Ls 600 Batteries

Alanmspice · July 16, 2014

Hi does anyone know if the batteries need replacing after a certain amount of time and if so how much it costs? The LS600 runs on electric up to 41mph so the batteries must be quite large and expensive?

ColinBarber · July 16, 2014

expensive yes. The cells are small but lots of them :) List price for a new hybrid Battery pack is around £15,000. Not sure you be charged that amount, I'm sure Lexus would foot some of the bill for a genuine failure.

There is no timeframe for replacement. Toyota/Lexus build a lot of redundancy into their hybrid power packs, the number of failures is very low across all vehicles. Lexus provide an 8 year warranty in the US.

Personally I would be nervous with a vehicle having covered 150,000+ miles. In theory you could get a second hand Battery pack from a breakers but the LS is a rare beast so finding one would be difficult. A specialist could strip down the pack and just replace faulty cells but if at some point all cells would need replacing due to a natural drop in capacity which comes from age and the number of charge cycles.

brendangeorge · July 16, 2014

expensive yes. The cells are small but lots of them :) List price for a new hybrid battery pack is around £15,000. Not sure you be charged that amount, I'm sure Lexus would foot some of the bill for a genuine failure.

There is no timeframe for replacement. Toyota/Lexus build a lot of redundancy into their hybrid power packs, the number of failures is very low across all vehicles. Lexus provide an 8 year warranty in the US.

Personally I would be nervous with a vehicle having covered 150,000+ miles. In theory you could get a second hand battery pack from a breakers but the LS is a rare beast so finding one would be difficult. A specialist could strip down the pack and just replace faulty cells but if at some point all cells would need replacing due to a natural drop in capacity which comes from age and the number of charge cycles.

The Battery pack is made from descrete cells that can be replaced so you only need to replace duff ones. If you look on UTube you will see plenty of videos about Prius cell replacements. It is unlikely they will all go at the same time.

I am not keen on hybrids because the Battery assistance is only useful around town - once you are on the motor way you are running on petrol because the batterys do not hold enough useful energy for high speed running. Hybrids are early adopter technolgy - at the moment Battery technology is only viable in traffic jams to cut down urban polution. Fuel cell cars will be here soon - £40K models will be on sale in a year or two and that will give us sensible electric cars.

The MPG figures quoted are usually misleading - even a plug in hybrid is not better than a petrol engine because the charge comes from a power station. I saw another poster on the forum telling somebody to tell the Lexus designers they are muppets (forgive my license here I am paraphrasing) - well I will be happy to tell the marketing guys they are muppets - the engineers only design what they are told to.

If anybody wants references to back my comments up let me know - the IEEE (I am a memeber) is a great place to look.

Bren

ColinBarber · July 17, 2014

On 17/07/2014 at 12:06 AM, brendangeorge said:

The battery pack is made from descrete cells that can be replaced so you only need to replace duff ones. If you look on UTube you will see plenty of videos about Prius cell replacements. It is unlikely they will all go at the same time.

There are two issues, one is a cell faulty which can be individually replaced if you can find somebody willing to do so with an LS.

The other issue is just natural deterioration of all the cells due to age and charge cycles. At some point the usable capacity will drop below a certain point where the pack needs to be replaced.

jmcc42uk · November 13, 2017

Hi Guys

Whats the latest news on this?

Looking at a 2009 LS600HL with 47k miles and just a bit nervous about hybrid Battery failure.

Malc · November 14, 2017

Jonathan, I too have been tempted by the Ls600 from time to time, the ridiculously seemingly low prices appear to be a great incentive

However, just reading a few tales from time to time of amazingly silly repair costs and my perception that the batteries might last about 10 years, and then a £10/15000 replacement cost, quite frankly scares the s..t out of me ....... maybe I'm a little paranoid about this ( also the Ls460 too I fear ) and doubtless all would be well ........... but I cannot even get anywhere near to justifying replacing my Mk3 Ls400

Others on here with the Ls600 will confirm they are brilliant cars and at bottomed out prices there's a lot of motor car for the money !

Malc

Newbie1 · November 14, 2017

On ‎17‎/‎07‎/‎2014 at 12:06 AM, brendangeorge said:

The battery pack is made from descrete cells that can be replaced so you only need to replace duff ones. If you look on UTube you will see plenty of videos about Prius cell replacements. It is unlikely they will all go at the same time.

I am not keen on hybrids because the battery assistance is only useful around town - once you are on the motor way you are running on petrol because the batterys do not hold enough useful energy for high speed running. Hybrids are early adopter technolgy - at the moment battery technology is only viable in traffic jams to cut down urban polution. Fuel cell cars will be here soon - £40K models will be on sale in a year or two and that will give us sensible electric cars.

