Hello all I've been searching for answers to my problem on this forum and haven't found anything answering my question so here it is. We bought my husband's 2008 Prius used in 2014. It has 140,000 miles on it. Just recently the AC has been working intermittently. Some weeks it will work fine then, out of the blue, nothing, no air blowing. We decided to take it to have the AC checked at a shop where they would do AC diagnostics. Their conclusion? Everything looked fine, and that it was probably a failing hybrid battery that was causing the issue. How did they reach this conclusion? Well they said they had the engine on and it never reached past 25% charge so that led them to believe it was the hybrid battery. It cost us $95 dollars for them to tell us this. Has anyone ever heard of this happening? Could this be true? We're taking it to the Toyota dealership tomorrow (which we should've done to start) to find out for sure, but just wondering if we got royally ripped off by this shop. I don't know much about cars so I cant really answer technical questions so thanks in advance for any help!
Sorry about the trouble you're having period but I am too curious to see who would have a good answer for you. Good luck Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
The shop clearly doesn't know anything about the Prius. Was it charging above "25%" before you took it in? If it's just sitting there, the engine will start when the battery says it needs juice. It'll stop when the battery has enough juice to function normally, not when it's "full." Probably about 3 bars. On top of that, the battery would never get down to a real 25% without throwing all kinds of alarms. The display only shows the amount of battery that the computer allows you to use. That would be between something like 40% and 80% actual state of charge. I'm not an auto a/c expert, but I think I would take it to a shop that works on A/C and knows the Prius. Best bet, but maybe most expensive is a Toyota dealer. You might get good results elsewhere, but it's riskier. Maybe someone here has experience with the A/C to help point you in the right direction.
sounds like a loose connection or bad switch or control board. but maybe there is something in the ac system that can cause intermittent problems.
Yup that's exactly what we figured. I'm sure they weren't experienced with working on Prius' because from what ive read on other posts, the battery would also not reach full capacity because of the hot weather and the amount of energy it's using to cool the car. I don't want to take it to the dealer myself but I'm pretty sure they're the only ones that'll be able to give us any kind of answer. I'll post when we get word on what their explanation is.
