I just received my '05 Prius three days ago, and on the display, the battery never showed to be fully charged. The close it ever came to a full charge, was one bar reading away, then it went back down. It has never discharged below the half way mark. Is this normal? I only have 160 miles on the odometer.
Totally normal. You'll eventually see all green (top 2 bars) and eventually see at least down to two pink bars. But even when all green the actual total state of charge (SOC) is only ~80% and even when it's down to 1 pink bar the SOC is still at least 40%. The computer tries very hard to keep it closer to the middle/blue bar range to preserve the life of the battery only going higher or lower when it must.
I've seen it at 100% a couple of times, but mainly after going down a long hill. It drops down pretty quickly after that.
Evan -- your picture came back when I right-clicked and did the Show Picture option. Maybe PBase was busy? I see the full eight bars almost daily, as I have frequent ups and downs -- and some fairly long 2 - 4 mile downhills that I hit on a regular basis. I have only seen the pink bars (two or less?) maybe once or twice.
[vent] When there are 8 bars on the display and all 8 bars are full, then it's 100% full. So, it's feasible to say, I've seen it at 100% a few times. I've seen so many posts where people nit pick about this when it really doesn't matter in context of the question. It was obvious the original post was talking about the bars showing 100%... [/vent]
I can see how that might be frustrating to you, but equally frustrating for some of us is the misconceptions about what that battery indicator means. The top end isn't as big a deal, but people come here harried that their battery was 'almost drained completely' and they frantically shut down their automobile before it drained completely then trembled with fear not knowing if everything was ok or not, etc etc. I think it helps to dispel some of those misconceptions...esp. to someone who only has 160 mile on their car and clearly doesn't understand exactly what is being represented on the display or why it behaves the way it does.
I know but I wanted to make sure that they knew. We don't want them to panic when they see 1 or 2 bars thinking that they're gonna be stranded because there's only 15% charge left or something like that.
True, and while my post was directed at you, it was also directed at all the other times I see people state that :lol:
