16 July 2016

Riaan in Pretoria has sent me pictures of the interior of my failed battery. According to his tests one module is dead while three others are unbalanced, ie on their way out. There is also some buildup/corrosion on the busbar.

Photos by AA Janse van Rensburg (2016)©

13 July 2016

Driving a Prius with a brand new battery is interesting when I compare it to the performance of the failed battery. The new battery stays on 6 blue bars most of the time and only very rarely goes up or down. The car stays in EV mode much longer also. The old battery used to fluctuate quite a lot in a short period of time. Come to think of it, the "failure" signs were there for at least 6 months.

9 July 2016

I inspected Toyotas' work and found everything in place except for a tie hook they forgot to put back on.

8 July 2016

Got my car back!

 I got my Prius back today. All clean and driving fine, albeit with an eye-watering bill. Oh well.

26 June 2016

My car while the Prius is in hospital

20 June 2016

  Main Battery Failure!

It had to happen sometime. My Prius' battery failed after ten years and 263500km. Not bad I think. The photo at the top shows the error lights when I took it in to Toyota. I barely made it to the dealership. The battery fan was running full blast. The car was sluggish and the engine was racing. I find it good engineering that even in its' limp home mode you can still drive the car.

A visitor to this website, Riaan, rebuilds batteries in Pretoria. He offered to buy the old pack off me for R2500. The total cost of repair is R 32 794.46. Now I just have to wait for the new pack to come from Japan.
 

4 May 2016

9 Years as a happy Prius owner!

261700km

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