Please clarify the following statement: "If the rechargeable battery goes out on the Honda Insight the car will still run.. and still get about 40 mpg, if the the battery goes out in the Prius, it is dead". True or False?
The way I understand it is, if the traction battery is completely dead, the Prius is dead. If the 12volt auxiliary battery dies, the Prius can be jumped very easily with even a hand full of AA batteries. Unless a major malfunction happens, the traction battery should never drop below 20%.
Prius dead: True Insight still runs: Maybe, it is only an assist hybrid and may still have a starter and alternator with the associated belts and maintenance. But it would be underpowered without its pack, so not a state in which you would want to operate beyond getting it in for repair.
In the Prius, the large traction battery supplies the power to spin up and start the internal combustion engine (ICE) via the electric motor. So Prius cannot start/run without a charged traction battery.
So here is a follow up question... if the traction battery ever got low enough such that it can not start the ICE, can it be recharged or does it have to be replaced? Has this ever happened to a Prius owner (other than a battery just going bad / unchargable)?
It can be recharged with a special Toyota recharger. This is expensive: you don't want to do it. Some clever PCers have hand recharged the HV pack when doing a rebuild. It can be done, but not by amateurs. Tom
...Yet I cannot imagine any situation when this discharge should occur. Do you have a particular set of facts that would differ from the rest of us?
