Predictive battery failure analysis for the Prius Hybrid

Written by Paul Cortes Friday, 14 November 2008 21:10 - Last Updated Friday, 24 December 2010 09:33

Predictive battery failure analysis for the Prius Hybrid

How can you tell when a Prius battery is beginning to fail?

How long will a Prius battery last?

How much will a Prius battery cost to replace?

These are questions that have concerned many of our customers who were either considering buying a hybrid, or had already purchased a hybrid. Let me start this article by saying, battery problems are very low on the list of problems we've found on the hybrids we repair. The level of concern about battery packs is massively disproportionate to the actual rate of failure.

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Predictive battery failure analysis for the Prius Hybrid

Written by Paul Cortes Friday, 14 November 2008 21:10 - Last Updated Friday, 24 December 2010 09:33

So far, we've seen a few bad Insight batteries, but they have all been covered under Honda's warranty extension, so we have not actually replaced one.

We've seen only three bad Prius batteries. The first one went off to the dealer as soon as we discovered the P3006 code stored in the HV battery ECU, since it was still covered under the 10 year / 100,000 mile warranty. The next two Prius batteries came in withing weeks of each other (when it rains it pours I guess). They were out of warranty because the cars had over 100,000 miles. Both Priuses were 2001 model year (it's now the end of 2008) so these batteries lasted 7 years and well over 100K. Not too shabby at all in my opinion, and again, we've only seen 3 fail so far, and we service a lot of First gens.

It's even more impressive when you consider almost all of the first generation Priuses had the batteries removed for the bus bar campaign, so they were hardly factory fresh. I'm not trying to say dealers didn't do a quality job with the battery campaign. In fact both the battery packs I removed had every bolt in its original place and whoever had performed the campaign had done a really professional job. However, there are advantages to having assembly done in a factory setting by a guy or gal that does nothing but assemble batteries all day long.

The battery packs were about $2500 (a price which will likely fluctuate) and the labor to replace them was about 3.5 hours. The actual R&R (remove & replace) is pretty quick. About 45 min for removal and an hour for putting it back in. The remaining 1.75 hours is for transferring components from the old battery pack to the new battery pack.

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Predictive battery failure analysis for the Prius Hybrid

Written by Paul Cortes Friday, 14 November 2008 21:10 - Last Updated Friday, 24 December 2010 09:33

So now you know "How long?" and "How much?", which leaves "How can you tell if a Prius battery is beginning to fail?"

The HV ECU monitors battery condition, and will alert you that the battery performance has degraded below an acceptable performance threshold with a warning light. But it seems that is not good enough for folks who are in the market for a used hybrid. For them, I have devised a method for testing battery condition. Well, that's not entirely true. It's actually just the same test procedure for the confirming a P3006 is legit. I just found a nice way to graph it on the TechStream, and took some sample data on a few cars with known battery conditions -- one with a new battery, one with a bad battery, and one with a 60K / 7 year old battery that had no problems.

Here comes the bathtub science! (Like "bathtub cheese", or "bathtub gin", "bathtub science" is home-made, by people without professional training, and may be of dubious quality.)

The Prius battery consists of a bunch of individual battery blocks wired in series. Each battery block is about 15V. The HV Battery ECU monitors the voltage of each individual block. All of the block voltages vary slightly. Whichever block has the lowest voltage is reported in a PID (Parameter ID) called Battery Min Block Voltage. This PID will jump to whichever block is the lowest at the moment, so it may be the voltage for block 10 one second, then block 13 the next second. There is also a PID called Battery Max Block Voltage. It's the same as the Min Block PID, except it reports the block that has the highest voltage.

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Predictive battery failure analysis for the Prius Hybrid

Written by Paul Cortes Friday, 14 November 2008 21:10 - Last Updated Friday, 24 December 2010 09:33

These two PIDs can be used to determine the condition of the battery pack. Battery block performance can be affected by temperature and I'm sure other variables as well. So how can you tell if a battery block is performing adequately given its current situation? Easy, you look at the identical battery blocks right next to it, which are performing under the exact same conditions. If one block in the pack is doing something wildly different than the others, something's not right. By looking at the highest and lowest blocks, the HV Battery ECU is able to judge the condition of the battery pack.

The picture below is a recording on the Toyota TechStream scanner. I have graphed the Min Block Voltage and the Max Block Voltage using an overlapping graph. I have turned off auto-ranging amplitude and set identical minimum and maximum scale values for both PIDs. If you use the default settings, you end up with a pretty useless graph.

The length of the capture is five minutes, so each division is about 30 seconds. The capture trigger was set to "10% before", meaning that once the trigger button was pressed, the recording started about 30 seconds before the button was pressed.

The object of the test is to discharge the battery and observe the difference between the Min Block V and the Max Block V as the battery is stressed. So, how do you discharge a Prius battery?

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Predictive battery failure analysis for the Prius Hybrid

Written by Paul Cortes Friday, 14 November 2008 21:10 - Last Updated Friday, 24 December 2010 09:33

The test goes like this -- Start the car and allow it to warm up. Put it in reverse. Wait for the engine to stop running (if it's not already running, wait for it to start, then wait for it to stop running). Press the trigger button and simultaneously step on the gas and brake at the same time.

By doing this you are discharging the battery with the MG2, which is trying to roll you backwards, but the brakes (hopefully!) are preventing you from moving. THE ENGINE (ICE) MUST BE OFF! When the ICE is running, the battery is charging. That's the last thing you want when you are trying to discharge the battery. This is the rule for the test: ICE on = throttle off. ICE off = throttle on. You are trying to discharge and recharge the battery pack while observing the voltages.

In the graph below, the MIN & MAX are pretty close when the ICE is running. But as soon as the ICE shuts off and the battery is loaded with the throttle & MG2, the voltages make a major split! There are about 7 divisions between the MIN and the MAX and each division is .5 volts. That's a 3.5 volt difference. The maximum allowable difference is 1.2V. This battery pack is very, very bad. Notice that the voltages come back together pretty quickly once the ICE restarts and the throttle is released. Also notice that the battery pack was discharged in only 1 minute 45 seconds and the ICE had to start. Finally, take a look the amplitude -- the MAX reaches 18V and the MIN drops down to 14.5V.

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Predictive battery failure analysis for the Prius Hybrid

Written by Paul Cortes Friday, 14 November 2008 21:10 - Last Updated Friday, 24 December 2010 09:33

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Predictive battery failure analysis for the Prius Hybrid

Written by Paul Cortes Friday, 14 November 2008 21:10 - Last Updated Friday, 24 December 2010 09:33

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Predictive battery failure analysis for the Prius Hybrid

Written by Paul Cortes Friday, 14 November 2008 21:10 - Last Updated Friday, 24 December 2010 09:33

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