Any 2012's running original 12v?

Mine still reads 12.7 but I have never discharged it. Haven’t seen too many replacements Here, i don’t think.
When we go to Florida 6-8 weeks, it has never been lower than 12.4v upon returning

Advantage of pip is you get a charge when charging the hybrid battery, good for those who dont drive much

 

Mine still works fine in my 2012.

 

I had our 2010 Prius II original 12 volt in service until January 1 of this year when I read 12.3 volts at the jump points one morning. Went down to Auto zone and picked up a replacement and they were running an sale for $20 off rebate:



Middle pic is the original.

Not bad for 8.5 years.

 

While not a gen3, my '08 w/145k still has the OEM 12v.

I have never tested it.

 

Mine's still the original AFAIK (I only bought it 2 years ago but looks OEM and no records of change). Temperate climate probably helps.

 

I am still running my original 12v battery in my 2012. I usually change out my batteries after 5 years proactively but since this isn't a starting battery I will try to get 7 years out of it. I heard that getting 7 years out of the 12v is very doable

 

8-10 years is doable in cooler climates, and pip has the advantage of a trickle every time you plug in
i'm hoping for 10-12, if i keep her that long

 

My regular 2012 still has its factory battery, but is very weak and needs replacement now. On a 3 Amp battery tender, it goes from under 12V to fully charged in under an hour. I.e not much capacity left.

 

I'm hoping for the same.

be well

 

I just proactively replaced the 12v battery - which was ~7 years old. Advance Auto Parts had a 20% off online special. Replaced it with the AutoCraft Platinum AGM.

Based on a load-test, the original battery was still serviceable, but it was near end-of-life, so I did not want to risk having it die at an inopportune time.

 

what test did you run to learn it was near end of life? mine was 12.7 cold, last time i checked it, but i don't have a load tester.

 

my wife took our 2010 prius shopping this summer and she calls me and says car is acting up and will not start and the locks do not seem to be working right. I drove to her and jumped the battery so it could be taken to the dealer to check out. Had trouble getting it started but finally did and drove it about 2 miles to dealer where it died. turns out the original battery had an internal short!! Thus, I was lucky the battery didn't explode when I jumped it!!! the unfortunate part was that I was charged $348 (charolttesville va) for diagnostics , labor and battery. So you might want to consider about 7 years to be a good time to changout that battery on your own terms.

 

A battery load tester uses resistance (a heating coil) to test the battery's ability to provide a sufficient amount of energy (amps) to start a vehicle. As a battery ages, the total amount of energy it is able to deliver decreases, even though a voltage reading would show that the battery is fully charged.

A good analogy is a five-gallon bucket filled with water with the battery discharge/recharge cycle similar to removing or adding water to the bucket. Each time water is removed and added, a small stone is dropped in the bucket. So when the battery is new, you would have a full five gallons of water, but as the battery ages, and goes through discharge/recharge cycles, the bucket will now contain less and less water. A battery load test is a measure of the amount of water that is in the bucket. At some point, there will be more rocks than water. The size of the stone increases with the more water removed from the bucket - which is why fully draining a lead-acid battery is detrimental to battery life.

That being said, the PIP does not need a lot of "water" to operate, thus the physically smaller battery. The PIP also does not use a lot of "water", thus the discharge/recharge cycles are very small (very small stones), which is one of the reasons that battery has a much longer life.

The load test on my battery showed that the battery was probably half-filled with "stones", which means that the battery was still usable, but the big unknown is how much longer would it still be usable. So for me, it was better to proactively replace the battery.

You can search the web for battery load testers.

 

half filled, that's like filling the gas at half a tank

 

There's a new gen of testers, Solar BA5 is one example.

 

does that tell you how long the battery will last?

 

Any 2012's running original 12v?
It's December.
Not for LONG!

REMEMBER....
This is a PRIUS that we're talking about.

The 12v (Aux) battery is NOT what starts the car, but rather it's how the car bets booted up so that the traction battery can start the car. All the 12v battery has to do is throw a couple of relays and wake up the ECU....presumptive...I do not know the exact start sequence, but it's sorta like a modern rocket launch.
If the onboard computer detects something that it doesn't like......for example......an under voltage condition, then you're very likely to not hear something.
Back before 80's rock band members started wearing Depends and taking little blue pills a "low battery" on a cold morning would often be accompanied by the quaint click-click of a solenoid, or the plaintiff growling of an overworked starter motor trying to break lose a 6000cc ICE from it's winter slumber.

However most modern (12years or so or newer) have ECUs and most of these will block certain functions (for example: STARTING the car) unless there is a predetermined voltage detectable at whatever input pin it's supposed to be present at.
What this means to you, the driver, is that you're not going to get much warning when the 12v battery fails to deliver the required voltage at the required pin....and since Murphy is something of an opportunist, you're going to get a NO-START whenever you're in a hurry, in the cold, in a bad neighborhood, and at night.

What this also means is that all of the quaint talk about resistive load-testing and open-circuit-voltage values is somewhat meaningful in a whiteboard and classroom environment, but out in the real world if you have a 5-year-old Prius aux battery, you're putting your purse or wallet on the green felt in front of the roulette wheel and letting Lucifer (or WORSE...a dealer!!) have a turn at the wheel.

If you insist in living on the edge?
Learn how to start your car when the battery dies:

...and get an inexpensive battery booster.
Stanley Simple Start Lithium-Ion Jump Starter Battery Charger - Walmart.com

Remember....you're not starting the car with this....so it doesn't have to provide much current!

Good Luck!