My Dad has a 2007 Prius with 27000 miles on it. It has been in service for 40 months. Recently the battery went dead on several occasions and he boosted the battery with battery cables. The last time it went dead he could not start it with cables and therefore had it towed to the local Toyota shop. After one week in the shop they have advised that the battery must have been boosted backwards and the inverter is ruined. Total repair cost required is $6000, including $4700. for the inverter. Apparently they have $1300. already invested in time (6 hours) and parts ($700) in diagnosing the problem. Dad boosted his first battery 50 years ago and has never had a problem before, and is very sure that the cables went on as directed in the owners manual. To add insult to injury the dealer has offered him $3000. for the Prius "as is", on a trade on a replacement vehicle. He would be interested in any comments from your readers as to the the treatment he has been offered by the dealer. Although he did buy this Prius from an out of town Toyota dealer, he has purchased 7 vehicles from the dealership in the last 22 years! Jesse Wilson
not trying to be rude but did you ever consider he did boost the battery the wrong way? Jump-starting a prius isn't like an ordinary car.... its completely different seeing how there isn't a 12V battery under the hood for you to work with. Jump starting once or twice should've been a big warning, and he should've replaced the battery then. a bunch of jump starts aren't healthy. The inverter is a very expensive part. Its basically your 2nd engine in the car. Can't think of any other reason why the inverter went out.
jessewilson, :welcome: to PRIUSchat. What kind of troubles has your Dad had for 40 months? Or do you just mean that the car has "been in use" for 40 months? It is disheartening to hear stories like this in a first post. On the face of it, it looks like your Dad is between a rock and a hard spot. "Jumping" or "hot starting" a Prius is potentially a dangerous business. If you had the time and/or inclination to search this site, you would find many, may warnings to folks who have weak 12V battery about the dangers of doing so. The biggest danger being that if the jump isn't done exactly right, the inverter an be ruined -- as an example, contrary to common practice, the engine on the "hot" car should not be running and even "sparking" the leads when they are on the right terminals can cause inverter damage. (The Owner's Manual has a whole pack of Warnings! and Cautions! about jump starting... they seem to be seldom taken with the full seriousness they deserve.) There is one thing you should do before going further. The car stores codes that describe what the on-board computers have seen as systems fail. If you can get the codes from the dealer and post them here -- in your Dad's case it may be a very long list -- the experienced trouble shooting gurus can tell you from an independent point of view what your Dad's situation looks like. I wish your Dad the best of luck.
Sadly, your dad's story is fairly common, and is the result of a reversed polarity jump. I am guessing that the fusible links within the main relay/fuse box also need to be replaced, specifically the 100A DC/DC fusible link. I'd be interested if you would provide a full list of parts that your dad's dealer has suggested need to be replaced. Since there is a good supply of 2G in salvage yards due to accident damage, an inexpensive alternative may be for your dad to purchase a salvage inverter, and have an independent mechanic install that part. This is not particularly hard to do given access to the Toyota repair manual documentation. Good luck.
Thats too bad. We have heard post after post after post describing the same event. So many people swear they hooked up the cables correctly and still smoke the inverter. In fact it seems to me one of the main reasons people come to this site. Dead batteries. Hybrids and dead batteries are becoming a very common thing. And there's so many micro processors in the Prius its so easy to damage it jumping it. Most importantly you cannot spark it...not over current it. Make sure the donor car's engine is off. Make sure the cables negative side is hooked up both ends to good grounds. Try not to spark it when you hook up the pos side. Best way is to hook up the pos side to the Prius first as its kinda hard with the tiny L bracket under the hood. Then with donor car off connect the pos side to the donor battery with authority. I wouldn't even clamp it it to the donor + terminal. Just slap the clamp side to the pos end of the donor pos battery terminal and hold. Hold it on there while someone "Readys" the prius. Remove as fast as possible after prius "Readys". Even then its a crap shoot. Best thing I've heard is a poster said he could jumpstart his prius with a Dewalt 14 volt drill battery. Smart. It takes so little to charge up the aux battery enoough to throw some relays. But very very easily prevented by always locking the doors every single time you get out no matter where the car is. I'm going on my third year of oem battery on my 07. Caught the lights on by mistake lots of times with the lock trick. But, if my Prius ever went dead its a tow home and a new battery.
