Need to shift to neutral - Can ICE be started safely with hybrid battery out of car?

The Hybrid pack starts the engine, so you won't be able to do that...

Some guy on here recently had whole car shut down when he did that because he forgot to roll the windows up, but suspect that was a glitch/problem with his 12v.

When car's computers sense lots of problems like a missing pack it will throw the warning lights and likely not shift from neutral, or will only shift from Park to neutral. I've experienced this more than once when I forgot to make one of near a hundred connections on a battery pack rebuild. So suspect that's the same thing you will experience. Please follow up on this post after you've tried it so we can be certain. A quick search engine look for related PriusChat posts didn't turn up anything.

 

Soon as I get this pack I have to build finished, I'll give it a try with everything unplugged and report back to you. Might take a couple days. And if you decide to go for it before I do, let me know?

 

How definitive an answer are you waiting for? The hybrid battery is what starts the ICE, so with the hybrid battery out of the car, any starting of the ICE simply isn't going to happen.

In any case, the ICE would never even try to start except in READY mode, and you don't need to go to READY mode to shift to neutral. ON mode (second button push, without touching brake pedal) is enough. ON mode uses only the car's 12 volt system.

Car is likely to log some codes of the "dude, where's my battery ECU?" variety. Can clear those after putting stuff back together, if they don't go away on their own.

 

@ChapmanF told us enough details to be confirm it's not going to be an issue if you just need to get into neutral...

 

When my inverter died, we obviously could not go to Ready. The car was at a restaurant parked head first. The tow truck driver was about to chain up and drag the car out of the spot. We went to On mode and shifted to neutral. The car rolled out.

 

There are known 'chicken dances' published in the repair manual, like entering maintenance mode, that involve shifting to neutral in ON mode, so the cat's pretty much out of the bag.

 

Toyota new

 

Toyota Stealerships rip people off replacing inverters that have nothing wrong with them because the error codes for hybrid battery issues sometimes show up as inverter error codes. We get a couple people a year who get ripped off this way. Once they drain your bank account for the inverter the warning lights come back and then they say it's the hybrid battery and try to drain your bank account again.