Help!!! Battery red (2-bars)

Good news! This is perfectly normal. The good news is that for 25 minutes you 'idled' without using any gas, now once it gets to two bars it will idle using some gas. But still less than cars that idle continuously. (The big screen is watching the HV Battery, the 12 volt battery is a lot shyer)

By the way, to Prius Chat!

 

First, the battery display is your main battery (a.k.a traction battery) not your 12V battery. Second, you Prius is operating as it should be. Enjoy!

 

I've never gone down to 2 bars/red, but I imagine it's normal in heavy traffic when the ICE never engages. ?

 

Yup and on long steep grades. Drive to Reno on i80 in the winter at 70+ mph and you'll see red bars. lol

 

jdustie, I was stuck a couple days back in what was likely the same sort of Boston traffic. I was crawling for a half hour, and even doing everything I could (neutral under 7 mph, occasionally running engine very lightly to get most possible charge to battery, monitoring energy on Scangauge), my bars went down almost to that level.

It's perfectly normal in situations like that where you're basically using electric only for miles and miles. The car will self-correct when you drive more with the engine on. You can help some by accelerating only as much as needed and quite lightly in electric. After the acceleration, lift your foot slightly from the accelerator (but still pushed down slightly) so the car continues to glide but there are no arrows on the "Energy" display of your display screen. Avoid jerky accelerations. If you're over 7 mph brake lightly and gradually to maximize regenerative braking.

Lightly turning on the engine with the accelerator for a little bit can be good, too, just every now and then. Despite the low mpgs, when barely using the gas engine like that it'll charge the battery more rapidly than "normal" acceleration, help stop the bleeding a bit.

 

The HV battery gauge on the MFD just gives you some reference. Not the exact amount in your HV bttery pack. Even when all bars gone, it still have 20% of charge there, No need to be panic when you see the bars in red color. Enjoy the color. On the other hand when it shows all bars green the battery pack is just 80% full. To prevent it from over charged, ICE may sometimes runs to discharge/reduce the capacity of the battery pack to keep it long life.

 

Apparently they changed the color of the battery low charge bars from red to purple in the 2009. Interesting-

 

It's completely normal and you don't have to do a thing. The car takes care of itself without any help.

 

IIRC, on my 06, if I'm down to 2 bars, it's purple. And yes, it's normal, esp. if you're stuck in stop and go.

If you want to deplete it even quicker, turn on the AC, esp. w/the fan at the max in very hot weather.

 

I recently drove my 2004 south on Hwy 395 in California from Lake Tahoe to Bishop. That route covers highly mountainous terrain and the SOC indicator went from 8 green bars to 1 red (or purple, whatever) bar several times during that journey. A very good way to stress the traction battery.

 

and don't smoke in the car, it's bad for the battery. not to mention your lungs.

 

Some one mapped the SOC to what the MFD displays at Prius Palm Mileage Simulator.

Yep. To also add to this, the OP probably noticed that when the HV battery got low, besides the above, the ICE would also sometimes turn on when accelerating (while creeping along) and shut right back down upon letting off the accelerator. This is also normal.

 

if you are stuck in crawling traffic, or stop and go, AND running the radio, AC and fan on high...
the battery will deplete quite quickly. it is normal.
if you turn off the AC and the fan, and jsut open a window, you can stay fresh and battery will not go down so quick.
close windows and use fan or Ac when traffic start to move again!
AC and fan will also kill your MPG's