car won't start

If I was desperate and that was an option.. I'm sure it would work.. a 12cell LiIon has a fair amount of punch.

But whats far cheaper and way more practicle and useful is an external battery.
For 50.00 bucks I bought an 1100A/Hr 550CCA battery with jumper cables attached with light and airpump from Costco. I've seen nice systems at Walmart and similiar too. Although its far more power than I need for the prius, I can not only help myself, but am equipped to help others.

I haven't heard this question addressed, but if someone else needed a jump... I don't think I would want to tap off my prius to give them help. With the inverter hooked to the 12 system.. it would be a bummer to toast something.

And its never a good idea to have anyone else monkeying with cables on your prius anyway... normal laypersons just dont' know enough about the prius yet.

With the external.... I can help others, and I never have to be dependent upon or at the mercy of someone else to give me a jump.
Who knows.. it may be your wife or kids you need to save some day.... so you really want to jump off your prius?.. the battery is really too small to do that anyway.


I much prefer the independence. It just gives me a nice warm and fuzzy!

 

I recently used my Prius to give a jump start to a Porsche owner here at work. His car started up just fine, and my continues to work just fine. I used the connections in the engine compartment to hook the jumper cables to. I had my car in ready mode when he went to start his car (engine was even running).

 

by being in ready mode, you also had the added power of your inverter "1400 watts", but if you would have momentarily shorted the cables or even demanded a tremedous amperage load because "he" had a short in his system... your inverter would take the hit, and I don't know if it could protect itself.....

sounds too risky for my blood... but maybe someone else knows the risk?

Maybe he didn't need much of a jump... but I can think of some fords that would suck every bit of 1400 watt easily. Thats only 116 amps.... many engines will pull triple that while trying to start cold or if its out of gas or having complications, it will just crank and crank.....

I sure don't like the idea of taxing my intricate and delicate prius system with such loads.

 

There is an easy cheap fix for all these battery probs. On ebay do a search for (Solar Charger) and you will get a huge list of available solar charger for cars boats and much more.
Click Here for an Ebay List of Solar Chargers
Solar Trickle Chargers are not made to charge your battery over a short period of time, but instead, over a long period of time. If you plan to leave your Prius outside (at an airport) for a few days or weeks, I suggest you plug in the trickle charger (cigarette lighter / 12v power plug) and leave the panel on your dash. When you get back the car will have no problem starting up.
These chargers can run from 20 to 200 dollars but if you leave your car for long periods of time they're worth it.

 

A cigarette-plug based charger will *NOT* work on the Prius unless you modify the circuit: the Prius switches the plug off when the vehicle is turned off. The modification to keep the plug powered at all times is outlined on the Coastal web site; alternately, you can connect the panel directly to the battery instead.

Secondly, as I've said many times before, the small 1-2W dashboard sized amorphous panels are useless: their output is greatly reduced when under solar-absorbing auto glass, and whatever output you get, you have to offset the parasitic drain of the Prius' electronics before any charge makes it to the battery.. Under glass, at peak output, you might actually get 45-50 mA from a brand new 2W panel, but then you have to subtract the 35-45 mA that the vehicle electronics and theft deterrent, etc uses..

Even if you were to assume 100% efficiency and get the 150 mA max out of a small 2W panel, you only get that for a few hours a day when the sun is brightest, the rest of the day, it drops off significantly, and of course, you get nothing at night.. So again, using overly optimistic numbers- let's say 100 mA average x 8 hours of charging per day gives you 800 mAh * 13.8V = 11 W-h produced. The car uses 35-45 mA continuously so 24h x 40 mA *13.8 = 13.2 W-h consumed, so the net result is that a small (~2W or less) panel will *NOT* keep your battery charged; at best it will give you a couple of extra days before the battery goes dead.. By my calculations, you need a 5 W panel at a minimum if you want any type of charging to occur, even better, get a crystalline-silicon panel in that size if you can- the crystalline panels are much more efficient than the amorphous types (13-17% vs. 5-8%) and last longer to boot (but the amorphous types are much cheaper to produce and replace, which makes up for their lack of efficiency).. I used to have a 5W amorphous panel in the back of my Prius that produced a peak output of about 120-150 mA under glass when new (vs. 350mA rated output; it is actually down to about 80 mA now that it has aged), but I recently replaced it with a 15W monocrystalline panel that is actually about 1/2" narrower in one dimension than the old panel- the new panel is so much more efficient that it generates more than 3x the power (close to 400 mA output under glass with really bright sun; 250 mA on a more typical day, 100 mA even with cloud cover) and with less surface area to boot (and monocrystalline cell output only drops 10% over time due to aging vs. the 30%+ of the amorphous cells)... Of course, as I mentioned, the panel was also more expensive- $150 vs. about $40 (on sale) for the 5 W amorphous..

 

Oh, I don't think that's a good idea. The manual says not to jump other car w/ the Prius.

 

ROFLMAO "Short and Exciting life"

Love it.

Ford's Escap has a small hidden switch in the drivers kick that actually uses the 12v batter to recharge the HV 'traction' battery in caseit runs low. Pressin the switch kicks the inverter into recharge mode for 8 minutes. It can do it 2 times before polishing off the 12v battery.

Would be cool if the Prius had a similar swithc but one that worked BOTH ways.

