About 3.2k miles and about 5 months, I've got a P3023 on my Project Lithium, Nexcell battery. I noticed on my way to work that it was delayed to accelerate and if you punched it, it was pretty slow. Texas is having another freeze. Car sat for 4 days, instead of 3 because they called off Monday. Anyways I made it to work fine. Heater is garbage. When I was leaving work, I used my remote start. I get in about 2 minutes before the 10 minute auto shutoff happens. Open door, restart car, swap shoes, and notice I've got a Yellow Triangle and CEL, with the Check Hybrid System message. Open up Dr.Prius and find the P3023 code and that's apparently Module 13 is low. When I first started my car on the way to work, I was just 1-2 bars short of full. On the way home is was full or 1 short. I watched the module voltage and it was either low or high compared to others, at times. I also noticed that despite my HVB nearly full or full in the car display, Dr Prius said it was about 60-65%. As I was trying to get Dr Prius to work, the car was kinda bucking in park. Engine was on. When I reset the code, it smoothed out. Drove home and I'd say it felt peppier than it ever does. Now, I know to take Dr Prius and the voltages with a grain of salt. I don't remember exactly how the modules are wired up. Do you think this is a type of code that will go away or is it something more? I'm not finding much about this code, online. Thanks, Higgins909
The symptom of less power in the morning was before or after the error code? The Toyota Battery ECU is designed to dial back the amount of power available in super cold weather to protect the battery. Also a small number of Gen3, which has a more powerful motor-generator than Gen2, in super cold weather are having this error code symptom. And because this business if a project of refinement, not just a product, in only a few months they've already replicated the problem by packing in dry ice most all the hybrid cars they build packs for and redesigned to a V2.5 circuit that solved this problem. This process also led them to develop a signal soother that they were shipping out to people while they completed final testing of V2.5. And again this is only a very small number of Gen3 with this problem, but they take this stuff super seriously and don't want to have any packs throwing error codes at all, not even one! Email a copy of your error code info and they'll likely ship a V2.5 pack to you right away or they'll have you ship them your pack for free testing and upgrade to V2.5 with a 24 hour turn around time, not counting shipping time. For all the other Project lithium pack owners reading this who don't have warning lights or problems, there's currently a 30% discount on upgrading to the newest V2.5 version of the pack, which performs far better than version 2.0 in many ways. Just purchase http://www.projectlithium.com/products/nexcell-lithium-battery-upgrade-service and enter promo code "Soother" at checkout.
Lithium iron phosphate batteries deteriorates quick when charging below 32F. There’s typically a low temp sensor that cuts off charge to batteries but in this case there’s none.
As a user and tester of Project Lithium I am currently using the soother and must say that really helps balance the modules. I would say you have the one blade that is bad but if you have the v2.0 you can get a free upgrade to v2.5 even without a fault code. Email here [email protected] To upgrade your v2.0 to 2.5 for FREE!!!! Learn to watch the battery colors while driving during different temps outside and internal battery temps, you want to see mainly green and sometimes yellow and very little and for short durations red. Too much red and your pack is gonna throw a code soon.
A signal soother, which if you have modules with different voltages it will balance them better. So if you have a module that reads 16.45 & another at 16.55 it will make them both at 16.50 each. Seems to release more power from the battery too.
First stage design of future packs... Basically a new circuit added at the plug of the voltage sensor harness. Jack has a junk yard style Gen2 Prius with bald tires, bad brakes and all kinds of electrical glitches that he acquired from a cutomer who got full warranty coverage even though that dang car over charged and ruined a V1 pack, a V2 pack, and a V2.5 pack. I'm not sure of what's in the circuit but I'm encouraging him to add bluetooth connectivity and app to it along with a pack pre-heating system for V3 and beyond. So far that pack destroying Prius is running perfectly with this new system and no more damage to packs.
The idea of bluetooth and an app companion was thought of by me long time ago and the cost would be too much he said. Sad because this would make updating and get people to understand their battery packs better. Maybe in the future huh...
