understand why they have to be secretive about it. I asked for the actual diagnostic report from the techs, as apparently there wasn’t an appropriate person to convey that information to a paying customer. This is what I got:

If you recall my post on diagnostics, that’s literally exactly what I had come upon on my own. So… thanks dealership. 119$ + tax for me to drag out of them in a round about way exactly the information I had brought them to begin with. Now, I know I’m no mechanic, and I certainly don’t know that much about electronics, but that certainly does not feel like a great way to spend that money. I know professionals hate it when clueless customers tell them how to do their job, but really, if you’re going to be better and smarter than me – prove it by providing me more information than I came with or some meaningful insight that a clueless customer couldn’t arrive at themselves! I think it’s abundantly clear when customers just want to come in and pay money, and when customers want to be more involved in the process. So that certainly didn’t really make me love this dealership interaction. Then I got the quote…

The only option available to me was a total battery replacement… 3500$ into a 2004 Prius that has had more than its fair share of abuse. That’s INCLUDING the credit applied by giving the old battery back to Toyota. Literally the only option. The dealership gave no reconditioning options, no battery rebuilding option. Just buy a brand new one.

Excuse me while I digress, but this is a 2004 Prius. The first Prius was 1997. A decade and a half the cars have been on the road. The corrosion on the battery terminals of the first generation is a well known phenomenon (among people who care to know), and the rating for the second generation is 10 years. So this battery is basically exactly on schedule. Toyota has done absolutely nothing to address this. Nobody wants to put 3500$ into a 10 year old vehicle. There is virtually no knowledge at the mechanic level on how to service the batteries. At this point I’d only done a couple hours of reading, but it was clear that there was no one at the dealership that was made available to have a meaningful discussion with, with respect to alternatives. How can you have a product line up out for almost 20 years and not have a servicing plan! In my mind, it’s almost line saying “looks like it’s time to change the oil. We have no way to do that, so we’ll just replace the whole engine”.

So that would be an aggressive no on my part. From what I can see, there’s a dead module or two.  Surely someone should be able to fix that. And for much less than 3500. After loving the Prius so far, and finding it extremely reliable and cheap to maintain, this would be a giant black mark on the record of Toyota in my eyes. I would be thrilled to pay 500$ and have their battery service team replace the faulty cell at a giant mark-up and be on my way. I don’t understand how it is different than every other part of the car that you need tools and experience to fix correctly. Really puts me off hybrids in general if there is no servicing plan and it makes you entirely dependent on the dealer.

After getting as far as I could with the diagnostic aspect of my car troubles, I had to get my car into a dealer to see if I could get away with a cheap fix. I called Tony Graham Kanata Toyota, and they were not that nice about giving me information without having the Prius in their shop. Despite that, I called them back to take the car in because they were the most convenient location for me. After 3 calls to their service desk, I was still unable to actually talk to anyone. Thoroughly frustrated with the lack of communication, I called Tony Graham Nepean Toyota. A world of difference in terms of responsiveness. They also had their shop open from like 8am until 2am, which was a handy thing as well.

With an appointment booked, the Prius was at my house, and the dealer was a solid ~45km away. At this point, the car still drove, so I figured the cheapest option would be to just drive it. The internet and owners manual both strongly suggested that I not do that, but once again, I’m cheap and it seemed like nothing *too* bad could happen. The car certainly didn’t drive like regular, the cycles on battery power were extremely short, even sitting at a stop light. As I got into the city I ran into some traffic and started to think that maybe it wasn’t going to make it. The engine would cut out, then almost immediately come back on. The battery wasn’t draining or charging, and the glaring warning lights certainly didn’t go away. It only got to be particularly stressful when I hit stop and go traffic (when the car most heavily relies on the battery). I was only about 2km from the dealer, and I was starting to think maybe it’d be a bad idea. Even started to consider parking it and getting a tow for the last tiny bit. I didn’t, but I considered it. Made it to the dealer with nothing particularly exciting happening, dropped the car off, and caught a ride home with Cailyn.