As for the lights, the the individual oor and trunk switches all go to the Body ECU and that in turn turns on the individual lights. The roof lights and key slot light are on one circuit, the doors are on 2 of theri own circuits and the trunk light is on its own as well. I know for sure the front lights time out after a while of leaving the door open, not sure about the delay on the trunk though.

Now I have notice over the years that Toyota has always said to turn off the headlight switch from the ON, park or Auto position if leaving the car parked for more han 2 weeks.

BTW I have the full Electrical Diagram in PDF format for 05 almost 7 megs.
B)
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Not too scare anyone (windstrings), but a laptop-type battery will most likely live a very short and exciting life if you pull that kind of current from it. They are usually internally fused to prevent an explosion, but you never can tell.

[snapback]217303[/snapback]​

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C4, your post answers almost everything I came to priuschat looking for...but can you sanity-check my conclusions?
My situation: I'm about to go traveling for about 2.5 months and I'd like my Prius aux battery to be in good health
when I come back.

Sounds like I should
(1) disconnect the aux battery so there are NO drains from it (I don't care about losing settings, I can re-do them);
(2) clamp a solar trickle charger directly to the aux battery

In this scenario, do you think one of the cheapo 2W panel will be sufficient? I'll be leaving the car in a secure place
(not an airport!) so I can leave the panel outside the vehicle to maximize solar gain.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(c4 @ Mar 13 2006, 11:52 AM) [snapback]224335[/snapback]</div>

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Roland Pesch @ Jul 11 2006, 06:23 PM) [snapback]284647[/snapback]</div>

I should just say that all you should need to do is turn of the SKS and your battery should be fine. However, if you want to be safe, disconnecting the aux battery should be enough. No need to use a trickle charger if the battery's not connected to anything; not for 2.5 months, anyway. . .

 

My prius is totally dead... no power to it. =/ how can i jump start it?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(2whiteprius @ Jul 16 2007, 05:30 PM) [snapback]479869[/snapback]</div>

Looks like this is your first post... Welcome to the forum.

It would help if you knew "why" it won't start.

Chances are you left something on and the 12V battery is dead which not only gives you accessory power, but also boots the computer so you can access the real power "the 201V main battery" that starts your car!

Without the computer, your dead.

Under the hood look to the right and you will see the "relay cover".. its black.. approx 5" X 12".
Press on it and the small latches release easily.
Once thats open you will see a red plastic cover about 1" X 1" in the upper left of that series of relays.
that too released to flip open easily.

You will notice a small "copper" connection underneath thats looks rather beefy compared to the rest of the circuits there.
Don't expect it to be the size of a conventional cars Positive connection as little amperage is needed as the real power to start the car does not actually come from here... "only to start the computer and accessories"... once the main system is up, the converter pulls off the main 201'v battery to reinforce and supply up to 1400watts of 12V accessory power to the battery.

But to get all this started, you need to jump here with 12 Volts.
Its doesn't take a whole lot... in a pinch, even flashlight batteries configured into 12V would work.

You can use a car jumper that supplies 12Volts or even conventional jumper cables... just keep in mind the + connection is so small you may have to be careful to get the + jumper cable to make connection "without" grounding it to something unintentionally!

Once you get 12Volts to that little connection, just ground the negative from your power source to something on the car.

Good luck.... this message will self destruct in 60 seconds.......


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Roland Pesch @ Jul 11 2006, 05:23 PM) [snapback]284647[/snapback]</div>

2W should be more than adequate for the little 12V battery in the prius...
Make sure you hook it up direct.. not through the cigarette lighter as that circuit does not connect when the system is off.
http://www.batterystuff.com/solar-chargers/SE-2.html

 

I've had to jump start my 06 Prius 7 times in the year I've owned it. During that time I took several 1 or 2 week trips, although a few times it died after only 2 or 3 days of not being used.

After the third time I had to jump start it, I took it to the dealer and he told me I don't drive enough to keep it charged. I bought a solar trickle charger and had my friend install Coastal Tech's power mod, but I still had to jump it a few times after that. Luckily I bought a portable jump starter after the second time it died.

I brought it in again this week, and once again he found nothing wrong with the battery and told me I don't drive enough. Since I telecommute, I often don't drive for several days, so I only have 1300 miles on it.

I never once had to jumpstart my previous two Corollas even though I drove them the same amount.

 

Something is being left on or the battery is breaking down. Get a second opinion from a battery specialist not a garage. Most mechanics will test it with a high amp draw tester which the Prius battery won't like.
I'd say your battery is stuffed.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mike C @ Aug 23 2007, 12:15 AM) [snapback]500832[/snapback]</div>

I purchased at auction several of the older model VDC Electronics Battery Minder units. I leave it plugged in whenever I'm not driving the car, and the battery seems fine. I also use the same Battery Minder units on the old truck and tractor at my hobby farm, and on my FJ Cruiser.

The Prius sat a month in the underground condo parking while I was at the hobby farm on vacation, no problems when I returned. Now the FJ will probably sit for a couple of weeks or a month, and I don't expect any issues with it either.

We have covered this problem before

http://priuschat.com/index.php?showtopic=27552

It wouldn't hurt to remove the 12 vdc battery and charge it with a real battery charger. Toyota recommends the 10 amp setting.

 

You have to figure out what operator-error or incorrectly-installed aftermarket electrojunk is killing the 12V battery, and then buy a new 12V battery. After being drained that many times the old one is toast.