Hello. Three questions for you. I was towing my base model Gen II Prius in accessory mode in neutral when the battery died. The first question is, should the car be in accessory mode or on while towing . The second question is, now that the battery is dead is the Prius still in neutral? The third is whether the steering wheel locks when battery is dead & does it matter if the "key" is in the the ignition? Thank you for your help.
I assume you are referring to the 12V battery, and not the traction battery. I do not know how you can tow in ACC mode. The parking lock mechanism operates via a motor that is powered from the 12V system. The car has to be in Ready or IG-ON in order for the parking lock to work, via putting the selector in N or D. From the owner's manual: If the 12V system were to collapse while the car was IG-ON, it might happen that the parking lock mechanism is off. The steering and brakes will also be much harder as the power assist will not be on. It would be strongly recommended to supply a new 12V battery, or carefully jump start the car with correct polarity in order to tow. (O.T. I thought the T in ATP stood for "Tri" ?)
1. You should not tow any Prius with the front wheels contacting the road for any length of time. When the Prius is in IG-ON mode as you learned, that puts a heavy drain on the 12V battery and it will quickly die if the 12V battery is not in top shape and fully-charged, to start with. If the car is made READY instead but left in N, the traction battery will eventually discharge since it is not receiving any power from the MGs while in N. If the car is made READY and left in D or R, this poses a significant safety hazard. 2. With the 12V battery dead, the Prius will probably be in P but you can try pushing the car to see whether it remained in N or the parking pawl activated, hence the car is now in P. 3. The steering wheel is probably locked.
Correct. If you tow with the front wheels off the ground as the manual says, you do not need the Prius to be on at all. http://www.toyota.com/t3Portal/document/om/OM47614U/pdf/sec_02-05.pdf Page 10 if the PDF, Page 178 of the manual
