Quote:
Originally Posted by ncwa
You also might look at selling off your old pack to a solar user. There is a lot of current activity around folks planning on using older packs for their solar arrays. You never know, you might find a bidder!
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The battery pack in a hybrid is way to small to power an off grid system, it looks like they are a 1.3kwh battery pack... that is around 1/20 the size of the battery bank that my parents off grid system has and it's even 1/3 of the size of battery pack that my electric motorcycle has, it would be a really nice battery for an electric bicycle...
Largest market that I've heard of for used Prius batteries is people who rebuild them in to refurbished battery packs because when they "go bad" it's often just one or two cells in the pack that have gone bad.
I agree that where the extra $2,000 is going is being saved, so when you come back and want to know why the repair that they did didn't fix every single issue that your 12 year old car has, they don't go broke making you happy.
Best deal you are going to get I suspect is to find someone who works on hybrids and is confident with every diagnostic that they make, I suspect that a mechanic like that is not going to talk you in to a brand new battery pack, they are going to tell you to put a used/rebuilt pack in your car, if they tell you that a brand new pack is your only option then get a 2nd opinion.