Pick up a used converter from ebay or the local junkyard and if you’re not able to install it safely yourself then ask a local mechanic to install the part for you.
I’ve owned and worked on a hybrid car and the parts themselves aren’t difficult to change, you just need to use a modicum of common sense with your safety practices.
For the most part the electrical components in these cars are fairly robust.
“Common sense” when it comes to dealing with strangers and their skill in handling high voltage electrical devices…hmmmmmm…
Ok I think I will inject my on little bit of engineering judgement, but please take it with a grain of salt, because I don’t know much about hybrids.
An inverter transfers DC to AC and a converter does the opposite. So without this part you electrical motor on the hybrid is dead.
I would go ahead and buy a refurbished part and have someone install it. I might work great! Then you are done with it. If it doesn’t work you are back where you started and you can pay the $4,200, because I agree with there person who said this newer part is more likely to have an even longer life than the original part and you can get another 8 years out of it.
A third option might be to ask if they dealership has a test unit that they use to evaluate the converter inverter and if they might let you bring in used parts to test on the test unit. They might not want you to use their test unit though but then again they might let you.
But on a side note this brings up the big flaw I see with hybrids. You have to use a lot of weight and a lot of technology to get marginal gains in fuel efficiency. A Toyota Corolla can get great gas mileage and use less technology to get that gas mileage and have few components to maintain.
I don’t view 50 mpg (common with a Prius) as ‘marginal’.
Talon, the problem I have with the OP’s statement is the use of the word “insist” and even if that word was not in play, the application of used or unknown parts often turns out to be a major headache when things go sour as they often do.
I’ve been in the middle of some things like this (and done to help someone out originally) and the mechanic gets the blame when that salvage yard or Craigslist purchased engine, transmission, or what have you turns out to be bad or goes bad shortly afterwards.
A co-worker who became a good friend of mine after giving up self employment went to work at a dealer where I was employed was physically assaulted by some yokel who was upset that a used boneyard transmission that my friend had installed started failing after a few months in operation.
This happened in the shop just a few service bays down from me and was going to turn into a 3 on 1 situation until I got involved with a very long 1/2" breakover.
Apparently this idiot’s receipt that stated “NO WARRANTY on used transmission” and his affixed signature stating that he acknowledged that was part of the forgotten past…
Ok, I mean marginal compared to high efficiency internal combustion engines. You might get an additional 10-15 MPG out of a hybrid compared to an efficient ICE. But you have to get all this additional weight and additional technology that means more upfront cost and more maintenance cost. So I think the gains in cost savings compared to fuel efficient ICE car are marginal once you factor in the upfront cost and additional maintenance cost.
That’s just my opinion anyways.
But you are right 50 MPG is not to be marginalized! bawahahhaha. ok sorry.
""Common sense" when it comes to dealing with strangers and their skill in handling high voltage electrical devices....hmmmmmm... "
@texases:
Yeah, that’s when you find that “common sense” is really quite uncommon.
@Talon … an inverter" is an electronic component which increases a DC voltage to a higher AC voltage. Higher voltages reduce the weight of the electric motors used in hybrids.
Have you ever traveled to a country that uses 220 VAC instead of 110 like we use in the USA? Europe, most of Asia uses 220 I think. When I go to one of those place, one thing I notice is that many of the electric appliances are smaller and lighter. Like hair dryers, etc.
You can buy an inverter in a place like Harbor Depot for a couple hundred dollars or less. But that wouldn’t work for the Prius I expect.
How do they work? Well, what if you had a 12 volt battery and wanted to power something that required 24 volts? If you had two capacitors – which can store energy – you could charge both of them up with the battery, then connect them in series and you’ve have 24 volts. The same idea works with inductors, which can also store energy. Capacitors work well in low power applications, but inductors work better in high power application. When you use inductors, the voltage is reversed due to the physical effect of a collapsing magnetic field inducing current into a coil of wire, which I think is why they call it an “inverter” in the first place.
(2 capacitors make 24 volts not problem. A good puzzler might be: How many capacitors would be needed to create any multiple of 12 volts?)
The other aspect is the AC vs DC. Electric Motors usually are easier to make if they use AC rather than DC. The AC freq can control the speed for example. So that’s another advantage of an inverter.
Since inverters are electronic gadgets made with components that can store energy, and with electronic switches (transistors), and all those items are all fairly inexpensive. But a Prius inverter needs to fit in the space alloted, and work with the rest of the Prius, which means it is produced in fairly low volumen, so that’s why it costs $4200 rather than $200 I imagine.
Another reason the inverter is expensive is that it handles 27,000 watts (in the current generation), a bit more than a $200 inverter.
When you buy a car, you are buying transportation, and that’s ALL you are buying…What really matters is cost per mile to own and operate…When you go wandering off into the high-tech, luxury car wilderness, there is almost no limit on that cost per mile number…
Your car is 9 years old and things do go wrong. If you had a non-hybrid car that had an engine failure and the replacement would be $4200, what would you do?
What is the condition of the rest of the vehicle? Is it free of rust? Does everything else work?
If we were facing a $4200 repair on our 2003 4Runner, I am certain that Mrs. Triedaq and I would disagree on what to do. If it were the engine, she would insist on a new engine being installed. I would want to install a used engine if it could be done for under $1500. Mrs. Triedaq would probably have the right approach as she intends to drive the 4Runner another 100,000 miles. If we were just going to get it operational for a few months and then sell it, my approach might be better.
