I Left My Prius Running All Day!

Pretty scary, but it's good to see that the outcome wasn't too bad.
Now that you've tried it for us, we don't need to for ourselves.

 

I often end up parked in my car in the Houston heat, and I leave the car "running" with the a/c on. The battery will go down to 2 bars, the engine starts, runs for around 2 minutes, then shuts off again until the battery is back to 2 bars. Seems to take around 15 minutes before the engine restarts. So.....the engine runs for approximately 8 minutes per hour to keep my a/c running while sitting still. Not too bad at all, and the effect on mileage is minimal, around 2.5-3 mpg per hour.

 

Oh yeah, just to clarify, I was talking about trip mileage going down, not tank mileage. Probably not as much of a loss on the tank mileage compared to the trip mileage.

 

I have done this in my gen ii prius camping. It was too hot to sleep outside and instead we slept inside the Prius with the ac running. It used very little fuel and my mpg did not suffer that much. The engine would just cycle.

 

Why would this be? The engine doesn't come on if the battery has enough juice and it's in park. All that was left on is the hybrid system.

 

Yeah, I was only at about 30 miles on the trip meter so the effect would have been magnified.

 

Perhaps a good preventive measure to help avoid this from happening again to get into the habit of hitting the power button (which will automatically put the vehicle in park) rather than the park button before exiting. That way, if you forget power off and open the door the car will panic and signal you.

 

This would have happened to me too, but fortunately when I went to lock the door it wouldn't lock! At first I thought something was "wrong" with the car but finally it dawned on me! Ding-dong!

Actually I've almost done it twice now. :embarassed:

 

eglmainz, That is a pretty scary story. Thanks for sharing. The bright side is that it sounds like the car worked as advertised. I wrote in another thread about my paranoia and the potential fall-out. When we do something like this, it seems inevitable that Murphy jumps in. So, in spite of how it is suppose to work, I bet it's great for you that, this time, it did work. --TK

 

I almost left my car running in the garage when I was playing with it the day I got my car, but as I got out of the car with my key, it started beeping. Then a message appeared on the dashboard reminding me to turn off the engine. I guess you didn't notice the beeping noise when you got out?

 

These cars do the darndest things. There are only about three times the beeps never worked -- and I ended up leaving the car on each time!!

 

But then wouldn't the door not lock when you went to lock it, or are you in the habit of leaving the doors unlocked?

 

I have a Prius II on order. How do I prevent myself from accidentally leaving the car on all day? I understand the suggestion that I hit the power button first rather than the park button, but I'm so used to a conventional car that I doubt I'd remember to do this. Any ideas? thanks as always.

 

Is it acceptable to just hit the power button without putting the vehicle in park? This won't damage the vehicle in any way? (This is assuming that the vehicle is of course at a complete stop).

 

On the Gen 3 when you put your foot on the brake and hit the power button to turn off the car it automatically goes into park.

 

Guess this will become my standard practice.