Hello! I'm in the market for my first Prius. I have my eye on a 2012 Prius C One with 28,000 miles on it. How can I check the battery to make sure its still good? While test driving the battery charge indicator stayed around 2-4 bars and this seemed worrisome to me.
That's a little lower than I experience, but it may have to do with your load. Were the lights and A/C on? Was it mostly in tight traffic? If you can borrow a Scangauge, you can monitor battery directly and more accurately. Mine hovers around 60% most of the time. X
welcome! the dealer can give you a current reading, but that doesn't mean it won't fail tomorrow. how long a test drive did you take? the battery indicator can go all over the place, from full, down to two bars. but on a good long drive with the engine warmed up, it should hover around 6 bars at some points, more than anywhere else. fwiw, we don't see any bad batteries at 28,000 and you have an 8 year/100,000 mile warranty. all the best!
I agree that seems low, but if it was a short drive it might not have had time to charge fully, especially under heavy load (low speed, ac blasting, like most test drives from a dealership). I would see if you could take it on a longer one. Also, I would argue what you saw was better than if it filled up to the top instantly, which much like a cell phone that charges and dies in 15 minutes indicates the battery is on it's way out.
See if you get another, extended test drive, and look for a long downhill stretch in your area, the longer the better. You may need to drive straight up it first, that'll still work. By the time you get back to the bottom, the battery charge should be at or near full. If it's a long hill, say close to a mile, and the battery's functioning normally, it should display full, no question. (Just took a look on Google Maps, Claremore OK looks pretty flat?)
It was definitely a pretty standard test drive. And yes, we're very flat around here so I'll try and find a steep hill and see how it does I'm thinking that because the car does have such low miles the battery should be in good condition.
Yeah, 2012 with 28,000 miles might have been a lightly used daily driver. Or might have been used a lot, then sat idle for a long period. Hard to say. FWIW our 2010 was manufactured in August 2009, and we bought in November 2010, when it had around 10 kms (ten, not ten thousand) on the odometer. It was fine. But a vehicle that's used some and then sat might be a different story. Still that's a very new vehicle to be having hybrid battery problems. And in the unlikely event something does happen, you're still within warranty period.
If it was a standard drive it's probably fine. Mine will do that under those conditions as well. I'd do a longer drive if you can. If you can't the hill thing is a good idea too
Realize the battery will never go to 100%full. If you read some of the threads in here it is by design. conversely the capacity will never hit zero for the same reason
The car probably has sat on the lot for a long time. I can pretty much say that this car probably sat for a week and as a result, the battery is low. The biggest misconception regarding the Prius is all the talk about the main battery. You should be fine should you purchase this car, due to the warranty. Just make sure the warranty is in tack and all will be good. Most car sales people know very little about the Prius and most of us in here, if we owned a Prius Dealership could sell these cars like crazy. My wife had a Gen II. She took it in for routine maintenance and the Dealer convinced her to trade it in for a Corolla. There was nothing wrong with the Prius, but they leveraged on my wife's fears about the battery. It was only 2 years old!! From Gen 1 to Gen 4, the people in Priuschat know our way around these wonderful cars. Should you decide to buy it. Stay connected here. I knew nothing about the Prius till I found this website. Now, I know a lot more and learn a lot every day.
