I heard an alarm sounding in our aparment building at 05:30am informing us to move all cars immediatly as the basement was flooding.I jumped out of bed finding the car almost up to the doors in rising floodwater. The car is now safe on higher ground with no damage. I picked up our black 2005 Prius last Saturday and it nearly floated away The rain is still coming down in buckets and our car is safe in the Hotel carpark down the road. I think it will get wheel clamped but that's better than it floating away. :roll:
In NY, it just started to rain like crazy in the past few days. On the radio, I heard reports about flooding around the city. That got me thinking. If the Prius were to immerge in water (because of flood), will the electricity from the main (hybrid) battery leak out? For a side note, I saw two Prii on the way to work today! I was driving side by side with another silver Prii on the Southern State Parkway for about 5 min :mrgreen:. Because of traffic conditions, we had split up . But it was cool 8) !
Well, the end connections of the main supply cable are above the door line. One goes to the battery, the other to the inverter. You all know how high those are. Then you have to consider from the inverter to the motors. I believe the control signals would get washed out (pun intended) before you had problems with the actual high voltage. At 206V, it shouldn't be too much of a problem with freshwater, as long as you aren't actually touching the wires. Seawater would be a different matter, as seawater is a weak conductor. But corrosion would be more of your problem.
The HV battery completely disconnects when the power is off, so no need to worry about electrocution.
if the carpets are soaked I recommend the following: remove negative battery terminal, remove rear seat bottom cushion, remove front seats, remove center console, remove gps & jbl units (if equipped), remove dead pedal and fuel filler door release, remove entire carpet and lay it out upside down to dry out, remove all 4 sound insulator pads and allow them to air dry as well, remove drain plugs in floor pans if there is standing water, paper towel everything dry, when its as dry as a bag of rice put everything back.
