Hybrid Battery....or What?

[Snyderiii]

I have owned my 06 RX400 since 09 and have driven it like crazy. The car has about 210K miles and i haven't had a single problem with it, until 5 weeks ago.

Driving about 80 the car just shut off and i got the check vsc-check hybrid love on the dash. While waiting for usaa to come get it found this site, saw about the recall, had the vehicle towed to lexus of richmond and left them a note about what i thought was wrong. The next afternoon my car was all fixed with (it was the inverter) and ready for pick up.

Everything seemed fine. Tuesday night was serious torrential rain. Wednesday morning i hopped in the car and drove my commuter lot (prob about 20-25min drive half on the highway), as i was pulling into the lot all the same evil codes came back and the car went into limp mode.

This time, since i was closer to home, i had the car towed to toyota of Fredericksburg and figured i was going to end up with some kind of part warranty work on the recall stuff which was just done. The initial diagnosis cost was going to be 120 bucks.

Just got off the phone with them and they said there is nothing wrong with the inverter and they need to authorize some additional labor cost for diagnosis (total about 450 bucks) to disassemble the back seat and look at the hybrid battery wiring, et al because they got a low voltage indication on the hybrid battery.

If wiring is my problem, i guess i should be pumped because this repair will probably be on the 600 bucks total and i would have the car back. If not, I'm assuming i need a new hybrid battery and will go the route of replacing it myself. But i guess my question is this: is there NO OTHER way to confirm the battery is bad except to disassemble the seats? Finding out the battery is bad is going to suck...but paying 450 bucks to find out the battery is bad seems a little ridiculous. Any advice, thoughts, or questions i should ask them would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[maseace]

The diagnostic tool and software, which can be bought cheap on eBay, will display the voltage and other data for each battery cell. I would have them show you this data before taking things apart. Or get one yourself and see what the data shows. You need a laptop with USB port and MS Windows OS.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mini-VCI-v8-00-034-Toyota-Lexus-TIS-TechStream-OBD2-Diagnostic-Interface-Scanner-/111386474635?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19ef26b88b

Here is some data when I tried it on my 400h:

[RX400h]

....looks like a good program to have as our batteries age past the 200,000 mile mark. Fortunately, that should be another 10 years for us.