Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery

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Wed 26 Jan 2022 14:09
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - Steveieb

globalcirculate.com/mercedes-benz-new-battery-pric.../

Following on from the Tesla owner who blew his eight year old car up rather than pay £20 k for a new battery here is a story closer to home .

I understand that Toyota Prius have a better reputation than this and given the heavy use they take as their life as taxis I’m sure this is the case !

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Wed 26 Jan 2022 14:29
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - mcintosh

globalcirculate.com/mercedes-benz-new-battery-pric.../

Following on from the Tesla owner who blew his eight year old car up rather than pay £20 k for a new battery here is a story closer to home .

I understand that Toyota Prius have a better reputation than this and given the heavy use they take as their life as taxis I’m sure this is the case !

Toyota will warranty the hybrid battery for up to 10 years if you get the hybrid health check done at the dealership annually (£39 or free with a service) In fact, I think it’s 15 years for newer models.

£12.5K for a new battery is eye-watering and would make me think twice about an MB plug-in hybrid. AFAIK the Prius plug-in’s battery is about £5K. I suspect most Prius taxis are the non-plug-in version with a smaller battery which costs £1200 to replace.

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Wed 26 Jan 2022 15:30
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - madf

Simple : Mercedes are poor for reliability. Man just kept buying MB without any research.

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Wed 26 Jan 2022 16:21
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - barney100

Ouch. I don't have much faith in EVs.

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Wed 26 Jan 2022 16:44
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - kiss (keep it simple)

Considering it's 20k for a massive Tesla battery, 12.5k for a hybrid battery seems completely out of order. Presumably the car will still function, just not as a hybrid. Hopefully, in time, there will be a thriving independent industry for all battery servicing, not just the ubiquitous Prius. Mind you, what would a brand new engine for that Merc cost?

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Wed 26 Jan 2022 16:58
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - movilogo

Speaking to Leicestershire Live, the dad said: “I have always been a Mercedes customer and loved the cars they produce and we bought the car for its reliability.

There lies the problem. People don't do enough research before buying. If a manufacturer offers X years of warranty, it effectively says manufacturer expects the car to fail after X years - else they would have offered longer warranty.

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Wed 26 Jan 2022 17:27
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - brum

The guy who blew up his Tesla (he did it for fun and 15 minutes of fame) was quoted $22k thats around £16k. Sounds a lot, but its still a lot less than a new Tesla and the battery is the main part of the car....maybe he thought Tesla would gift him a new car to stop his stunt.

Toyota get quoted here ad nauseum. Did you know the majority of Toyota hybrids even today use Nimh batteries and not Li-Ion? And there is an important point here, their cells use well established industry format and are packaged in an easy to strip and rebuild assembly meaning replacements are easy and relatively cheap to source and quick to change.

AFAIK many other manufacturers new into the game use Li-Ion cells of their own specification and format. Think phone or laptop batteries, very individual, different sizes and shapes. The result is you can (at the moment) only get replacements from the car manufacturer dealer network. And the packaging means its very much a major stripdown. But who cares? The manufacturers don't, as long as demand outstrips supply.

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Wed 26 Jan 2022 17:08
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - mcintosh

Considering it's 20k for a massive Tesla battery, 12.5k for a hybrid battery seems completely out of order. Presumably the car will still function, just not as a hybrid.

If it's like the Toyota system, then no. The Toyota hybrids have no separate starter motor - one of the hybrid system's motors cranks the engine. The 12V battery just powers the dashboard and the accessories.

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Wed 26 Jan 2022 17:36
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - _

Not that I am considering an EV, but, if I ever do, it'll be on a lease and not my problem after...

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Wed 26 Jan 2022 18:35
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - movilogo

Did you know the majority of Toyota hybrids even today use Nimh batteries and not Li-Ion?

As per Toyota forum members, the new RAV4 Icon (the lowest trim) uses NiMH where as RAV4 Design/Excel (higher trims) use Li-ion batteries.

I read that while Li-ion has better capacity, NiMH is better for lower temperature. Toyota intends to shift towards Li-ion in the long run.

Plenty of hybrid RAV4s worldwide faced problem with battery drains where battery depleted leaving owners stranded next morning. Root cause was either faulty 12 V battery or parasitic losses which lost charge even when cars were switched off.

Edited by movilogo on 26/01/2022 at 18:37

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Thu 27 Jan 2022 17:37
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - Andrew-T

Ouch. I don't have much faith in EVs.

