So the other day, jump in the car to head home from my exercise class and the dash is all lit up with warning lights including the exclamation point, but other than that, the car seems fine. Decided to drive the 2 miles home regardless and then drive carefully to the dealer another 3 miles away. They tell me the HV battery failed and they won't be able to get a replacement until early April. So I'm driving a free rental car which is fine. New battery is covered under the warranty thank goodness. Car has less than 60K miles on it. I'm quite surprised that this can happen so suddenly. Batteries cannot just be good one moment and bad the next, can they? Shouldn't the computer be aware that the battery is starting to go bad? If this had happened on a vacation and required a long tow, I'd would not be a happy camper. Also surprised that it can take about 3 weeks to get a replacement battery. I assume it is coming from Japan.
That is one of the earliest failures that I have ever heard of. Since your car will be in the shop for a month, ask that they keep your 12V on a charge maintainer. Otherwise, they will give you some BS story about how the main battery killed the 12V battery too, after they themselves have killed it by letting the car sit.
I have serious doubts that the problem is the traction battery but, if they want to replace it, let them.
Agreed, I wouldn't turn down a free HV battery with a free rental car; & if that doesn't solve the problem all the better as the car is under warranty any new parts they want to replace will be under warranty. A couple weeks or when my cars have less than a thousand miles of warranty left I go to the dealership and tell them to go nuts, they're more than happy to comply and find every little fault that can be replaced, I get new parts, they get labor paid by toyota, win win.
A battery can be completely good one minute and totally dead the next. It's not a common failure mode, but it can happen. Tom
There was another thread recently where the person found out from Toyota that the batteries are on a 4-week backorder. This is really odd, I wonder if there's suddenly a huge demand for them?
What do you see in Torque for the battery block high and low voltages when driving up a long hill? i.e. battery current is >50A for a couple of minutes. Not that there are many long hills in NYC...
Yup 4 week back-order for and If I paid $600 extra they will get it in a week through an expedite order. No surprise that the demand is increasing. 2nd Gen Prius that were sold are aging every year and need for parts will increase. Not sure how fast Toyota's manufacturing queue is on these batteries. Also I think inventory management on this part is complicated as they might not want to produce too many of them and then have them sitting as a sitting battery deturates. (from what I heard)
The longest "hill" I can think of is the acceleration and climbing of the Verizonal bridge after the toll booths. The battery doesn't get much work out since ICE did most of the work. I mostly see 0.1, 0.2 or rarely 0.3 volt difference between the high and low. The max delta recorded was 0.5 volt.
Where are you reading the voltages to see the variation? Can I see these voltages on my scangauge? Thanks, John
