I Bought a Cheap Toyota Prius-- with a DEAD Hybrid battery

Say hello to my gorgeous, wait did I say gorgeous? I mean stunningly gorgeous 2005 Toyota Prius. I know this puts me in a minority with car enthusiasts, but I must tell you my dirty little secret. I totally love these things. No I'm not a hipster, no I'm not an environmentalist, no I don't like the smell of my own farts or have an herb garden in my backyard or enjoy witty political bumper stickers. I'm just a normal slightly deranged dude who bought a Prius for only $1500 with a dead hybrid battery. Now I did this on purpose. Stay with me. I bought this car at my local dealer auction, even though after my usual thorough testing of the Prius before the sale made it obvious the hybrid battery was dead. But that's really no big deal anymore. Despite having a dead battery, the car drives 10 miles below the speed limit in the left lane just as well as it did when the car was new. The Prius isn't like a Tesla that will leave you on the side of the road when the battery dies. They still have a little engine, though in Prius speak it's called a generator, and it'll drive all day long without a good battery. If you're wondering how to tell if a Prius has a bad battery, in the case of my car it was pretty obvious that mine was dead. The Prius certainly lets you know something is wrong by the check engine light, as well as the red triangle of death. But for Prius batteries that aren't quite that bad yet, I found a way to test if the battery pack is still strong. Of course an engine computer cannot make things any more obvious, but for a good driving test you start by making sure the battery is charged enough. If not, put the Prius in drive and do a full throttle power brake. Don't worry, there's no chance of the Prius doing a burnout. Once the Prius battery is above the halfway mark, stomp that sucker up to 60 miles an hour. A battery that's on its way out will drain very quickly, while a good one should only go down a few bars at most. Of course, it is a total dog acceleration wise without the battery, and the much bragged about MPG will suffer. I'm sure this is why my Prius was traded in and sent to auction, and if you took this thing to a Toyota dealer to get fixed, they would want $4,000 for a new hybrid battery pack, which basically totals the car. Thankfully, there's a much, much cheaper solution. Throughout the United States, Prius battery rebuilders have popped up everywhere. They will replace the dead cells in the battery, rebalance the whole system, and do a few other things to bring the battery up to spec. Most of these companies will warranty their work for a year or more. I chose to get my replacement cells from an outfit called Electron Automotive out of Orange, California, because they seem to have lots of Prius experience and long warranties. When I contacted them about my upcoming project, these guys were amazing enough to send me a battery reconditioning kit for free. Free! This is like a $1,000 value, which is really reasonable for all the things they do to recondition these batteries and how they stand behind their product. If you're in the Southern California area, they will do all this work for you as well. Obviously, since they hooked me up with this kit totally free of charge, I certainly had to give them a shout out. I made my way up to Halstead, Kansas, where my trusty mechanic, The Car Wizard's shop is located, as well as this random pet pig I like to visit. Hey man, how's it going? Feeling good? Feeling good today, buddy? While The Wizard was kind enough to let me use his facilities, I am going to be doing all of this work myself. I'm going to remove the battery, take it apart, replace all the cells, and then put it back in. And, yes, The Wizard has already alerted Halstead Emergency Services. Just in case. Really, there's no risk of me electrocuting myself as the Prius battery has a power cutoff plug that renders it mostly harmless. If you're looking for a more detailed how-to on this, Electron Automotive had one of their employees make an hour-long step-by-step video. I started by removing the interior pieces around the battery. I then carefully unplugged and unbolted the battery before giving an impressive show of brute strength by removing it from the car. Once the protective shell is removed, you can see the individual cells. All of these iPad sized things along with the terminal bars were removed and after getting distracted for a moment, I began installing the replacement cells. Each cell comes from other Prius battery packs and were tested for performance and balance to one another. This is why they are labeled in numerical order. With the new terminal strips in place, the battery is buttoned up and put back in the car. So other than dropping a battery cell on my foot and the clamshell around the battery trying to slip my wrists, this really is one of the easiest jobs that I've ever done. It took less than three hours and everything is really straightforward. I've bought, sold, and driven tons of these Priuses over the years and now that I've fixed this one, I can tell you why I think they are great cars. The first and most obvious reason I like the Prius is the technology. Back when these were new, critics would say that buying a cheaper Toyota Matrix was smarter as the fuel mileage difference would take years to make up versus buying a Prius. But it's not just the hybrid system that makes the Prius really techie. The Prius came with a keyless go system that at the time was only ever offered in the highest level of luxury cars. It had a touchscreen with lots of neat features with optional navigation as well as a funky LED gauge cluster. The factory stereo is quite good and the cabin is spacious and comfortable and has lots of storage. The window design with the A-pillars in the rear is certainly strange, but the car has lots of aerodynamic touches normally seen on sports cars, only in this case is for maximum MPG. Another great thing about the Prius is the incredible durability. The hybrid system is actually really simple. The transmission, for example, is a planetary drive CVT, kind of like a moped, and only has a few moving parts, so it never fails. And the engines are not worked hard at all because the battery helps with acceleration. It's not uncommon to see a Prius with over 300,000 miles on the original drivetrain. Meanwhile, a Honda will grenade its transmission before it gets there and a Subaru will puke out its head gaskets. And domestic cars? Forget about it. Sure, a European car will get there if you don't mind paying for the car three times over in maintenance during that time, and now every car guy hates me. All of this technology and aerodynamic design makes this Prius fun to drive for a totally different reason. You can make getting the most MPG out of your Prius into a game. Hypermiling really is pretty fun, even though coasting a quarter mile to the stoplight for maximum MPGs and doing the pulsing glide technique in the less obstructed left lane tends to make people furious. I imagine most Prius owners do this all inadvertently, but there are a few people that do this on purpose, and they see in their own little way that they're saving the world. And I know you guys hate that. So with everything, I have only $1,700 into this car. Once again, thanks to Electron Automotive for providing the battery kit to where I'm into this car for way less than what it's worth. And that's like the first time I've ever been that way in a car in like forever. So now what should I do with it? I'm very tempted to make this Prius cool with the money I've saved, or should I just sell it for the $4,000 that it's worth and move on to something else? I'm sure some of you were hoping that I bought this car to blow it up or something and are really disappointed right now. And for those Prius haters who think that I've lost all car guy credibility at this point, hit that like button in a really, really angry way. And as always, thank you for watching.