Prius plug in battery only getting 8 miles per charge. Help!

Lithium-ion battery degrades over time even though the battery has not been charged. Battery is affected by extreme heat, cold weather, etc. We have a Prius plug-in 2013. The car was made in Japan in August 2012 so it is pretty much the same car as yours. I bought the car over a year ago with approx 138 000km / 86 000 miles on it. It now has approx 170 000km / 106 000 miles. I did a Dr Prius life expectancy test in May. It gave me 77% capacity left which I think was ok. I got maybe 16km / 10 miles of electric range. Now half a year later I get less than 14km / 8,75 miles of electric range. I have to say that the winter has affected the range a lot. We live in Finland. Summers are sometimes hot, and winters sometimes very cold.

 

Eight miles is a little disappointing, but remember that the EPA rates it at just 11 miles and it is a 10 year old battery, so that really isn't very surprising.

If there were bad cells, you'd have trouble codes and a light to alert you. So, no warranty without trouble codes even if the warranty hadn't expired two years and 49k miles ago. Probably, they have reduced capacity thanks to heat and time, especially if it was out in the sun. If that's all that's wrong, that's just wear and tear and there's not much you can do about that except to slow future degradation by keeping it out of the heat as much as you can, which ain't easy down here.

But there is also likely to be imbalance between the cells. If you charge it more than she did, that imbalance might get a little less over time if there's any management taking place while it's charging.

 

Was it driven during those 3 years ? Plugging in shouldn't matter to the battery life

 

BECAUSE......even when not plugged in, it should use part of the battery's capacity acting like a conventional hybrid.

THEN....if the 12 V battery is over 5 years old, start looking for a new one.
And/or get it tested.
A weak 12 V can make other things look bad when they really aren't.

I can't help but wonder if actually USING it in electric mode and plugging it in for a couple of months might show slightly more capacity.

 

I'm not sure if you're agreeing with me or pointing out a failure ?

 

Both.

 

I forgot to mention that our car still has one year guarantee left on the hybrid battery. In Finland the guarantee is for 10 years / 350 000 km which is 218 750 miles. When maintenance is done by Toyota authorized shop, that activates the guarantee again for one year or 15 000km (= 9375 miles).

 

2012 PIP Advanced here. 85,000 miles. Down to just under 9 miles showing for available EV. I wish it had more, but am accepting this as the norm at this point.

 

it depends on where you are getting your information. start by disconnecting the 12v neg for a minute. that will set the battery icon to factory default.
make sure the tires are pumped up,
then charge the battery and take it for a drive on 30 mph back roads until the engine comes on.
don't use any hvac.
report back here with how many miles it went. i get around 13-14 in nice weather. if you're not, there might be some brake drag or something.
there is nothing wrong with the battery, other than it's 10 years old, and they do lose a bit of capacity over time.

 

She let the batt drain down and deep cycle. It's ruined by neglect

 

not true of the pip hybrid battery

 

no response from the o/p

 

It's been a while since I've been on the forum but this thread caught my eye.
I'm in the same boat as many with my 2012...maybe 9 or so miles range at this point?
My question: are there any reliable/cost-effective "add-on" battery options to increase our range? I'm not needing a lot more range, but doubling what I have now would get me to town/work/charging options so I'd be running significantly higher EV. I last researched this several years ago and I didn't find anything that looked attractive, but just thought I'd check before heading back into that research again.
Thanks!

 

unfortunately, nothing. when the prime came out, all hope of aftermarket pip enhancement evaporated.

i'm at 9.9 right now, but it was 14 last fall, and will be agin this spring.

 

Too bad. I had hoped someone might have homebrewed some kind of battery add-on, but I'm probably underestimating the complexity/difficulty of something like that.

 

What chemistry is the battery cells? Lithium ion is just a broad name for any chemistry battery that uses the lithium ion exchange as its method of energy storage.
Need to know if it is LFP or some other chemistry if it is a lithium ion battery, from there I can walk you through a charging regime for each cell to regain the capacity.

T1 Terry

 

everything toyota is proprietary

 

Besides being pretty out of date, they didn't make many PiPs, so even if someone did develop something and every PiP owner bought it, they still wouldn't recoup their investment and make a profit on it.

 

Seems no one is interested in actually trying to revive their lost capacity .... interesting ...

T1 Terry