Anyone else having 12V battery issues?

If you keep the 12v battery fully charged with a Battery Tender, it is LESS likely to be drained, but that is still possible. I replaced the OEM 12v battery in my '06 Prius with a "yellow top" but have had no problems with the 12v battery in my PIP.

As Rogerv said, if you want to listen to the radio for extended period, put the car in READY. Keep the doors and trunk closed tight and don't leave the lights on. The 12v battery charges when the traction battery charges. If the 12v battery is in good shape and not badly run down, it should be fine for most normal conditions.

A battery like the "yellow top" is always a good idea and is a good solution if you have a persistent drain.

 

I installed an AGM battery in my Dodge Ram because I'd been leaving it for long periods without driving it, and I was finding it dead every time I wanted to use it. Unfortunately that wasn't enough, because the problem was battery drain due to unknown reasons, probably having to do with electronics. I installed a battery maintainer, and now it starts up instantly whenever I need it, which turns out to be a handful of times during the year.

The problem with my new Prius was a completely different one. I was finding that the 12V auxiliary battery was going flat in a shockingly short amount of time by having the car in acc mode. I took it to the dealer, and they found the battery to be unsatisfactory and had it replaced.

The problems remains, that when the Prius auxiliary battery goes dead for whatever reason, the car is dead in the water until you have the battery boosted, even though you may have kilowatts of energy on-board. . This can happen to anyone for various reasons, and it's not good for the battery. This is a design flaw that should be addressed.

 

Looks like we have a troll here...

My Leaf has a similar issue with the 12 volt battery, so I carry a (used, in this case) 10AH UPS battery, with a pair of small alligator clips that have spade connectors attached, so I can just clip them on the UPS battery and "jump" the Leaf as needed. The alligator clamp lead that comes with the battery Tender is perfect for this use. I keep the UPS battery wrapped in bubble wrap, in the rear compartment.

 

Is this a design flaw? I think not.

I maintain it is intentional because it would be simple to make the DC to DC converter available at all times. I had a ZENN car with that feature. It had no 12v battery apart from the traction batteries.

The reason for not doing that is the resulting inability to protect the traction battery from potentially dangerous levels of discharge. If the traction battery State of Charge is low and the car is allowed to sit with an electric drain which can draw from the traction battery when the car is not in READY, good bye traction battery.

Toyota engineers know better than to allow that.

You and I know very well that there are people who would do that to their cars if it was possible. THAT would be a design flaw.

I have had no problem with the 12v battery in my PIP and I will wager that most PIP owners are the same.

If you are worried that your new battery will not solve your problem, many "work arounds" have been discussed here. Pick one or several and then get used to it/them.

Then enjoy your PIP. It is a great car.

 

I might take that bet, but there is no way to prove it. I think most PIP (and regular Prius) owners have had the 12V battery go dead, had it jumped or charged, and simply not reported it. It happened to my housemate just last month. As for what is 'planned' and what isn't, Toyota could at least have supplied the cars with deep cycle batteries. They didn't, to save money.

 

If this was a real wager, I would call and challenge you to put up a poll. Remember that "most PIP owners" means more than half.

I agree that a larger capacity 12 v battery would give a larger margin of error and the failure to do so saved money. Since Toyota is a profit making business, they would have preferred to add that to the cost of the car. But car sales are competitive so it was a balancing act. I am quite sure that much attention was given to the odds of a failure and to the experience of failure after the fact. If the bean counter's attention along with that of marketing is gained there will be a change.

And, they read PriusChat. So it is very likely that your thoughts got to the right place.

 

I've said this before; it would be easy to protect the hybrid battery from being drained to dangerous levels by preventing a transfer of power to the auxiliary battery when it was unsafe to do so. But in normal circumstances, the driver should have the option of giving the aux battery a boost, as long as the hybrid battery is at safe levels. It would be rare for both batteries to be so low.

A transparent solution would be for the boost to happen when you press the start button. A message like: "please wait, transferring power" could appear while the boost is happening. Also a reminder could appear that warns letting the aux battery run flat will shorten its life and diminish its capacity.

Toyota didn't become the world's top automaker by tricking their customers into spending more money on things like batteries. If a reasonable solution can be found to prevent the car from being dead in the water from having something left on, it would add to customer satisfaction, and translate to them increasing their lead over other automakers.

 

No, they became #1 by providing high-quality, long-lived cars that rode like Buicks and became Beloved by Americans. Then, circa 2005, there was a handover of management to the next generation, and all hell broke loose. The engineers were told to eliminate 1/3 (or maybe it was 2/3!) of the moving parts in the transmission used in the Camry, for example. The result was rather predictable, except that because it was a new design, they didn't know* exactly* why so many new transmissions were failing or malfunctioning. So they shipped a bunch of them back to Japan, for study. We had a '95 Camry for years, so I followed the alt.autos.toyota.camry newsgroup for a long time, and got a spectator's seat to the debacle. Never assume that any group of people is infallible OR ethical...

