10 K Service, less than impressed! dealership misery!

We both agreed; I'll have to wait for a recall or a wireless update. I can't blame them for that. If I had demanded a new battery or something, I'd have looked like an A-hole first class.

 

I must be missing something. Why didn’t they get to the bottom of it? You have a new car that isn’t working. I’d suggest insisting that they make it right, at their expense of course. My 2022 Prime had weird symptoms with the main display not shutting right down. They dropped a new 12-volt into it and it remedied the issue, at their expense. Different issue, I realize, but I wouldn’t have left before it was fixed.

 

So, you are saying that all Gen 5 Prius Primes have a 300-mA parasitic drain through the 12-V battery? I find that hard to believe. If that were the case, you would get a 6¼-day standby from the 12-V battery before it went dead in the best-case scenario.

Are you sure that there isn't some third-party accessory installed like a tracking device, code reader, status checker, or such?

I left my 2021 Prius Prime undriven for six weeks in hot weather with an active full Toyota Connected Services subscription, and I had no issues.

 

I’m stuck using dealership but it’s a fairly decent one. Plus the advantage of having the parts and labor warrantied really helps in my circumstances. My local
independent mechanics charge almost as much as dealership and only cover part warranty. I can’t afford the risk of paying for labor twice. There are definitely a few Toyota dealerships in my area that I wouldn’t allow near my car.

 

It must have been more than that today. I left it parked for 2 hours while we went for coffee. I got back and the message on the screen told me that it "could not be started. ""Battery Low." Shortly after that, I ordered a 100 Ah LiFePo4 battery off Amazon. Almost 3 times the capacity. Should help a bit.
I believe that both battery tests finding the battery OK are probably right. Still, it's an unacceptable problem. I'm hoping for some kind of fix.

 

For a 2024, that's nuts.

 

Let us know how it works out. You shouldn't have needed a Li-ion 12-V battery. You still haven't been able to identify the root cause of the high parasitic drain.

 

I am not sure if anyone else has used an LFP Li-ion 12-V battery in a Prius, but I am sure that the car will get very confused. The 12-V battery has a battery sensor that detects SOC, SOH, SOF, self-diagnosis, current, voltage, and temperature. That assumes that it is a lead–acid battery. Since a Li-ion battery has a built-in battery-management system, things will get very confusing for the ECU. You will be lucky if it doesn't throw error codes.

 

I'm forced to carry a booster pack and plug in my battery maintainer when I park. Two dealers have admitted they have no solutions or answers besides what I'm already doing. Kinda sucks, but not much more I can do,

 

Then the dealership needs to take back the car and refund you its cost.

 

There are specific procedures for determining and isolating parasitic draws that are definitely not rocket science (time consuming, but not overly complicated). This is a warranty issue and the dealership apparently is trying to sidestep it and you are basically enabling them by just accepting it (no offense intended here). I would suggest the ball is going to stay in your court until you get fed up enough to get significantly more aggressive with the dealership and Toyota.

 

The 'usual' fix is for the customer to accept a loaner, which is actually a rental car.

The dealer bills the rental to Toyota, which should provide some pressure to get the customer's car fixed.

...but what's normal anymore?

 

how about contacting Toyota Canada, the solutions proposed by the two dealers are ....well....unnaceptable . Something if very wrong about your battery or a parasitic draw well over the norm .Any third party gizmo installed on the car ? or some lamp staying on when the car if off

 

Absenting a warranty claim - WHEN would that be???

If a product is free - then YOU are the product.
My last 2 cars (a 2020 and a 2024 GMC, ) both came with a complimentary 'free first' service, which were not worth the asking price, and thus there is NO WAY that I would trust them to do this service.

Even in today's 'booming' economy you can get 4 valve stem cover caps for a little over a dollar - so buy a blister pack of them and get on with your life.
Typically I run my tyre pressures a little higher that what's on the door jam, and so sometimes when I'm forced to get a patch or I'm too lazy to rotate and spin balance them they come back with less air than I sent them in with.
I always break the lugs loose and torque them to spec after somebody who cares less about my car than I do assaults my wheels with an air gun - and so it's easy for me to check my caps when I double check my tire's pressure against the TPMS values.

SO.....outside wear?
THAT is a potentially BIG problem for a car with only 7500 miles!!!!
Either you are one of those people who think that the Fast and Furious movies were a "how-to guide for driving," you don't know how to avoid curbs and potholes, OR your car has an alignment problem.

