2001 prius battery options
 

Needs a replacement hybrid battery, options, ideas, lithium upgrades?

regards
mech

Are you a diyer? Are you or do you have time to go stick by stick with a hobby charger to rehab it or do you just want a oem drop in, aftermarket replacement or high performance?

I could do a balance myself. Hobby charger implies not expensive. Time is not an issue. I guess a rebalance would be the best first option. Is there anyway to get it working good enough to drive the car instead of towing?

regards
mech

I'm also interested in this topic.

If I'm not mistaken (and I may be), the Prius pack isn't organized into subpacks with cylindrical cells like the Hondas were. Not sure what that means in terms of rebuilding/swapping at the cell level.

There was an '01 Prius for sale near me recently for $1k asking. Cosmetically good, still driveable but the battery was going. It sold, but one day I'd really like to get an inexpensive Prius, because they're so much darn fun to pilot and get silly good numbers.

They are not cylindrical cells, look to be individual rectangular packs bolted to a common connection. Shouldn't be hard to balance, even replacing a really bad cell. Military guys get deployed and they sit for months or longer.

This one is low miles and $750, looks good but I wanted to know if it would move on the pack it has, no response.

regards
mech

The ad is gone. Rebalancing the battery costs about $1200, other more expensive options are using newer cells. Lots of those batteries around. At $750 for the car and$1200 for a battery (sure there are cheaper ones used but they all need balancing). Best kind of charger?

regards
mech

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p8Im1eL67Y

Gen 2 but basically the same. These will be coming on to the market, Prii with dead main batteries. It would be good to have someone here who can balance them. Grab a bunch of used ones and make some money.

regards
mech

Im not an expert on the prius.

I thought the gen 1 used cylinder cells, than the rest were the soft sided ones?

Soft sided cells need to be under compression when in use.

Gen 1 cells are hard to find, like gen 1 insight cells.

Best bet is to balance the pack at 350 ma using a few series wired mean well led power supplies.

I believe the prius itself is the best tool for servicing the battery as it gives readouts of the sticks.

750? I would of purchased it and let AAA tow it home. You could make a portable balancer using a deep cycle battery, but it still takes HOURS for it to do its thing.

That video seems too simple, but this video supports it, and it came from a news channel, so you know that it is true! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guSE6L2Hjjs

Nhw10 or Nhw11
 

Hi,
There are two prius 1 model:
-the nhw10 (First Japan model)
-and nhw11 (Only model that we can find in Europe)

The nhw10 have round cells (240xD cells)
The nhw11 have rectangular ones.(Not sure but I think 38 x 6.5Ah nimh)

Here a guy is replacing a nhw10 battery with lithium.

:)