BoomerGer Posted November 10, 2014 Report Share Posted November 10, 2014 You know, the big thing behind the seats that made this car so famous. Has anyone ever had THAT battery take a dump? When considering a 'Max at the place where I take it in for service, I asked my service director his opinion of how the hybrid batteries hold up. He stated he has never had to replace one except when one was involved in a wreck and it split open and had to be replaced that way. As for failing, he still has customers that that have over 200K on the Hybrid Escape and one that has almost 300K on it. But none that have "failed". This sounds encouraging, doesn't it?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevedebi Posted November 10, 2014 Report Share Posted November 10, 2014 Encouraging, I suppose. Note that the Escape hybrid has a different battery (I had one). However, the HV battery warranty is for either 8 yrs/100K or 10 yrs / 150K. Most folks don't own their cars that long. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
plus 3 golfer Posted November 11, 2014 Report Share Posted November 11, 2014 AFAIK, no one has reported any issues with the HVB. Ford appears to be operating the Lithium-ion battery for a long, long life (charge / discharge cycles or miles). Here's key life test and real world results. Since the max. and min. operating range of the HVB appears to be limited between 70% and 30% for the Hybrid and more like upper 50% to low 40 % in typical driving, the HVB should last for virtually the life of the car. If one assumes 0 miles on the graph is 100% working capacity, it appears that the working capacity will still be around 80% at 300 k miles which is still higher than the max. operating range of 70%. Ford's confidence in lithium-ion is based on so-called Key Life Tests. The tests predict that the working capacity (y-axis) of lithium-ion batteries (green line) will be greater over a high-mileage lifetime (x-axis) than that of nickel-metal hydride (yellow line). Past field data for nickel-metal hydride (blue dots) has shown that the testing results are conservative -- that is, batteries generally do better in the field than they do on tests. obob 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fotomoto Posted November 11, 2014 Report Share Posted November 11, 2014 I regularly follow the prius forum and they are just now seeing an increase in failures of the HV battery at 10 years in. In many cases, it's only one cell that is bad which can be replaced by skilled DIY types at home for less than $100 and the pack continues on. Another popular solution is to either buy a used pack with less miles or a rebuilt pack sold by third party shops with a warranty. Finally, the most expensive solution is a new pack from Toyota for about $3500 (nickel metal hydride). I assume the higher tech lithium ion packs used by Ford will cost more than that though. This will be of more concern around the years 2022-2024. ;) obob 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottwood2 Posted November 11, 2014 Report Share Posted November 11, 2014 Thx for sharing that data. I have not seen that chart before. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fbov Posted November 11, 2014 Report Share Posted November 11, 2014 (edited) ...Ford's confidence in lithium-ion is based on so-called Key Life Tests. The tests predict that the working capacity (y-axis) of lithium-ion batteries (green line) will be greater over a high-mileage lifetime (x-axis) than that of nickel-metal hydride (yellow line). Past field data for nickel-metal hydride (blue dots) has shown that the testing results are conservative -- that is, batteries generally do better in the field than they do on tests. +1 to key life test data I regularly follow the prius forum and they are just now seeing an increase in failures of the HV battery at 10 years in. ...And that's expected, give the poorer performance in the key life test. Have fun,Frank Edited November 11, 2014 by fbov Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SCSweeney Posted October 7, 2015 Report Share Posted October 7, 2015 Great question and solid answers, thanks. I'm a n00b and once it dawned on me that the the battery problems were the low v battery and not the hi v battery, I started feeling less concerned. This question "what about the big battery?" was the next question that popped into my mind. I notice this thread ended in Nov 2014 ... Are there any updates / comments / observations nearly a year later? I'm guessing no, since there are no new threads. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill-N Posted October 7, 2015 Report Share Posted October 7, 2015 No worries here, but I have only 3 years and 40k miles on the car. BTW, the HV battery is part of the 8 yr, 100k warranty. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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