Gen 1 has its own built in charger!!

The Prius in reverse is electric only the reason why it goes backwards well. Or should I say there is no reverse gear so the only way the car can go backwards is to use the electric motor in reverse. If the battery is low the engine will start to supply electrical energy from MG1, but the engine is then actually working against MG2 that is moving the car backwards. Look at the link below near the bottom of the page and move the sliders for the engine and MG2 to get an idea how the transmission works.
.Toyota Prius - Power Split Device

John (Britprius)

 

The turtle light comes on when a combination of low temperature and traction battery (HV) having a low voltage output ,this tells you to not try accelerate too quickly because the battery has a low output capacity at that point, as the car warms up and the battery warms up its capacity comes back and you can move quickly again. This turtle light exists on the 2001 to 2003 prius but I understand the 2004 up do not have it.

I have found that I rarely get the turtle even in real cold weather if the traction battery is in good shape, I discharge and charge with my high voltage charger/discharger taking the traction battery up to 100 % state of charge and down to 40%. This brings some life back to the traction battery. Read some posts on this site about buying a mini vic software and cable (although you may not have a port to plug it in) - John may be able to help you with that. I use the mini vic to see the state of charge and discharge on my 2001 prius.

 

You will find the Mini VCI useful as it works on all Toyota's Lexus, and will give emissions related engine codes on most vehicles. I have not tried this but I also believe it works on Volvo, and VAG group cars.

John (Britprius)

 

With VAG cars techstream is useless. VAG cars need VAG-COM or VCDS software.

 

Yes you have slightly miss quoted me there, but my post was a bit ambiguous, and for that I apologize. As I understand it the VCI does work on VAG cars, but I omitted to say other software was needed. I did not say Techstream works on VAG cars although by international agreement it should be capable of reading emissions related codes.

John (Britprius)

 

When I tested it with VAG cars even some minor emission related stuff didn’t give anything in normal obd2 mode. But yes I get what you mean.

 

Hi John- Just looked at the pdf on the hv charger you posted- did not see this pdf before to-day. It sounds like the hv battery has to have a signal from the computer that is based on a low voltage on the battery or a low SOC state of charge signal form the battery computer. If he has the minivic techstream equipment he could run down the battery and watch the SOC and battery voltages drop until the charger kicked in(however he should have a way to charge the hv battery (separate from the one in the car) in case his car hv charger is really damaged. Would be an interesting experiment for me if I had the car.
He could buy or make a hv charger that he could hook directly to the hv battery as a means to condition his hv battery.
Very interesting to see one of the original generation .

 

Keep this car- it will soon be a collectors item.

 

Great to see someone else with the same car as me.
I have a 1998 Gen 0 Prius and my charger looks the same. As my main battery has some bad cells, it crossed my mind that it would be nice if the charger was able to handle 2 or 3 big 12v lead acid batteries hooked up to it in parallel to assist / take the place of the NiMH battery.

I have a couple of spare battery packs that came with my car (I'm assuming that there is only one square battery pack installed behind the seat) and I'm currently going through the orange battery sticks and splitting the D-size cells up to remove the bad cells and create a good battery.

Here are photos of the (2?) battery packs in the boot and my Charger.

 

You'd need 17 12V lead acids.

 

That sounds interesting - how do you do that? Is that 0.5 degrees Celsius?

I have the same charger, mine didn't work at first, until I added a decent 12v battery ( using jumper leads across the standard 12v battery in parallel) Then when I pressed the charge button the green light came on and it began charging the traction batt until the voltage dropped. Then the beep and red fault light came on. This gave me enough grunt in the traction battery to start the engine. What a welcome sound that was!