The MPG figures quoted are usually misleading - even a plug in hybrid is not better than a petrol engine because the charge comes from a power station. I saw another poster on the forum telling somebody to tell the Lexus designers they are muppets (forgive my license here I am paraphrasing) - well I will be happy to tell the marketing guys they are muppets - the engineers only design what they are told to.

If anybody wants references to back my comments up let me know - the IEEE (I am a memeber) is a great place to look.

Bren

I'd thought the only reason for their existence was to provide similar MPG to a diesel, with urban cleanliness a bonus.

mick4545 · November 14, 2017

Battery assistance is not just for low speed around town. At high speed the electric motor continually cuts in and out assisting the engine whenever it detects any high demand for power. This is undetectable unless you look at the power display. This is primarily to relieve engine load and improve MPG, it also boosts power when accelerating hard.

When I owned an LS 600h MPG never fell below 34 MPG, mainly high speed cruising. Not sure if the power animation shows this on the LS, it does on the RX.

Alanmspice · November 15, 2017

I have a friend who is a parts Manager at Lexus Inchcape and he told me they have never sold any replacement batteries for the LS600 so that gives me the reassurrance that they are long lasting. As already posted, individual cells can be replaced anyway making the costs a lot more affordable.

ColinBarber · November 15, 2017

26 minutes ago, Alanmspice said:

I have a friend who is a parts Manager at Lexus Inchcape and he told me they have never sold any replacement batteries for the LS600 so that gives me the reassurrance that they are long lasting. As already posted, individual cells can be replaced anyway making the costs a lot more affordable.

Did he state the cost? It's probably so expensive that nobody would ever purchase one, and either get the individual cells replaced or scrap the vehicle.

Having said that, there is no fundamental different to the Battery pack in the LS compared to the Prius or other Toyota hybrid. The type of cells used, and over capacity built-in, means these Battery packs are very reliable.

jmcc42uk · November 15, 2017

Right....I phoned around several Lexus dealers yesterday. The consensus is that the Battery is designed to last the life of the car, not the 8 year cycle that some have said. Also all of the main dealers I rung said that they have never replaced a Battery on a LS600h....ever ! I think I got through to 5 or 6 around the country yesterday. The costs if anything did go wrong ranged from £3000-£4000 fitted and inc vat.

I'm also in the process of researching Battery repair as there are several companies that do this in the UK now

Hope this helps people

Thanks

Jon

ColinBarber · November 15, 2017

Who has said the batteries only last 8 years? That clearly isn't correct, Lexus US provide a warranty for 8 years so on average it is clearly going to last longer than that otherwise they will be replacing expensive Battery packs.

There are Prius Gen 1 and Gen 2 vehicles still working on original batteries that are 14 to 17 years old so there shouldn't be a reason why the LS ones won't last as long, but it is somewhat of an unknown and obviously the chances of a problem increase with age.

There are several posts in the GS section on Battery repairs, the GS450h seems to be the least reliable for a Toyota hybrid for some reason - at the stage when Toyota's quality wasn't the greatest (2005-2010), but must be related to design as well because the Prius and RX400h don't suffer the same issues.

doro708 · November 16, 2017

Also as far as i am aware if you do your annual hybrid health check at Lexus you get an extra year warranty and it only costs £36 .

I am doing mine on 25th this month for a peace of mind but to be honest even if i would actually have an issue and not be covered by the warranty i would use Richard from Hybrid Battery solutions who is present on this forum and sorted out my previous GS450h .

ColinBarber · November 16, 2017

Yes, the health check gives you a 1 year extension to the Battery warranty (doesn't cover other hybrid components) but only until the vehicle is 10 years old. Past that date you don't get any additional warranty, we are now getting to a point in time when the age of these vehicles can exceed 10 years.

Farqui · November 16, 2017

13 hours ago, ColinBarber said:

...the GS450h seems to be the least reliable for a Toyota hybrid for some reason - at the stage when Toyota's quality wasn't the greatest (2005-2010), but must be related to design as well because the Prius and RX400h don't suffer the same issues.

Ah heck, really? I read this now, after 10 months ownership

Is it because the GS450H is a sportier performance model and if abuses will be under more stress?

Touch wood, mine has not missed a beat.

cruisermark · November 16, 2017

Someone mentioned the the gs450h has the problem because if poor cooling set up - the inner cells tend to overheat causing premature failure

Malc · November 16, 2017

funny this Battery cooling business . the other day on an old " wheeler dealers " they were taking apart the engine bay of a Jag XJC ( or summat, an splendid elderly coupe ) and the Battery was housed in an effective water trough band to aid its cooling

anyone else see that ?

Malc

Farqui · November 16, 2017

@Malc, yeah I saw that 'heath robinson' contraption on the Jaaaaag. Didn't half make me chuckle. You can just make it out in the engine bay pic here http://car-from-uk.com/sale.php?id=99804

@cruisermark, thanks. I often have the rear sun shade up and keep the parcel shelf vent clear of any 'gubbins', not sure if there's anything else I can do is there?