Greetings all...been a long time since I've posted. My 2002 Prius seems dead...I tried starting it the other day and it did start briefly, then shuddered, and now no signs of life when I twist the key. Its been sitting for months. After doing some reading I'm wondering if the aux battery and possibly the hybrid battery charges are below threshold for normal operation. With the pandemic and working from home I've hardly driven the car for many, many months, and I didn't think ahead on this and do any purposeful regular driving to keep things charged. What is the best approach?
start with the 12v. how old is it? if less than 4 or 5 years, get a smart charger/maintainer and charge it up. if older, you should probably just replace it.get a volt meter and track the voltage. if it holds in the low to mid 12's, you should be good. if it won't start, you probably need a new hybrid battery, but is the car worth it? you would need to have the codes read at toyota or a qualified hybrid shoppe.
Thanks. Both batteries are about 4 years old. I'll try charging the aux battery and see what happens. It is definitely not worth it to me to have it repaired if it still won't start after that. Sad. The car only has about 130K miles on it. I'm sure there is a lot of life left in the gasoline fired motor...hybrid system has likely brought an early demise.
possibly, but not likely. a 4 year old oem hybrid battery should be able to withstand a lot of non usage. if it is rebuilt or aftermarket, that's a different story. you're right about hybrids vs gassers though. gassers can be 50 years old, and nothing much goes wrong, where batteries don't like aging.
I'm betting the 12V is dead as a doornail. And that the state of charge on the HV battery is not great at this point. If a 12V gets it going, it needs a nice long drive to get the HV battery charged up. And I wouldn't be surprised if it throws a red triangle at you. And if it gets moving again, it does need to be driven quite regularly or these things do happen.
Thanks for the replies, folks. It is an aftermarket hybrid battery...wasn't my decision...was put in just before I took possession of the car. Over the years I've had it there is frequently a red triangle...goes away during nice stretches of dry weather, so I think there is leakage that is more pronounced when the environment is damp. The car has issues unfortunately. I have a good trickle charger and will charge the aux battery and see what happens.
So I installed a new 12V battery. When I turn the key to the ON position everything springs to life as far as the display and such, but when I twist the key to the START position nothing happens, and as you would expect when I set the transmission to D or R there is no power to the wheels. Any suggestions? I do recall that, before this most recent debacle, sometimes the gasoline-fired motor would shut off when I didn’t expect it (like right after starting the car from a cold state).
If you don’t have a way to check the state of charge on the 12v battery and you don’t have a scanner to check the vehicle for trouble codes it is nearly impossible to give you a starting point to diagnose your problem. That being said it sounds like your drive battery is discharged. The drive battery is actually what starts the gasoline engine.
I’ll put a charger on the 12V battery overnight. i may have a scanner I can use with this car to check for codes. is there a way to charge the drive battery? [EDIT] The battery voltage is measuring 12.85VDC when disconnected from the system. Should be fine but I’m going to put the charger on it anyway. And by the way thanks for the response. I do realize this is not binary stuff...I’m not expecting that it is a simple answer or that anybody here is going to hold my hand through a complex repair...I’m just hoping for some starting points/directionals.
The best way to charge the HV (drive) battery is actually to drive the car. But I'm going to guess that its basically useless at this point given its age and after so much sitting. (And as far as age goes, it might have gone in about 4 years ago, but it wasn't "new" stuff - it was refurbished stuff so its still old). While only about 130K on the car, mileage is rather irrelevant to batteries which are far more about time (and conditions and history - they can be killed sooner rather than later). Your HV battery is likely smoked by now.
It ain’t cheap, Maxx Volts 2004-2009 Toyota Prius EL-1 Traction Battery Grid Charger Balancer Maxx Volts 2004-2009 Toyota Prius EL-1 Traction Battery Grid Charger Balancer | eBay the only other option is to tear down the battery and charge each module individually.
Hi all…resurrecting this latent thread. So I full charged the auxiliary battery, still won’t start when I twist the key the main display goes black. I pulled codes and came up with P3006. I cleared codes and it did not return but there is no change in the symptoms…I’m assuming the car needs to be running to regenerate the code. The HV battery is a Dorman replacement the previous owner had installed in 2015, and the car has done a LOT of sitting in the intervening years; only driven about 24K miles between 2017 and present, and the last year it has mostly sat. This is likely a situation where the HV battery modules should all be replaced and the buss bars inspected, etc., yes?