In your case, I think a used inverter might make sense. Inverters don’t involve mechanical parts and don’t wear out as an internal combustion engine does. Of course, you can’t expect the installer to give you any warranty. However, you don’t worry about the number of miles on an inverter as you do the miles on an engine or transmission.
I don’t know if one is even able to open up the inverter to do repairs. Years ago we had a DEC PDP-11 (I think that is the right model) computer for classroom instruction. Something went wrong in the power supply and the repair cost was going to really clean out our department budget. Fortunately, a physics professor came to our rescue and managed to bridge the defective place in the circuit board. However, the standard repair for electronic equipment is just to replace a major component. I bought an inexpensive big screen televison. It developed a problem under warranty, so I called the factory. The factory sent a technician to my house. He showed me when he opened up the case that there are only 3 components; 1) power supply board; 2) driver board; 3) display. He changed the defective driver board in 10 minutes and then spent the next 20 minutes playing fetch with our dog. The defective board wouldn’t be repaired–just scrapped. Had the set not been on warranty, it would have been cheaper for me to buy a new for the $275 I paid for the original set than to try to get a replacement circuit board. In the old days, I would trace down an open resistor or shorted capacitor in my television and replace it for a few cents. That isn’t how electronic equipment is handled today–the repairs consist of replacing an entire unit.
" In the old days, I would trace down an open resistor or shorted capacitor in my television and replace it for a few cents. That isn’t how electronic equipment is handled today–the repairs consist of replacing an entire unit."
That had some big drawbacks for technicians of the day. From open set, troubleshoot to the bad component, replace the component (often requiring soldering), test and close everything up could be one to two hours. Customers had trouble understanding $50 repair bill for a 12 cent resistor. I had a friend who had a customer throw the TV at him and refused to pay the bill (or for the damages) over that very scenario. Cops had to be called.
But back on subject. An inverter just changes DC to AC, it does not increase the voltage, and you do not use capacitors to change the voltage either. The voltage is increased with a transformer. Then it is converted back to DC with a rectifier and filter.
Keith–the car radios through the 1950s (before transistors) did the same thing. A pulsator or vibrator changed the 6 volts or 12 volts d.c. to pulsating d.c. and fed to a transformer. The transformer stepped the pulsating voltage up to 150 volts or so and then a rectifier converted the output from the transformer back to the higher d.c. voltage for the plates of the vacuum tubes. I do remember my parents owning a 1960 Rambler where the plate voltage for the tubes was 12 volts and the cathode voltage was about 3 volts. This got rid of the vibrator, transformer and rectifier tube. However, the transistor soon replaced this innovation.
Today’s inverters do indeed change the voltage…Large, heavy transformers needed at 60 cycles are no longer used, too expensive…Instead, the FREQUENCY is jacked way up, 20,000 cycles or so, and in this environment, very small, very efficient toroidal transformers can be used, greatly reducing costs…From here, the power is converted back to D.C. and then re-converted to 60 cycles (for home inverters) or in the Prius, the 200 volt battery is boosted to 500 VAC 3 phase power…
Both MG1 and MG2 are permanent-magnet three-phase devices, providing torque when driven by ac power or providing ac output when rotated from outside sources (either the gas engine or the wheel rotation during braking).
To create the three-phase power for the motors, the dc battery source must first be stepped from 200 to 500 Vdc via a boost converter. A bank of insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) with parallel diodes is mounted in bare-die form to a thermal plate, with connection to an ICU control board by way of feed connectors and ultraheavy-gauge aluminum wedge bonds for power interconnect.
With a boosted dc voltage available, the inverter is responsible for delivering the three-phase power needed in the MG1 and MG2 assemblies when they are used as motors. As in the boost converter, IGBTs are used for power modulation in the inverter. Again, a dedicated assembly plate supporting unpackaged transistor slices is used, with similar interconnect to the same controller board to which the boost converter is linked. The entire transistor/diode array assembly used by the boost converter and inverter is encapsulated in a gooey sea of protective silicone gel. Four of the six legs of the inverter have small current monitor assemblies to keep tabs on power delivery to and from MG1 and MG2.
Caddyman, I think we are not seeing this the same way. You are looking at the complete assembly as the inverter, which is common. I am looking at the inverter assembly as multiple circuits in which the inverter is only a small part, and that small part does not increase the voltage. Whether at 60 Hz or 20kHz, a transformer is still used to increase the voltage. A toroidal transformer is still a transformer, Its just the way the core is shaped and how the windings are done, and they are not cheap.
Toroidal transformers have been under consideration in the power distribution system in this country because they are slightly more efficient than the current designs, but the cost to make them as been a big roadblock for them. When you consider that todays current generation of transformers are more than 99% efficient, you simply will never recoup the extra cost of the toroidal design, not even a fraction of it.
Good point @circuitsmith … I assume you mean the Prius inverter is 24KW peak output. That’s a huge amount of power and would require specialized transistors and significant heat sink design I expect.
For comparison, the most powerful inverter I can see for sale at Harbor Freight is 10K watts peak, 5KW continuous. It is price at $400.
http://www.harborfreight.com/catalogsearch/result?q=inverter
Keith, the savings come because the SIZE can be greatly reduced at high frequency. The old inverters weighed a ton because the voltage conversion was done at 60 cycles. When they jacked up the frequency, the size of the transformer shrank by 80% and the price of 12DC to 110VAC inverters came way down even though electronically they were more complex…
Caddyman, I am not arguing with you about the size or type of transformer. All I have been saying is that you need a transformer to step up the voltage. Size for size, toroidal transformers are harder and more expensive to manufacture. Yes, a small toroidal would be cheaper than a large conventional type.