How long can you leave the parking lights on for?

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Your concern is legitimate in the absolute sense, but the devil is in the details.

30 minutes could be fatal to a very old/worn battery while 3 hours could be no big deal to a healthy one provided your next few trips are long enough to properly charge it.

In a very general sense, if the battery is fewer than 5 years old and the trip home after the grocer is longer than the stop itself, I wouldn't worry.

It might be worth using a simple voltmeter to keep tabs on the 12v battery over time. Some versions of the Prius have one built in and accessible from the dashboard, but it's cheap to add a miniature one that fits in the lighter socket in any case.

I'd expect a couple weeks of paying attention to voltage spot checks will give you all the details you need to make good decisions.

 

I thought there are reflectors on a car? Mandatory for cars to see you at night?

 

One way I can evade answering the question and still say something useful is this:

why not carry one of the nifty little lithium-ion jump packs around in your glove box?

In addition to saving you from the possible strandings you foresee (oops, I left my parking lights on too long), it will also save you from the ones you don't foresee. And in between uses to get you out of jams, it will be there for you to use (more often, in my experience) for getting other people out of jams.

That way, you are also able to go ahead and learn the answer to the question I evaded, without having to worry about being stuck when you do.

Are the Gen 4 parking lights all LED? If so, the answer is probably "a pretty long time". And there might also be a bit of an inherent safety feature: LEDs normally have a certain minimum forward voltage drop, and they might helpfully just wink out below a certain battery voltage. (That's something that could be tested easily with a little variable-voltage supply.)

 

You could also use high visibility stickers, but if they didn't see your car when they hit it, they will most likely not see the hi-vis stickers either.

 

I regard the amount of reflector area on many cars to be quite inadequate. That is why I add a lot more.

 

Can't you leave the car in READY and lock the doors with the metal key?

 

Is leaving the parking lights on a British thing? I've herd that recommendation from CarThrottle a few years back and always though it was weird. Shouldn't the person driving and parking at night have THEIR headlights on so they can see and not hit cars or even people ?

 

Is leaving the parking lights on a British thing? I've herd that recommendation from CarThrottle a few years back and always though it was weird. Shouldn't the person driving and parking at night have THEIR headlights on so they can see and not hit cars or even people ?

 

1. Chances of that happening twice to the same person is probably in the billions
2. Your car has reflectors that are easily seen from any angle at night by 99.999% of morons who have their headlights on
3. If some dumbass does hit your car... that is what insurance is for.
4. W.T.F. did you even buy a black car for if you worry about these kinds of things? Black is objectively the WORST color you can get on a car. Shows scratches the easiest, soaks up the most heat in the summer, it is THE HARDEST color to paint match when you do get run into by some dumbass in a parking lot...

This is probably one of the dumbest concerns I have ever seen voiced on an auto forum... but hey, leave your lights on and kill your batteries faster... the cost will make up for all the gas savings!

 

Mine don't. At least not from the factory.

If driving out into an unlit rural area or otherwise dark void, these reflectors would be sufficiently visible. But in a 'civilized' world with hundreds of distracting artificial lights, glare, dirty windshields, rain on windshields, and other optical interference, more than half of my past and currents vehicles simply had effing inadequate reflectors to be seen by the very many inattentive and distracted and impaired and immature and drowsy drivers out there. A couple square inches of semi-retroreflector per side just doesn't do the job. Even here in America, where streets are typically much wider than in OP's country.

The number of bashed-corner cars parked on narrow busy residential streets, surrounded by road debris matching those still-parked bashed cars, should be a clue.

That is why I add much more area of better retro-reflective tape to my cars. And even then, I suspect your estimate of five 9s is still at least three 9s too many.

 

If your car does not have reflectors, it is not road legal.

 

Oh, they all came with reflectors.

But most of those factory reflectors are absurdly small for their intended purpose in common residential environments.