What Can You Do?

There are a several choices when the battery fails. Unfortunately, those options don't involve driving the vehicle, since the battery is important to the drive train. That means you can't just rewire it to work on gasoline alone, as some thrifty drivers hope.

Your 1st option is, of course, to simply buy a new battery. In our knowledge, this can price around $2,500 plus labor and taxes, though it's more expensive in some versions. Do this and you'll likely get a decade or more out of your new battery.

Another option is to buy a reconditioned or re-manufactured battery. While a seller is unlikely to perform this job, spend some time searching on the Internet and you'll get many third parties who will. They rebuild batteries by replacing dead cells with new ones. While re-manufactured batteries may not last as long as the originals, they're also much cheaper. If you go this path, get ready to pay $1,000 to $1,400 plus installation.

Your finally option is to buy a used battery, which typically comes from a hybrid that suffered an problem. This is the cheapest option but also the riskiest, since there are few guarantees that the battery will work until it's fitted and paid for.

Examine Your Warranty

One piece of suggestions we give consumers concerned about hybrid battery failure is to examine their vehicle's warranty. While most hybrid vehicles offer an 8- or 10-year/100,000-mile warranty, several states mandate that hybrid warranties last up to 150,000 miles. If your vehicle was bought new in one of those states, you might be able to get your battery changed under warranty for free.

Be Careful, Not Scared

Hybrid vehicles have many advantages, and we wouldn't advise a shopper to run away from one just because of potential battery traps. But we surely advise doing your homework, even if that means discussing a lower price to account for potential battery failure.

Hybrid Battery Replacement: 

When Can You Hope It?  

Whether you're preparing to buy a used hybrid or you already have one, you'll need to give some thought to the hybrid battery pack. That's because the battery in a hybrid motor vehicle isn't like the one in a traditional vehicle, and it can't be replaced for $75 at the local auto parts shop.

Instead, a unsuccessful hybrid car battery can cost thousands of dollars to replace, and that can be a big deal to a shopper who bought a hybrid to save money. But before you get too worried, we've given some tips on when to expect the battery to fail and ways to avoid a big bill.

When Will It Fail?

This is the most important problem posed by hybrid users and drivers considering a used hybrid. Unfortunately, answering it isn't easy -- largely because each case looks to be different. Some drivers experience failure at 70,000 miles, while others can make it to 200,000 miles without problem.

In our knowledge, hybrid batteries begin to become a risk when they're 10 to 15 years old and they've covered 120,000 to 150,000 miles. Yes, some users will do a lot better than that. There are information of batteries lasting well into the 200,000-mile range. But we wouldn't recommend counting on those reports as the norm, especially if you're thinking about a used hybrid and you're on a budget.

next part coming soon........

Tips for Hybrids, Plug-in Hybrids, and Electric Vehicles

5. Use Accessories Smartly

Accessories such as heating, air conditioning, and entertainment systems affect fuel economy on all motor vehicles, but they can have a greater effect on hybrids and electrics. So, keep that in mind when trying to maximize fuel economy or electric range. Pre-heating or pre-cooling the cabin of a plug-in hybrid or EV while the motor vehicle is still plugged in, for example, can extend its electric range.

Tips for Hybrids, Plug-in Hybrids, and Electric Vehicles

4. Maintain the Battery Charged

(EVs and Plug-in Hybrids Only)

For plug-in hybrids, maintaining the battery charged ensures that you will use as much electricity and as bit of gasoline as possible, protecting you fuel and money. For EVs, it helps maximize your driving range.

For lithium-ion batteries, the kind typically used on EVs and plug-in hybrids, recharging a partially charged battery pack ("topping off the battery") does not degrade the battery's storage capacity or make it degrade more quickly.

Tips for Hybrids, Plug-in Hybrids, and Electric Vehicles

3. Avoid Hard Braking

Anticipate stops and brake softly or moderately. This allows the vehicle's regenerative braking system to recover energy from the vehicle's forward movement and store it as electricity. Hard braking causes the motor vehicle to use its conventional friction brakes, which do not recover energy.

Tips for Hybrids, Plug-in Hybrids, and Electric Vehicles

Many of the gas-saving driving and maintenance tips for conventional motor vehicles also use to hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and all-electric vehicles (EVs). However, here are some extra tips that may help you increase the fuel economy of these advanced motor vehicles.

1. Study the User's Manual

These motor vehicles can vary significantly in design, specially the way they control energy use; tips that apply to one model may not apply to another. The manufacturer knows how to operate and maintain your motor vehicle to maximize fuel economy, driving range, and battery life. So, consult your user's manual for tips specific to your motor vehicle.

