Lose Radio Presets in my Prius v (lowercase v for Prius v)

The only thing powering the car when off is the 12v battery. If your battery has been abused then it could close to death and when the voltage drops enough the radio will lose power. When the radio loses power you lose your presets. Abuse is things like leaving the dome light on all night, headlights on for a bit, anything that requires a jump, long idle periods where you don't drive it for a while including sitting on a dealer lot for months waiting for a new owner.

If left untreated eventually you will start losing other learned things like the auto-up window functionality and that sort of thing.

 

Hopefully they will test the 12 V battery, find it weak and give you a new one under warranty.
You should insist that they test it, regardless of what else they might do.

It is possible that the battery will not test bad and then you have to decide whether to argue with them or just buy a new one (~$200).

Does much of your driving consist of fairly short trips, separated by sitting idle for several days ?
If so, getting a small automatic battery maintainer (charger) would probably be well worth the money.
Actually I think that every car owner should have one.

 

It is also possible to reset the radio through a setup screen. Maybe someone accidentally did it.

 

You do realize I hope that there are two sets of FM presets in the car. You toggle back and forth between them by pressing the FM button more than once.

Bill the Engineer

 

If so equipped, the mode button on the steering wheel will do that too. Learned that one the hard way.

 

On the surface it does sound like bad flash memory in the radio, but you'd want to be triple sure the 12v battery is not at fault. You bought a 2013 car that was sitting on the dealer lot for up to a year, and we know its 12v battery was not tended to. I'd offer the dealer a choice: new head unit for the audio system or a new 12v battery, and let them decide what to do.

Keep in mind that whatever the dealer decides to do will have a good chance of being the wrong choice.

Check to see if any other settings for audio, nav, phone etc are being lost. If so it increases the likelihood of a battery issue.

 

Happened to me yesterday too. At the time it seemed to happen, my wife was trying to find a station playing Xmas music so she was using the seek capability and the tuning capability. Today I noticed it and reset one just to see if it would reset. It did. Wasn't battery as the battery had to be fully charged as we had gone 100 miles when it happened.

 

That would not be a smart move on their part.......what's new.
Given the relative cost of a battery versus a radio head AND the history of bad batteries testing "good" when they aren't, I think the first choice is a no brainer.
Actually the first choice should be to clean and reseat the connections at the battery and at the radio.