I came back from being out of town and my wife said the Prius was dead. At most the car was not in use for only overnight. The car is 4 months old and has 7,000 miles on it. I couldn't jump start it myself because it was in the garage front end first and my jumper cables are not long enough to reach the front of the car. Called Road side assistance and the guy said he sees a lot of dead batteries on the Prius. (Didn’t ask to qualify or quantify “a lot.â€) I don’t give his opinions much credence because of what followed. He powered it enough to pop the trunk, promptly disconnected the cable from the front and uncovered and connected directly to the main battery saying from past experience he couldn’t jump it from the terminal in the front. I didn’t have time to stop him or argue that his problem may have been a misunderstanding of starting the car and knowing when it was “on.†I know I could have started it without accessing the back battery since all of the displays were lit up and I only needed enough power to get to ready mode. And not enough juice to turn the ICE over like a traditional car. I had also read that you may have to cycle through the startup procedure a couple of times when recovering from a dead battery to get to ready mode. Not sure why it was dead, I did NOT notice any interior lights on after it started up. I hope it starts when I head home this afternoon… My resulting problem that I immediately noticed is that the driver’s side window will not work in auto up/ or auto down modes. It does go up and down, but the second click of the button does not put it in auto up/down mode. I cycled through the window lock (for passenger windows) to make sure that wouldn’t cause it. Not sure if a fuse controls just the auto function, or if the guy from road side assistance shorted anything. Does anyone know if there is anything I can check for this, or does the dealer have to look at it?? BTW, I have to reset the Reverse Beep OFF preference and the calculated MPG was reset, but nice to see that the radio stations are in non-volatile memory, as are the NAV settings. Thanks.
If the auxiliary battery is disconnected or run down, the power window may not operate automatically and the jam protection function will not function correctly after you reconnect, replace or recharge the auxiliary battery. In any of these cases, you should normalize the power window. To normalize the power window: 1. Push down the power window switch and lower the window halfway. 2. Pull up the switch until the window closes and hold the switch for a second. Make sure that the window opens and closes automatically. If the power window cannot be operated properly, have it checked by your Toyota dealer.
I have an idea that you could "jump start" the Prius from a pack of 8 AA batteries. If the aux-battery on mine ever runs low (and it hasn't in over a year), I'll try it Dave
I had to jump start once but it was my fault for draining the battery down. At my brother's house, I installed a new amplifier and speakers and was testing the system (cranking it up pretty loud) and left the car on in ACC mode for several hours. Came out later that evening and the 12V battery was so drained the interior lights wouldn't come on. I thought the battery might be hosed from being discharged so deeply but a quick jump start and idle charge for about 10 minutes, then a 45 minute drive back home and I haven't had a problem since.
Thats normal. The same thing happened to me. You just need to recalibrate the window. Do this by rolling it down all the way and back up and holding up for a second so it knows when to stop. If it doesnt work the first time keep doing it if it hasn't fixed itself already. EDIT: Oops, it looks like I jumped the gun on posting. Someone already posted the procedure long before I did.
I'm having a very similar but more intricate problem. After disconnecting the battery and jumpstarting my car, all driver seat window switches, except to the one that controls the deiver's window itself, stopped working. Strangely, all windows still operate via their "local" switches. All auto up/down functions are also dead and when the lights are on (and swihes light up) the green dots on the window switches blink! I'm going to check if the suggestions given above will work in my case - hopefully yes, but trully strange things seem to stem from the simple fact of battery disconnection.
You might try disconnecting the 12V battery negative terminal to let everything reset, then reconnect after a few minutes. If that doesn't help, then I'd suggest that you verify that the 20A FR DOOR fuse (located in the relay/fuse box under the instrument panel on the driver's side) is OK. If it is, then my guess is that the Power Window Master Switch mounted on the driver's door is bad.
I just replaced the oem aux battery with the Optima battery today and all was well until sometime later I noticed the auto up/down problem listed on this thread. Tried the window reset and it worked like a charm. I just wonder how many folks have had this "problem" when replacing the aux battery. There doesn't seem to be any mention of this in the aux battery replacement threads I have come across. Anyhoo, much thanks.
