The original poster’s battery very well may be going bad, but there are also more situations than the ones you describe in which the battery will get into purple. I’ve found that whenever my air conditioner is running and my car is stopped (either in a traffic jam or waiting in a drive through or if I’m parked somewhere), the battery level will drain to purple and then the engine will kick on to charge it.
18 minutes? You didn’t happen to be in San Francisco when that lady had the battery stolen out of her Prius last month?
Traffic backups is the situation where battery would go down to two bars and then cycle the engine on and off between two and three bars. This would happen regardless of whether AC is running or not. But AC makes a big difference since it drains the battery down a lot and faster too. I do try to switch AC off in stop and go traffic unless it is too uncomfortable.
I wasn't in San Francisco on that day, but maybe this guy was? In his video he shows how you can pull and install a hybrid battery pack from start to finish in as little as 12 1/2 minutes. I think about this guy often when I swap packs:
Before I learned how to rebuild and eventually get around to reconditioning my car's original battery pack I would get really stressed out in traffic when this would happen. Once I learned enough though, I realized it's a relatively easy fix if your pack hasn't thrown any codes yet.
When my friend got his vasectomy the doctor bragged he did the fastest vasectomies around. Well, my friend had a bad reaction to something and his nutz blew up to the size of oranges. Quite painful. Sometimes it’s better to take your time, do a slow through job.
I think a good lawyer could make a malpractice suit with that statement/information...but i digress Small Update for further diagnosis: Replies seem to be split pretty much down the middle, half say replace, half recondition; go figure. My mileage on that tank finished out at 47.7 so no dip there. Dipping into the purple 2 bars has been a normal occurrence nearly every morning. It always happens between .75 and 1 mile from my driveway and lasts about another mile-ish after which she charges back up into the blue and sometimes green depending on my commute. The purple does not happen again until the next morning(meaning if I go out for lunch or when I leave for the day at 7 it does not dip into purple on the drive home). After reading everyone's responses I'm still torn what to do but still leaning towards a reconditioning kit, although honestly I'm thinking about riding it out as well for the time being. My local stealership wants $1895 for a new battery, I found a location in Chicago(2.5 hours drive) for $1595 from the dealer. I know the newpriusbatteries.com is also an option. Anyone have any other ideas given the new info? PS. I said it earlier but the helpfulness and wealth of knowledge here is incredible. Thanks again!
