If you own a good quality hybrid car like the Toyota Prius, you might think that you have the best of both worlds: a strong engine and excellent fuel economy due to an advanced electronic system and the presence of a dependable electric battery and motor system. In most cases, you’d be right; however, hybrid batteries can still fail. If you plan to replace a failed Prius battery with a new one, you might be looking at anything from $3,500 to more than $5,000 for the new battery together with the labor cost for getting your car back on the road.
Fortunately, there are better options:
- You can replace your battery pack with a refurbished Toyota Prius battery. Even though this option is still a little expensive, it definitely beats the thousands of dollars you’d pay for a completely new battery.
- Another choice you might have is to hire an electronic car repair expert to look at your battery and identify the individual battery cells that need replacing. Even if your battery stopped working entirely, it’s possible that only 1-2 cells are damaged. In such cases, the entire repair job will cost less than $500, and you can start using your hybrid to its full ability once more.
Refurbished battery packs and replacement cells can work to your advantage to make your car run again without the excessive costs you’d normally have to cover for an entirely new battery, and they are a faster, more practical choice overall.