2. Use the Economy Function

Many of these motor vehicles come with an "economy mode" or similar feature that maximizes the vehicle's fuel economy. In some motor vehicles, this mode can be activated by easily pressing a button. The economy mode may limit other aspects of the vehicle's performance, such as acceleration rate, to save fuel.

TOYOTA HIGHLANDER battery pack

The nickel metal hydride battery applied in Highlander Hybrid-and the Lexus RX 400h-is packaged in a recently developed metal battery casing. The 240 cells can provide high voltage of 288 volts-but the motor-generators units can handle on variable voltage anywhere from 280 volts to 650 volts. The battery pack products 288 volts, but the boost converter, a part of the inverter above the transaxle, changes this to 500 volts. This battery pack gives 40 percent more power than the Prius battery, despite being 18 percent smaller.

Each of the modules has its own monitoring and cooling manage system. The cooling performance decreases performance losses due to excessive heat, ensuring that the battery can supply required electric power to the motors at all times. The battery-monitoring unit manages discharge and recharging by the generator and motors to keep the charge level constant while the car is running. The battery pack is stowed under the back seats.

TOYOTA Prius battery pack

The battery pack of the 2nd generation Toyota Prius includes of 28 Panasonic prismatic nickel metal hydride modules-each containing six 1.2 volt cells-attached in series to manufacture a small voltage of 201.6 volts. The total number of cells is 168, compared with 228 cells packaged in 38 modules in the first generation Prius. The pack is positioned behind the rear seat.

The weight of the complete battery pack is 53.3 kg. The discharge power capability of the Prius pack is about 20 kW at 50 percent state-of-charge. The power capability improves with higher temperatures and decreases at lower temperatures. The Prius has a computer that’s solely dedicated to maintaining the Prius battery at the optimum temperature and optimum charge stage. The Prius products conditioned air from the cabin as thermal management for cooling the batteries. The air is drawn by a 12-volt blower fitted above the driver’s side rear tire well.

hybrid batteries

Like all batteries, hybrid batteries have 2 electrodes (which collect or emit an electric charge) that sit in an ion-high solution called the electrolyte. (An ion, by the way, is an atom or group of atoms with an electrical charge.)

The electrodes are typically very near, so a polymer film, called a separator, avoids them from touching, which would make a short circuit. An on-off switch in whatever device is powered by the battery-your phone or laptop-bridges the cell’s electrodes to create power. That’s when the electro chemical effect begins.

Keep in mind: What we usually call “a battery” is actually a battery pack that houses many specific cells. Your mobile phone battery is just one single cell, but anything larger-even a laptop battery-uses multiple cells working together.

Ionized elements in one electrode are in a chemical state where they are easily attracted to combine with other molecules, emitting electrons (power) in the method. Those elements are tugged through the electrolyte and the separator toward the opposite electrode. The ions of the negative electrode (anode) give up electrons; the positive ions coming toward the anode take them. The electrons launched during this process travel through the external circuit (e.g. your phone), generating a flow of charge in the opposite direction to the flow of ions. During recharge, current is forced into the cell, reversing the process.

As we take a tour of hybrid batteries, remember one thing: Total energy determines the vehicle’s electric range, whereas available power determines its acceleration.

How do hybrid vehicles work?

One of the most symbolic and famous symbols of the "green" action is the hybrid-electric car, known greater as basically the hybrid car. These vehicles increase the performance of traditional internal burning engines by combining them with a battery-powered electric engine, which takes some of the work off the burning engine's hands. This allows the cars the same performance to a equivalent conventional car with a much smaller fuel engine, and an overall increase in fuel efficiency. Contrary to what some people think, these hybrid cars do not need to be plugged in to charge up the batteries. They aren't just any batteries, though.

Photos

TOYOTA hybrid vehicle photos

Identifying Hybrids

A motor vehicle is a hybrid if it uses more than one type of on board energy to achieve propulsion. In process, that means a hybrid will have a traditional internal-combustion engine and a fuel tank, as well as one or more electric engines and a battery pack.

Hybrid vehicles are sometimes mistakenly confused with electric motor vehicles. Hybrids are most usually fuel-burning equipment that use their electric bits to collect and reuse energy that usually goes to waste in standard vehicles. Theoretically, diesel-electric hybrids would be even more fuel-successful, but hybrid techniques and diesel engines both represent extra cost. So far, fitting both in the same motor vehicle has proven to be really expensive.