My car battery was so dead the door locks wouldn't work. AAA just jumped my batteries. I knew I should drive it around awhile, so I drove it straight to work, about 30 miles. I turned off the ignition, went to unlock my door, and... nothing. Completely dead. How is this possible? I've heard of alternators causing a battery to die "instantly," but Priuses don't have alternators, of course. New battery (because the old one kept dying, but not instantly).
There's no alternator in the Prius you're charging rate is very low compared to an alternator car your battery must be dead and not be accepting of the charge that is being provided it simple new battery time
Thanks. You're saying that the is that my battery can't be charged, even though I drove it? So my car started because it was drawing electricity directly from the car that was giving me a jump, completely bypassing my battery?
Normally I would have said that your battery has a bad cell or two. However, since you were able to start the car and the state of the 12V got worse it may be that your inverter is putting out too high a voltage and it is indeed killing the 12V. Long, long ago my mother had a Buick which was eating 12V batteries, and the alternator was putting out something stupid high, like 20V. Even then though, it took a couple of weeks to trash a new battery. Since yours is sooo fast maybe it is something more mundane, like a loose connection at the battery? It happens to be in contact when you start, works its way off during the drive? The 12V only has to have enough oomph to start the car and after that it can be detached and the car will still run. I don't recall who did that experiment, I think maybe Hobbit?
It wasn't brand new, but it was only a few months old. I don't know why it went dead. It had died around Christmas, after not being used for a while, and the AAA service guy told my wife he found a light on because something had jammed in my folding rear car seat. It hadn't been used for several days, and it was dead again.
Possibly so you want to take a digital or mechanical volt on meter and see when you're in ready what's on your battery terminals at ready should be 13.7 to 14.5 or so then when you turn the car off all you're seeing is battery voltage whatever the battery has stored in it so if you turn the car on and make it ready and you read say 14.1 volts then you turn the car off and you leave the meter connected to what was just showing 14.1 and then all of a sudden that display turns to 9 volts that's what the battery is stored of the 14-1 that was being sent to it a minute ago and/or on your 30 minute drive the amp and hour circuit of that rating is nothing like an alternator or your battery charger so it'll keep a good 12 volt battery charged up because it's not being taxed very much a bunch of LED lights and some computers everything that really runs on anything is running off the HV battery the air conditioning the electric motors for propulsion braking etc that's why our Toyota battery is really small etc. So there's not much headroom in our little Toyota battery once it starts to fail it plummets very quickly but it's also not under that serious of a load it doesn't have a starter to turn none of that at the most some halogen headlights if people haven't been smart enough to change those to something more efficient.
