If the hybrid / traction battery depleats, am I screwed?

How does a traction battery lose all of it's energy? You planning on letting the car sit for 10 years?

 

No. The HV battery pack is used to spin the gas engine via MG1 (like a starter motor) before the fuel is injected and then the gas burns. No HV battery potential, no engine starty-starty.

Makes no difference. If the car is READY, engine is off, but the battery is dead, the engine will not spin, the engine will not start.

The gas engine won't do anything because it won't start.

Now that your questions are answered, these are either very advanced questions if you are doing some very low level manipulations of the car, or just stupid questions from someone that has no idea how the car works.

So to answer again as if you have no idea what you're asking:

When the battery gets to its lowest bar on the screen, there is still 40% or more in the battery pack. The engine can start in the high single digit, low tens of percent SOC (8%-12% usually). There are only a couple ways this can happen. If you run out of fuel, you can then continue going on just the battery and it will let you go until the pack gets lower than 40% and usually stops moving around 18% to 20% which is well below normal. Once you stop, you could sit there with the car on for a long time, or reboot it many times, and it is possible the battery could get below the magic start value.

If this happens then you will require a grid charger. If you go to the dealership they will get an HV charger in and have to charge the pack from the wall to get it above the 20%-40% charge and then the gas engine will be OK. It will also damage the battery by getting it so low.

Same as above answer, and this can happen if you turn the car on, and put it in neutral and then let it go down for hours and hours. It may not start back up. But again, don't put it in neutral in READY for hours. The car will warn you as well, that it is not charging and don't do this.

 

No it will discharge to 40% (1-bar) anytime the battery is low and charge to 80% (full 8 bars) when the battery is full. The car will attempt to keep it in the 60%-ish range, about 6-bars. Want to see it go through the full swings? Drive up and down a mountain.

It will charge and discharge more quickly as it ages. Eventually the cells will become unbalanced causing the charge and discharge to happen by just accelerating and braking normally in traffic.and then the lights on the dash look like a Christmas tree, and the battery needs to be repaired/replaced. This could happen at 30K miles, 500K miles, 10 years, or 20 years. Nobody knows and each car is different. In the mountains and in the heat, they die faster. When they sit without being used, they die faster. That's why a 500K miles taxi that's 4 years old works just fine, but a car with 30K miles and 12 years might need a new battery.

 

.... The traction pack won't run out - yes, the engine will come on an bring it back up. Over the decades, people have run out of gas & run the traction pack down 'till all the dash lights come on - and even then the dealer can gas it up & do a reset. I call it the 'dummy fee'.

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Historically, the Gen3 2009+ is better than the Gen2.
The older Gen2 Prii will deplete HV batt if you run out of gas.

 

@massarmor I think your concern is battery depletion under normal driving conditions, the state of charge running down say due to protracted lower speeds on level roads?

This is a normal scenario; once the charge gets down to two bars it'll change behaviour a bit, run the engine more, bring the charge back up.

 

but to answer your question directly, yes, you're screwed.

 

...but nobody here to my knowledge has discharged a Gen3 HV batt because the Gen3 logic keeps the HV sufficiently charged in all normal scenarios including running out of gas. Gen2 yes plenty of folks ran the HV battery down in the out-of-gas scenario.

Yes you are screwed if hypothetically the Gen3 HV batt is discharged, but it is not a likely except lay off neutral eg in car washes. I do my own car washes, so I don't know much about that.

 

You're welcome.

And not being driven on when you are out gas.
And not being used as a whole house power generator.

No. The car will take care of itself if you take care of the car. Drive it like a normal car and it will reward you well.

If you are in a flood, an electric powered vehicle is the best in my opinion. Here's the Leaf in the water test:



Assuming you're vehicle is not buoyant enough to float away the danger to the engine is water getting in there. We use the power of hydraulics all the time because you can't really compress water, so that's bad if it gets in say a compression chamber of some kind, like an engine cylinder.

Uunless you have one of these:



But if you are in a flood scenario, don't be driving. You and your entire vehicle can be swept away in as few as a couple inches of fast moving water. Waaaaay less than most people think.

As for short circuiting, the car will just shut off. The Prius checks before it boots that it is not shorted. If it happens while driving, the dash lights up, the car turns off. This can happen in bad accidents and they have thought about it. The battery is fully isolated from the vehicle whenever it should be.

And if you have fuel. But otherwise yes.

 

One thing you can do: use the washers where the car stays stationary.

 

Unless you've arrived at the car wash creeping in EV, you're likely to have at least 4 bar segments showing without any extra "driving around." In that case, you have a lot more safe time in neutral than any car wash is likely to require, unless you do something stupid like leaving the air conditioning and headlights on.

Don't worry too much about far-fetched hypothetical scenarios. The world has enough real problems to worry about.

 

No not necessary. It won't hurt, but it is not required.

It is generally accepted that a Prius consumes 200W in READY mode, when just sitting there looking pretty. Measurements are taken from numerous people including myself (mine draws a bit more, but I have a bit more in the car...) that use the Prius as a whole home power generator on occasion.

Your Prius battery is made up of 28 modules. Each module contains 6 NiMH cells with a fully charged voltage of 1.2v per cell and a module capacity of 6500mAh, for a total of 46.8Wh per module, and 1.3kWh total pack capacity. A full 8-bar green battery (bad) is about 81% or 1kWh. When the Prius shows 1-bar, it is at 40%, or 524Wh remaining. The Prius will refuse to start around say 15% to pull a random number, around 200Wh. So with a brand new battery, you could get 2 hours in neutral from full to empty on the display, another hour and a half until it won't start anymore. Of course with a 2009, you might have 20% to 30% capacity left, so divide those numbers by 5. Assuming you roll in with a completely empty battery (40%) with a crap pack at 20% original capacity with no extra load in neutral, you have 18 minutes to dead. Most cars are in the carwash for 2 minutes at a high end one where there are lots of waxes and things and when the guy hops in at the end to park it, it goes back into drive (D) and all is well again.

All that to say, don't worry about it.

Electrical draws. Headlights, defroster, air conditioner, thumping 2000W bass subwoofer, that type of thing.

I would direct that towards Hayashi Telempu Company from Japan. They have done some... unique... things to a Prius.

 

But then again, it is possible to have a dumbass attack and leave the car parked in reverse with the parking brake on and the fob in the car during a 12 hour shift..... Then when you get to the big street the car says "ME NO GO!!!!" Eased to the next driveway parked, shut the car down, then powered back up. 0 bars and Battery empty or depleted message. It finally started the engine and I got going again. Just gonna keep an eye on it.

 

Something doesn't make sense ... Reverse isn't Neutral, and doesn't normally prevent the car from charging.

 

We spend our winters with our daughter in Florida and since this is our first Prius, I am a little concerned about it sitting in the garage in Ohio for 3 months. I would expect that a laptop that has been left off for that period of time would be dead and I wonder about the hybrid battery in this car doing the same. Any advice as I didn't see any storage procedure in the Owners Manual.