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Friday Fun Thread for June 21, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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You "used Prius" guys, how have the batteries held up? I always understood that that was a major limit to service life, but I might be wrong.

Newer Priuses have a 10 year manufacturer battery warranty, so that counts for something.

My last car was 14 years old when I got rid of it and the batter was still fine (it had other problems I got tired of dealing with).

Mine definitely degraded with time but did not fail (my catalytic converter went which was ultimately what caused me to ditch the car). mpg went from around 55 at 200 k miles to 42 mpg at 200 k miles). I knew someone who refurbished his battery which cost him relatively little to do (he did it himself). The batteries used to just be a bunch of nicad cells in series and when a battery “went bad” it’s usually just a few cells which can be replaced (cheap to diy, I don’t even know if it’s a service most shops would do).

I’m also unsure how this works with newer Priuses since I think Toyota switched all of their hybrids to lipo batteries in 2016.

They do eventually go bad, but it is often just 1 or 2 cells, you can just swap those 2 cells and the battery is good again, they are basically made up of lots and lots of laptop battery blades. I've done it with success.