The battery pack on the Toyota Prius is a critical component. It contains 168 nickel metal hydride cells, each one putting out 1.2 V of electricity. The whole battery pack all together, manages to churn out a whopping 27,000 watts of electricity. Careful buyers have come to both the used Toyota Prius and the new one with two basic questions usually:

1. Do they really completely guarantee the battery pack for 8 years and give you a full no-questions-asked replacement even if it should fail one day before 8 years are up?
2. Does a used Toyota Prius actually have a good resale value on the market when everyone knows that the battery pack runs out in and needs a $3000 replacement?

Well, they’re both quite reasonable questions that deserve straight answers.

There is no reason to look at the battery pack guarantee on a Prius any differently than you would the guarantee on anything else. Even if it fails one hour before your 8 years are up, you get a full no-questions-asked replacement. Some people wonder if there is any prorating done at all – meaning that they calculate how much time there is left in your 8 year guarantee, ask you to buy $3000 battery pack, and they give you a discount for the number of days in the 8 years that were left that the battery failed to work. There’s nothing of that sort going on at all.

Toyota frequently says that you really don’t have to worry about the battery pack because in their experience, it is only the rare and occasional Prius owner who comes in for a replacement.

As for how the battery pack’s finite 8 year life might affect the value of a used Toyota Prius, it certainly doesn’t appear that it has any effect at all. Which stands to reason. If you buy one of the older models of used Toyota Prius, you only need to pay about $2500 for a replacement battery pack.

Still, there are some who look into the possibility that they could buy a used battery pack for their used Toyota Prius. Now almost never does a Prius need the battery pack to be replaced before the 8 or 10 years are up.

For the reason that Prius hybrid vehicles have only been on the market for 12 years so far, not enough Prius owners have run into a problem with the battery dying. That’s why there is no used battery pack market for the Prius. Why would there even be a used battery pack on the market for sale? The only way that would happen is if someone totaled his Prius and the battery pack was the only thing of value that he had left to sell – as salvage.

You can get a used battery pack for about $600 on the market, if you can find it. But usually, it’s not really going to give you that much juice.

There are many educational videos about the Prius battery pack on YouTube. Be sure to check them out.