There's a couple of ways you can fix this:
Your location is 'USA' - and you are required to have a front license plate and you're driving a Prius, so my guess is that gas is a little more than $2.88 a gallon where you live.
This means that you're going to need to keep the G5 for a long time to reconcile your high purchase price.
I would look into paying for a lifetime alignment service at some place like a GoodYear or a Firestone storefront.
Most normal drivers only need alignment every 2-3 years but if you live in a place where potholes are identified by name in Google Earth - OR - you're not a very good driver, OR you have a car with eensy-weensie alloy wheels then this may be a more worthwhile investment than playing 'whack-a-mole' with a dealership that's already proven themselves to be less truthful than an average.....DEALERSHIP.
Your call.
If your alignment place of choice says that your car is properly aligned then the cause of your premature front wear might be between the seat and the steering wheel.
I do not know what tyres came with your G5 but I would be surprised if they weren't some kind of Gucci 'eco-chic gas sipper special' that's about as soft as a billiard ball.
This means that, unlike softer performance oriented tyres, you REALLY should not be seeing unusual wear patterns in the first 7500 miles.

You need to aggressively investigate this.

You can't!
EVER!
They're GOING to use the wrong oil, over or under torque fasteners, "forget to change the filter", or not do the clean and inspect items on the maintenance list - and THAT'S IF YOU'RE LUCKY!
They're also going to try to scare you into thinking that you need service that you do not need (things that are not listed in the Warranty and Maintenance Guide) or repairs for things that (unlike your suspension) might not really be broken.

If you're one of those people that buy new cars every 4-6 years then I would simply change dealerships (AND car brands) and let them keep financially and morally assaulting you every time you toss them your key fob and hope that they will be gentle with you.
There IS a good use-case for this.
It takes time and effort to manage your own maintenance, and if you're just going to be changing the car out every 4-6 years, and if your income supports this luxury AND silly stuff like kids, college and retirement then you can save yourself a lot of aggravation by NOT worrying about it at all.

Ignorance is bliss, and Toyota builds pretty good cars.
There's a good chance that you will never know the difference if you stop paying attention.

HOWEVER (comma!)
If you plan on keeping the car for longer than 4-6 years:
READ the aforementioned Warranty and Maintenance Guide and do as many of the items on the checklist as you can do yourself or get a qualified independent mechanic to do it for you.
TAKE OWNERSHIP of the ownership task!

Lastly:
OCI.
Oil CHECK interval - every 30 days or 1,000 miles.
Oil CHANGE interval - consider changing it every 5,000 miles, especially if your oil is thinner than my morning coffee.

Disregard if you're on the 4-6 year plan.

Good Luck!

 

They gave me the standard, "we are working to improve your ownership experience."
No help at all.

 

I'm at a loss for words regarding the answer you received from them

 

I wouldn't mess with a lithium-ion 12-V battery. I am guessing that it will result in the check-engine light because of the battery sensor. A lithium-ion battery is an entirely different beast than a lead–acid battery. It would work in an old car with a simple alternator and a voltage regulator but probably not in a Prius with a battery sensor monitored by the ECU.

Are you measuring the drain with the AC charger connected? The AC charger results in a lot of drain.

If that's not the case, it could be a tracking device the dealer installed or an accessory you installed.

I would replace the OEM battery with a Walmart EverStart Maxx 140R battery and see what happens.

 

This car is under warranty! I’m failing to understand why you are tolerating Toyota’s and the dealership’s behavior? Do you not have any legal rights in Canada? Attorneys could probably produce substantial improvements to this situation, at Toyota’s expense.
If not an attorney, doesn’t Canada provide some form of consumer protection or assistance for these issues?

 

I seem to have received an update. My profile is already loaded, but it's relentless in asking me to log in. Something is really screwed up. I'd hate to have another dealer visit to get it fixed.

 

Yeah I'd agree: brand-new, if dealership won't come through I'd try another, and contact Toyota Canada. If you want to do a test, instead of the clamp meter, try the aforementioned ammeter in series, between the neg post and car body. Just to confirm what your clamp meter is reading:

Disconnect neg cable (either at post or body)
Connect two, long jumper wires, one to neg post, the other to car body
Run both wires out of hatch and gently close hatch
Wait half an hour, with fobs well away
Connect up a multimeter to the jumper wires, first in amp scale (just in case), then switch to milliampers
See what reading you get

Doing this with a gen 3, I saw around 20 milliamperes, with jumps every 4~5 seconds to around 40. The jumps might be due to the security icon on the dash.