After a long hunt involving the Washington Attorney General's Consumer Protection Office, the Washington Law Library Research Service, and my local State Representatives research assistant, the answer is that Washington adopted SOME of the California CARB rules, but did not mandate the extended warranty for the battery pack. It was a lot harder than it should have been to get a straight answer to a seemingly simple question.

Yesterday I had a refurbished battery installed by a mobile service right in my driveway in under an hour, including the tech taking the car out for a test drive after clearing the error status codes. He then had me take a quick spin while he filled out his reports (on-line, of course). The lag in acceleration I was experiencing with the failing cell in the original pack was gone and the battery topped up it's charge very quickly. The refurbished battery has a lifetime warranty covering future cell failures too. (And the company has been around long enough that I'm not too worried about them disappearing suddenly.) I called the company in question on Tuesday, and they scheduled me for Saturday - very nice. Total cost - $1695, which included the installation.

 

Glad to hear the good news.....I hope.

IF....the replacement pack has ALL NEW cells, you should be fine.

If they replaced ONLY the failed cells, then you still have an OLD battery and likely will have a giant pain in the backside with exercising your "warranty" every 6 months or so as the remaining old cells fail too.

 

This company (and the 3 others I checked) assembles a complete replacement set of reconditioned and tested cells and then runs a full conditioning and test of all the cells in the configuration they'll be installed in in your old battery frame. Even the Toyota dealer said they don't replace individual cells any more - apparently you really need to have a complete set conditioned together and installed in the correct order (that the full pack was conditioned in). That also was mentioned in a couple of Youtube videos on Prius hybrid battery pack replacement. Oh yeah - the Toyota service manager said I'd only get a one year warranty with their $4K+replacement pack.

 

This company (and the 3 others I checked) assembles a complete replacement set of reconditioned and tested cells ..........

You can do pretty much NOTHING useful to "recondition" a battery cell.
It will still be an OLD cell, with a correspondingly shorter life.

The story about getting them in the right order is just blowing smoke.

IF.....you don't get an entire set of brand NEW cells, then you still have an OLD battery.

 

Well, for something that can't be done, there sure are a lot of articles on reconditioning NiMH Hybrid car batteries on the internet, including a description of the basic technique, and a lot of firms claim that that's what they are doing as part of refurbishing pre-2015 Prius Battery packs - supposedly that's when Toyota went to Li packs. Anyway, I'll keep the forum informed on my experience. If I "only" get 5 years instead of the full 8 for a new battery - I'm still WAY ahead of paying Toyota for their refurbished battery pack - it doesn't use new cells either, according to my local dealership.

 

Well, for something that can't be done, there sure are a lot of articles on reconditioning NiMH Hybrid car batteries on the internet,

Sure. And we all know that everything you see on the Internet is absolutely true.


And I think you need to verify that part about Toyota replacement batteries too.
I think it has been widely reported that Toyota does NOT sell battery packs with used cells.

Please do keep us posted with your continuing results.

 

I got the statement to my face at the local NW Washington Toyota dealer that the price was $4K plus AND the warranty was only one year - odd for a battery with all new cells. He specifically said it was a refurbished battery, didn't say it had all new cells - and the 1 year warranty fits with the cheaper refurbishment outfits that only want $1350 for a battery with reconditioned cells. If you have a cite from Toyota that they only use new cells in replacement batteries, and what they warrant if for, I'd appreciate it.

 

He specifically said it was a refurbished battery, didn't say it had all new cells -

You should ask:
Is this really a Toyota product.....or from some other "3rd party" vendor ?
and
Does it have all new cells ?
It likely can't be called "new" if it has a re-used frame and wiring.

 

I too had my battery fail and went to the dealer who told me 4K for replacement and 1 yr Warranty I went online and did some research and found a replacement for 1600.00 with a much batter warranty the first battery did in fact fail after 3 months they came right back out (No charge) apologized and replaced it , I have been running on this battery for over a year no problems. Do I care if its rebuilt hmm NO I care that this company stands behind their product

 

Do I care if its rebuilt hmm NO I care that this company stands behind their product

Glad your's is turning out OK.

Some people find that rebuilds are just a GIANT PAIN.....since they end up having to exercise the warranty about every 3 months, seemingly forever.

Because of that, I think people SHOULD care about exactly HOW rebuilds are done.
Replacing only the currently bad cells is an exercise in futility.