If your dad continues to leave lights/doors on and drains the battery needing a tow, I highly reccomend "smart" jumper cables. They have a delay when you connect them (i.e. no sparks) and are polarity insensitive, you can hook any cable clamp to either terminal, and it will correctly sense which is + and which is - on both sides preventing this sort of thing from happening. You can pick them up for $25-$50. Dont take "I've been doing it 50 years" to mean he is infallible. It happens to everyone, and the proof is there. In a normal car, you overheat the batteries real fast and/or explode them. Perhaps throw some fuses. In the Prius, you melt the inverter and potentially destroy one of the hundreds of computers.
When our Prius threw up the warning lights when the inverter coolant pump failed I called AAA, since the car was out of the factory warranty for Toyota roadside. The guy who came said it was their policy that they don't even jump start Priuses, they just tow them to Toyota when the batteries are dead. Too much liability he said. He called the car "their nemesis", jokingly of course. I don't blame them. I wouldn't jump start the car.
I wonder if the "smart jumper cables" would work on the prius... You know, the ones that connect with a box in the center....
The cig lighter port in the prius is not connected when the car is not on. So it would be useless. Those in general are useless, since on general cars, you are limited to 10A or 15A and it would take forever. Your car needs enough power to turn on, but not crank so the cig lighter is connected to the circuit, then charge. By the time it is charged to start, you could have walked to where you were going in the first place.
I'll do this from memory, it's important - To jump start the Prius - * may jump start Prius from another car that has 12V battery * open the Prius hood and fuse block cover * open cover on the exclusive jump starting terminal * connect positive cable to exclusive terminal * connect positive cable to positive terminal of 2nd vehicle * connect negative cable to other vehicle's negative battery terminal * connect other end of negative cable to Prius ground (bolt near strut tower, left side under hood) * with Prius powered off, start engine of other car, rev it a little for 5 minutes to charge Prius battery * Try to power on Prius and start hybrid system, look for ready light on Prius dash * If no ready light, open and close door, then push power button once firmly. * If ready light on, disconnect cables in exact reverse order they were connected. .... checking to see how I did ... I forgot, during 5 minutes charging, open and close any of Prius doors with power switch off. Also, if ready light does not come on, power off Prius, push power button once firmly. If ready light does not come on, contact Toyota. Also, once the hybrid system starts, have the checked ASAP at Toyota. I would consider any discharge of the 12V or hybrid battery a serious issue needing checkout with a Prius technician ASAP.
I have noticed from the many times I have disconnected the Prius 12V negative cable to work on the driver's seat .... after reconnecting the negative terminal, then trying to start hybrid system ... when I push brake pedal, then push button once, lights come on the dash, the hybrid system does not go into ready (I didn't note what state it goes into). I push power button one more time, then the hybrid system goes to ready state.
After hearing all this, I'd try to have my car towed to Toyota if any problem with the 12V battery. Question is, let's front wheels inaccessbile .. If the 12V battery is dead ... how do you get the car in neutral to load it on a flatbed tow truck? ----------- Isn't it true the driveline would be ruined if moving the car without it being powered on and in neutral?
Given the expense of the inverter, and the inexpensive components required to produce jumper cables with technology that detects polarity, why isn't this technology built right into the Prius to prevent burning up the inverter? Any guesses other than to insure the sales of a few inverters?
That only happens if you try to pull it flat on the road at high speed. The tow truck guy will just drag it up onto the flatbed. The worst that happens is that a little rubber gets scraped from the front tires onto the pavement. [D'ohh!! Thanks to Patrick for his correction below.]
Well, the parking brake activates the rear brakes, so there's no point in making things more difficult than necessary by setting the parking brake. If it is necessary to drag the front tires on the pavement when the car is in P, then some rubber will come off the front tires, that's about it.
The same rationale used by GM in not putting an anti-sway bar on the Corvair and Ford in not putting a plastic gas-tank shield on the Pinto. Toyota used to be smarter than that. Maybe with Watanabe gone, they'll return to those days.
I suspect you're right but these kinds of decisions build ill will over time as folks learn of expensive inverter replacements. Good will would have been built if we had read of the reverse polarity preventer that protects the several thousand dollar inverter. If this was the reason, it really smacks of the Detroit automakers and we all know what these types of decisions did to them over time.
