2006 Prius Traction Battery Acting Strange

Our Prius HV battery charger/discharger was built for exactly this type of scenario. You should consider charging and rebalancing (and probably deep discharging) the battery pack to restore cell balance and performance. It makes a huge difference in battery performance and will extend the lifespan of the battery pack.

 

UART makes many good points in this thread, and I am trying some of his techniques more often now such as the 1-minute warm up. In my case, I am off warranty (non-CARB state) so my goal is to keep going to 300k miles.

Jeff above has a new device which could refresh your battery, which is of interest to many of us off warranty. In your case, you have to decide if you want to employ a failure-avoidance or failure-encouragement policy due to the CARB warranty. By the way I assume you car is CARB wrranty, but be careful as Toyota has disqulaification rules for out-of-CARB Prii, if your car had any non-CARB prior life.

 

What's "the test procedure" you did? Is it somehow calling up the 12 volt battery's status through the car's dash display? If so, you might try checking the voltage with a digital multimeter, as a cross check.

Anyway, assuming 12.2 volt is an accurate measure of the battery voltage not in use, that's quite low. 12.6 volt or higher would be optimum, 12.5 volt so-so, 12.4 volt troublesome, and so on.

 

A free replacement would be nice, but to be honest it's probably a bit risky doing anything to encourage failure with only 1 and a bit years warranty remaining. It's just as likely to hold out until about one month or so after the warranty is up.

 

Pretty sure I'm going to get a grid charger, but don't really want to buy the discharger. Is balancing a prius battery worth it without a discharger? Thanks
-owner of a 232,000 mile prius.

 

Or am I just crazy for buying a grid charger for a old high milage prius? Btw nothings wrong with it.. Yet. No codes, average 48 mpg

 

Not crazy at all. The sooner you start using a charger as preventative maintenance, the more you will benefit from it. While using our charger with our discharger to deep cycle the battery is best, you will benefit from preventative charging alone, a discharger is not required. When used as preventative maintenance, a hybrid battery will normally benefit from occasional charging sessions only. We have yet to deep discharge one of our shop cars but have still seen great improvement in MPGs by charging it occasionally.

 

Thank you so much! How long does it take to grid charge a prius battery? And would it be best to lower the SOC before you hook up the charger, or just charge it at the regular 6 bar SOC?

 

Sure, happy to help . We recommend charging for 22-24 hours to complete a full charge/balance session. This timeline can be shortened to 16-18 hours if the battery is over half full when the session starts.

 

Ca$h your CARB Lotto, if your Prius was originally purchased in a CARB state that adopted the longer Hybrid Emission Warranty.

Toyota's CARB Warranty is convoluted, b/c of how, when, and what aspects or CARB Emission Standards, each State adopts.

• States determine when CARB takes effect, and it is based on model year.
• Not all States require the longer 10yr/150K mile Hybrid component warranty (HV Battery, Transaxle).
• The Prius needs to have been purchased in a CARB state w/ the longer warranty, to receive the longer warranty.
• Case by case basis is common for non-CARB purchase going to CARB state, and CARB short vs long warranty.

Confused? I'm nuts! This should clear things up.

CARB Emissions Standards and the longer Hybrid Emissions Warranty (purchase state dependent), took effect in 2004 for California.
Original Poster (OP) has a 2006 model year. Assuming this car was purchased new in California, by someone, he is good to go for the longer 10yr/150k mile hybrid warranty. His 2006 warranty manual should have a nice asterisk or superscript, indicating which States have this longer Hybrid Warranty.

Now if the OP had purchased this 2006 Prius in Washington State, and it was purchased new by someone, in Washington State, he would be screwed. In 2005, Washington Stated signed CARB Emission Standards into law. BUT, it takes effect four years later starting with 2009 model year cars. Also, Washington State does not require the longer Hybrid Warranty(10yr/150K miles).