The hybrid battery on my 2005 Prius has finally died after 360K miles!! I kept track of the mileage after the odo stopped at 299,999 by using the trip meter between oil changes. I do not plan to replace it. I intend to keep driving it knowing full well it will only use the gas engine. MPG will drop, which is ok with me. My question is, will continued driving cause any further damage to the hybrid system? Have others done this and what problems, if any, did you have?
as long as the battery has enough power to spin the engine, you'll be fine. once it completely fails, you'll be stranded, but no harm to any other systems.
Not exactly. The battery will degrade to the point that it will be electrically limited by the ecu on how much power (kw) it can take in and put out. You'll find out that even a 1 degree slope will be too much for the car to ascend. It will take an extreme amount of time to accelerate even though the engine revs to 5k rpm and you'll be a danger to yourself and those around you due to the unpredictability of the car. Just wait until you reset the code, think everything is good and then pull out in traffic and have it code out as you're halfway into the lane and the car effectively stops accelerating. Eating the front of a car with your driver door isn't going to be a healthy thing. Although many people have tried to drive around with a code reader hooked up so they can continuously reset the fault, medium to long term, this plan isn't worth a **** and you're going to end up stranded or have some modules detonate inside the case.