Maybe during the early years we have to regard them in the same way as cars in about 1910 - only affordable by the well-heeled ?

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Wed 26 Jan 2022 19:32
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - Engineer Andy

Simple : Mercedes are poor for reliability. Man just kept buying MB without any research.

I agree - it's often badge snobbery that they and other luxury / executive / sports car makes that benefit from where they are, in reality, amongst the worst-rated for reliability, often because (I suspect) they carry out far less R&D and shovel in new, relatively untested tech (especially when interracting with one-another and dynamic systems) in their latest models in order to be at the head of the pack on what features their line-up has.

That such makes also spend an inordinate amount of time and money regarding the visual appearance (though not neccessairly ergonomics) of said products rather than more practical aspects is also quite telling as well.

It looks like many car manufacturers have either learned a lot of bad lessons from rivals or from their own previous experiences, or (as in many industries, e.g. entertainment) like copying others because it is fashionable to do so, even if it isn't a good thing.

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Wed 26 Jan 2022 22:59
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - Terry W

MB don't have a reputation for cheap spares - quite the reverse.

The car is 8 years old and battery technology will have moved on. The cost of a battery pack 8 years ago may well have been £15k - similar capacity from a new car may now be £3-5k.

MB would not want to remanufacture obsolete spares in very low quantities, and probably make no profit on the deal. Understandably the cost is high.

What should we learn - being an early adopter of new technology carries a risk. Buying what was new technology s/h increases the risks. Solution - try and find a scrap vehicle for a s/h part, or reconfigure the ecu/car to run without the batteries installed.

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Thu 27 Jan 2022 09:58
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - madf

MB's latest battery technology involves non replaceable cells with the cell casings all forming part of the battery pack case thus saving the weight of a separate case. .

(Not yet in production, I suggest it's likely to have all sorts of issues in real life usage and I would avoid it )

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Thu 27 Jan 2022 19:13
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - Ethan Edwards

So you look into sourcing a second hand part. MB not being a main stream EV producer and to remind posters it's not an EV here it's a Hybrid.

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Sat 29 Jan 2022 16:59
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - kiss (keep it simple)

It isn't just a battery that can cost a fortune!

www.thesun.co.uk/motors/17458772/furious-mum-bill-.../

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Sat 29 Jan 2022 17:39
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - badbusdriver

It isn't just a battery that can cost a fortune!

www.thesun.co.uk/motors/17458772/furious-mum-bill-.../

Apparently owned by a plastic doll?

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Sat 29 Jan 2022 19:05
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - Engineer Andy

It isn't just a battery that can cost a fortune!

www.thesun.co.uk/motors/17458772/furious-mum-bill-.../

Apparently owned by a plastic doll?

Nothing good came out of that report. I was shaking my head a lot. Modern Britain. (shakes head again)

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Sun 30 Jan 2022 02:31
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - brum

Probably ex PCP/lease never been serviced and/or clocked/modified. True history uncovered by LR when checking the warranty claim

Going to be a common problem with many ex PCP cars I think

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Sun 30 Jan 2022 09:24
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - kiss (keep it simple)

With all the high tech in a car engine, I am surprised they don't go into limp mode when the oil level gets too low. Maybe that wasn't the problem but I guess we will never know.

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Sun 30 Jan 2022 09:31
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - Steveieb

Speaking to an ex LR Discovery diesel owner who had his engine destroy there was no warning apart from the oil light coming on momentarily and then bang.

After a £10k engine rebuild it did tge same thing so he has bought a Toyota pick up to use on the farm and scrapped the Discovery.

JLR not interested.

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Sun 30 Jan 2022 10:23
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - _

Google is your friend."Ingenium problems"

Edited by _ORB_ on 30/01/2022 at 10:34

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Sun 30 Jan 2022 11:22
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - Brit_in_Germany

Or the V6 crankshaft bearing shells rotating and cutting off the oil supply.

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Sun 30 Jan 2022 11:26
Mercedes Hybrid - Mercedes owner faced with £15k bill for battery - badbusdriver

Google is your friend."Ingenium problems"

We can't say whether the Discovery mentioned by steveieb had the Ingenium engine or not as he doesn't state the age of the car, or engine size. The Range Rover Sport in the linked (Sun) story is said to be 3 years old, which may have used an Ingenium, but not necessarily.

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