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550 mile drive in 120f weather with Battery pack @ 50% life

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Care, Maintenance and Troubleshooting' started by Bryanesk, Jul 12, 2024.

  1. Bryanesk

    Bryanesk Junior Member

    Joined:
    Aug 7, 2022
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    Location:
    San Bernardino
    Vehicle:
    2005 Prius
    Model:
    N/A
    Experienced this while regenerative breaking. The battery while driving performs great imo constantly 6-7 bars charges up to full or almost some times it will drain to purple bars pretty quick tho with the AC on if I’m parked m say like 3-5 mins. I get decent MPG 40+ always. I guess what I’m wondering is if this is safe or should I be concerned
     

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  2. Tombukt2

    Tombukt2 Senior Member

    Joined:
    Nov 29, 2020
    10,373
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    Location:
    Durham NC
    Vehicle:
    2009 Prius
    Model:
    Base
    In my eyes the car will drive fine even if you're driving right smartly most of these cars seem to not run a real long time with the air conditioner on sitting there doing nothing I mean look at the size of your battery The HV battery The air conditioning is running off that HD battery what voltage the compressor uses of that battery I don't know but probably a good bit of it That's a $211 volt system so that's like running a 220 volt compressor from your house in your car not as large of course and not as much of an amp draw etc but you know it's taking some juice I don't know how long I would tend to believe that little hybrid battery and those modules would keep this compressor running about five or six minutes sounds about right and then the engine should come on and start charging the battery right back up but even driving my '09 was coming up on 400K and pretty much not a lot done to the car when I'm driving the car with the air conditioner on full blast not auto I'm usually on medium fan lol on the display for the temperature AC button yellow and driving for hours while driving the car with your foot on the gas going down the road and doing everything fairly normal stopping at stop lights for maybe 30 seconds something like that none of this 5 minute stop light business I never see the magenta or red bars ever while driving If you do you're probably getting to the point where you need to be playing whack-a-mole or having fun with your HV battery I used to when the battery was going bad. The typical response was like this You get in the car you back out of the driveway you see magenta or red bars You put the car in drive You start going out the driveway and before you can even look back at the MFD energy display it's turned blue and about four bars up the battery or something like that by the time I reach the mile to the first stop sign at the end of my driveway that blue rack of lines has not gone to the top and is turned green and showing the green bar with a white thin sliver at the very top of it where the positive terminal is then I stop at the stop sign and make the turn and by the time I step on the gas it goes from green to the magenta bars just that fast like I'm talking. And then it repeats this while I'm driving down the road when the battery is in poor condition while this is happening I will generally be getting 37 to 39 mi to the gallon the car runs very well unless you really start pushing it especially uphill which I don't have a lot of that here. That's what was happening in my '09 when the battery was toast I drove to the dealer with the battery like that ripped it out dropped it in the funny container at the dealer dropped the new battery in connected it up left all the plastic panels laying in the trunk drove back home all the way in the blue and the green haven't seen the magenta again I can force it if I sit in the parking lot with the air on I don't do that I don't live in my car matter of fact I park in the shade and go in the Walmart or the store and use their air conditioning my Prius is not a mobile office If I'm going to have a mobile office I'll get a sprinter van.