Traction battery problem on 2004 Prius that sat for 4 months.

My daughter just called from California, I'm in RI and she flew out there to drive her Prius home after having left it there last winter. (Because her job status was unclear and she might need to go back. But now she has a job in Florida.)

Well, the traction battery seems to not be holding a charge very well. She is now drving thru the Rockies and it seems to have the power, but when she stops for awhile, the battery drops to 2 bars and it has trouble going up towards full like it used to. She thinks the battery was working fine when she left LA. Could this be just a mountain thing? She has driven thru these mountains before and can't remember it acting like this before.

Also, the temperature gauge is reading 72 degrees all day long. Even tho she knows the temps outside is changing.

The car was stored in a garage but was not run very much. She replaced the starter battery just before starting this trip.

Any thoughts? It is just barely over 100k miles now.

 

Thanks for the response. I've sent your thought to her, as well as stuff I found on other sites. I do suspect her battery was damaged and tho she has 101,000 miles on the car, she is going to see about warranty repair anyway hoping that Toyota is still going out of their way to maintain prius good will. Tho I suspect they've sold so many Prii now they can revert back to their corporate core and deny any repair under warranty. Oh Well...

 

gwalia, the first thing she did before setting out cross country was replace the 12v battery.

 

Thanks everyone. She made it home to NY and tomorrow she brings the car here in RI where she will be storing it again for a few months before she moves to Florida and take the car with her. She has a good job down there so expects to sell it soon. Anyways, she said the battery never got above half the bars but her gas mileage was only slightly lower then she got on prior cross country drives. This is about the 4th time she has done this in this Prius.

She is convinced the car is mad at her for leaving it in LA for so long so she tried talking real nice to it the whole way home. When she gets to RI and leaves it with me, I'll take it out about one day per week. The problem is that I sold my 04 Prius last May for a 2012 Volt and I really don't like using gas any more. I think gas use is a moral failure. Since I bought the Volt I've only used 6 gallons of the original tank and I'm at about 2500 miles.