 

Being "told" to reduce the number of parts in a transmission is quite different from being told to adopt the CVT technology which other automakers had used successfully for decades. The CVT also happens to have much fewer parts.

 

I for one am tired of hearing this.

Take it up with Ford.....and GM.....and Toyota.....and anybody else that makes hybrids.
They ALL work the same way pretty much.

Now that you know that YOU have more of a problem with it than most, get a portable jumper.
Continuing to whine about it doesn't do anybody any good.

(I could swear that I replied to this before but it seems to have disappeared. Maybe that was a different thead ??)

 

Your suggestion sounds good. But no matter where the limit is set, someone will discover that it is not enough. Is it so hard to avoid "leaving something on?"


I must say that Easy Rider said what is on my mind.

Greg, I learned more than 60 years ago when I had my first car, that one of the things that you do is learn what works and what does not because the car is just a machine and we have the ability to adapt. We take care of cars. They do not take care of us. The Prius and the Prius owner's manual are full of warnings and instructions for this and that to stop us from doing something foolish. Someone will always think of something else foolish which was overlooked.

I am convinced that the fact that your PIP sat unused on the dealer lot for two years was not good for it. It was a bargain for a reason and annoying little (and maybe not so little) problems are the price.

You suggest that Toyota plotted to cause unwarranted expenses to burden the owner. Statistics do not support this. The Prius, especially, has one of the lowest rate of repair records in the industry. When repairs ARE needed, they can be expensive, however, which keeps the discussion about extended warranties alive and well.

 

i would like to see a pip battery poll. why would it be different from the lift back? this is my 3rd prius and my 12v has never gone flat. am i in the minority?

 

The PIP has more items to drain the 12 volt. For example when I use Entune to check my state of charge, or to check my eco dash board or vehicle finder. When I charge it sends me an email that the charge was started, and another when the charge finishes. These updates thru the internet use 12 volt power and they up date the Toyota server weather I check or not. These functions all use 12 volt power over an above what the standard hatchback does. At least on the advanced model, not sure about the base PIP.

 

I don't see your point here. I was giving an example of Toyota choosing cost over quality. If you mean 'the Prius was given a CVT instead of a cheap slushbox' then I agree. Further, the Prius seems to have had more money spent on it, and gotten better engineers, than the more mainstream cars. That doesn't mean that Toyota management wasn't willing to save a few bucks by giving the Prius a standard type battery. It isn't all or nothing.

 

Same here, 9 years two Prius, both battery's were just fine, no problems! First one was almost 7 years old.

 

You can go to the myentune.com Web site to select when you want to get e-mail related to charging. I personally just set it to only send e-mail when there is some exceptional event, like charging interrupted. But you are right; the car sends the charge status whether you have asked for e-mail or not. This is how it keeps the "EcoDashboard" up to date.The Advanced does not have a continuous connection to the Internet. It has a very dumb 2G cell phone. When the car has something to report, it makes a data call to send the info to its server. When the server wants to talk to it (for example, to get charge status for the Entune application), the server places a data call to the phone in the car. The only continuous load related to all this is having the phone on in standby mode, ready to receive a call. This phone is the one used for the Safety Connect service (like GM OnStar), so you can call for a tow when you have a flat .

The Base model does not have the Safety Connect cell phone, so none of the above applies to it.

 

It's hard to agree with your suggestion that it was a "problem car" since there was less than 30 miles on it. It was obviously bad for the auxiliary battery for it to have gone dead and boosted many times. That's why it tested unsatisfactory and was replaced. I did not know this for sure beforehand of course, and I didn't know if it was normal for the car to become dead in the water after having the car in acc mode for less than 20 minutes. I'm sure with the new battery, it will be less of a problem. I suggested a design change, which some people apparently agree with and others do not.

I respect your choice to agree with Easy Rider, even if I don't agree, but I don't appreciate his getting personal. If these topics can't be discussed in a respectable way, there's no point to discussing them. I'm sure the forum rules are clear about getting personal, and I'd hope the discussion will continue to be carried on respectfully. I will have no choice but to put someone on ignore if it continues.

 

I know all about the personal settings, but I believe the Toyota server is updated no matter what you request in your settings (on the PIP advanced) not 100% sure though.

 

You have expressed exactly the same opinion about two dozen times now.....in several different threads I think.

There is no personal insult in suggesting that enough is enough.

It is not "respectable" to repeat yourself until people get irritated with it.

 

The reason I had to repeat it is because some people weren't grasping it fully.

And BTW, the reason your post disappeared is because you were breaking forum guidelines. It's not your job to moderate this forum. And there was plenty of personal insult in what you said. I was plenty insulted, and if we were together in person, I'm sure you'd be apologizing.