I need some advice on the outlook for the short term reliability of my hybrid battery for my 2009 which we have owned since it was a baby. Only 82,000 miles so far and we just replaced the 12 volt battery in April so we are gentle on the car. We have an excellent service center (Atlanta Hybrid Repair) but they are closed over the weekend and we have a family trip planned for Thursday. If we need to rent a car we need to be planning now. When I start the car after sitting overnight I don't get warning lights but the I'm getting purple bars which I use to only rarely get. After driving for a while I get blue and even green screens. I know a new battery or cells are in our future but is it safe to drive on a 1500 mile trip to the beach. Thanks in advance for any advice.
Your car is 8 years old and the traction battery might last another 100K miles, or might die tomorrow. No guarantee, one way or the other. If that makes you uncomfortable then maybe you need a newer vehicle for your road trips.
what do you mean you are getting purple bars when you start it? what level are the bars at when you shut it down previous to that? there's no reason a 2009 battery with 82,000 miles should be going bad yet, except for the odd defect.
I think most experiences here would say if you park it with blue bars, and start it the next morning and it's 2 purple bars, you are in the warning zone of the red triangle heading your way. You most likely have one or more modules that are doing some significant self discharge. It (or they) are around 7.7-7.8 volts when you shut it down and probably drop to the 7.0-7.1 range over night. Enough to not activate the triangle, and good enough to get the car started and getting it's charge on. Eventually, they'll degrade to the point where the car wont start. Could be tomorrow, could be next month, but it's in your near future. I am basing those numbers only off my experience disassembling batteries which I have replaced, including some which were disassembled within 12 hours of removal (similar to sitting overnight)
yes, it could happen. but without knowing at what level the bars were at previously, we don't know anything.
Safe? No. Your 8 years warranty coverage for the pack probably just ended earlier this year unless you bought it the last three months of 2009. If the pack failed during your trip, you would be forced to have someone do a quickie repair, buy a drop in refurb, or have a dealer install a brand new pack. I would hate to have to do this while on vacation. Chances are good that it wouldn't happen but you have to ask yourself a question. Do I feel lucky? Well do you ....
Actually we did purchase a 2016 Prius. Unfortunately we had a bad wreck that totalled it. We are back to one car. I have full confidence in the car. SO does not. We may have to resort to a rental for this trip.
Full bars, blue or green when we turn it off. We are in Georgia with warm weather. Air conditioning, not heating. If we had a prime we would be 80% EV around time (or so I estimate).
As most posters have said it's a crap shoot but my battery starting doing the exact same thing at around 100k miles...basicly starting to show noticeable degradation. If it was a flashlight battery you would notice the light getting dimmer, Your still in good shape because the hybrid battery has not thrown a hybrid code on the dash yet so what to do..... Do like I did and buy a Prolong Hybrid battery charger from hybrid autotomotice. You can do a charge/discharge To it using there charger system. I did and got some really good resullts. Woke the battery right up. Hoping to get another year out of it so maybe the Toyota oem hybrid battery comes down in price. Hybridautomotive.com. Check it out it works pretty good. You will see there ads for it here on this site. Lots of posts about it.
My 2009 Gen II had 83,000 miles on the odometer when I bought it in Jan 2014, all the recalls had been done, and it was regularly maintained at the dealer. I invested in a Hybrid Automotive Prolong Grid System in early 2015 as a preventative maintenance measure, and replaced the 12V AuxBattery at the end of 2015 (well, it was 6 years old and needed it) - there are many threads hereabouts concerning the pros and cons of using a Prolong System, and I'll leave that as an interesting voyage of discovery for you to work on when you have the time! hope this helps - Good luck! - Wil
