Ok, today my mothers nissan broke down on the hill from my house about 1/8 mile so I had to go get her and luckily she was able to get the nissan back to the house in reverse. I took my prius down there and forgot that the car is electric only in reverse,and began backing up the hill so obviously the turtle came on and all that Good stuff, now after pulling in the driveway, I put it in park and left the car run to charge the battery, 20 minutes later I check on it its still running and the battery shows completely full, so i shut it off and start it back up, everything is fine and the engine shuts off as normal but my battery shows full, so she and I carpooled to work and it went back to 3/4 full and it stays there and seems to be normal. So my question is Was that normal for my car to fully charge the battery after doing that? Thank you, Scott
The car pretty much manages its own affairs ... after a while, you get used to just driving it. It's ok. It is even capable of supplementing battery with gasoline power while in reverse. It often elects not to because the mechanically-transmitted torque term has the wrong sign in that case, which limits efficiency, but it will anyway if it has to (example: the Prius out of mud incident). Enjoy your car. -Chap
Scratch that part, I was wrong. I didn't have a ScanGauge at the time of the out-of-mud incident, so I tried this again on the way home (just backing up to a wall, as I had no mud to get stuck in). Turns out the engine was only running because it wasn't yet warm enough to stop, and the car never called for more power from it than the idle baseline. As soon as it reached 70 C it shut off, and all reversing power was drawn from the battery whether the ICE was running or not. Live and learn.... -Chap
I shut it off because I was scared I would catch the battery on fire or something, Now im wondering if I should of left it run, maybe the car was maintaining itself by equalizing the pack or something. Should I do this again and let it sit and run this time?
If the engine (aka: ICE) is running and shutting off as it should and your battery display shows 3/4 when engine is warm and shuts off, Then kicks on when battery image is 1/2 to 1/4 full, I would not worry about it.
What I mean is after I backed up that hill and depleted the battery I left it sit in my driveway to run and charge the battery, i left the car sit and run for 20 mins, I came out it was still running and the battery indicator was completely full (which i never saw it like that before)and still running and showing that its charging which scared me (afraid it would overheat)so I shut the car off, I restarted it right away and the engine shut off like it should. What i was saying is did I disrupt an automatic maintenance procedure that was being done by the car to equalize the pack or was I right in shutting it off? if I was wrong I would like to repeat the procedure and let the car do its thing. Thank you.
No, you didn't disrupt any procedure. You were right to turn it off. I have seen this happen b4 in my '01. I'm not sure what causes it to do that but it seems to happen when you turn the car on but don't drive it. It will do its warm up then shut the ICE off then fire the ICE back up when the HV battery gets low. Then...the ICE never shuts off and never quits charging the battery. You end up with a fully/overcharged battery. If you see this happen again, do the same thing (turn it off and back on). As for your car, your car is fine. Just drive it. (lol)
