Hello, my wife left her newer 2013 Prius "on" at work....by this I take to mean she did not hit the on/off button when leaving the car. to turn off the car I asked if it started ok, and she reported yes; however on return from the gym about 3 miles away, she says she noticed the Hybrid Battery bars going down very quickly now and the gas-engine on almost the whole time. I'm wondering was the battery "memory" adversely affected? Does the main battery need an extra long charge, or is this unrelated? Thanks.
You can leave the car on for 9 hours....or 30 hours. It won't damage anything. Just make sure you have enough gas. Many people use the Prius as a power generator and leave their cars on for extended periods, cycling on and off constantly.
The battery probably just hasn't gone back to its usual 60% target yet. The bars are very imprecise, and do not all represent equal amounts of battery capacity. (Bar #6, the one that's normally the top filled one, is particularly large.) The engine is running a bit more to charge it back up, and the bars disappear quickly when she's using battery power - even though she's only using an amount that would still remain within a single bar if the battery were more charged. Basically - nothing happened, just let the car do its thing, and it'll take care of itself. After you've driven it a bit, especially if it's at a constant speed on the highway, the battery charge will return to a normal level and all will be as usual. There's no need to force this happening, though. The car is perfectly fine with the traction battery being a little lower than usual.
I am guessing you mean if left and did not run out of gas. Because once you run out of gas, the car will remain powered from the HV pack until it fully depletes. Once the pack gets low enough (~10%) it cannot spin up MG1 to get the ICE going to charge up the car. Also that low of a discharge is bad for the pack and will diminish life. That did not happen in this case, but just for future thread readers I want to clarify.
whenever i do something stupid (and i have a lot of experience) i always convince myself of adverse effects which aren't actually happening.
I think you've easily gotten the answer here. Repeatedly. But think of it this way. The vehicle was designed to be "ON". So while obviously not recommended or necessarily "preferable"...accidentally leaving it in the ready state, for 9 hours while not moving isn't a state that should do any long term damage at all. IF you are having any problems now? It's coincidence. And I wouldn't think at all related to just leaving the vehicle on. My advice would be just to drive it. Either performance will return to the baseline you are happy or familiar with....OR you do indeed have a totally separate problem, in which case it will become undeniable. The good news is in either case you are still under warranty.
it's easy to let your imagination run away with you when you do something that you think might have caused damage.
I left my car on for 5 hours once. After the two movies ended, I put the car in D and drove away from the drive-in. $13 for two movies for the whole family. What a deal!
