Hello! New to the forum, bought my 2006 prius in 2013 with about 130k miles on it. Since then I've kept it in good shape, changed the oil when I needed, never had to replace the standard 12v battery or had any other services done (Don't know if I need to). Not had many problems with it, but the maint. required light came on about a week ago and I haven't had time to change the oil yet, I figured I'd do it this weekend no problem. Yesterday and today though, while I was at the same light leaving work, waiting to get on the freeway, I watched the Energy Monitor screen. The Hybrid battery meter just plummeted, not super fast but definitely too fast. After the light turned green, it had trouble accelerating. It was kicking in and out, going and then not accelerating. I put my foot down a little harder and it had no problem, got me onto the freeway and after about 10 minutes got another bar and started charging. Anyone know why this might happen? I live in AZ, and work in Phoenix. I'd really rather not get stranded in Phoenix at about 6 PM this week! Thanks!!!
welcome! check your battery cooling fan for contamination, make sure the intake vent is not blocked, 12 volt health, and hope your hybrid battery isn't showing signs of a bad cell.
What are the signs of a bad cell? I truly don't know how to do much on my own, so any extra details you can add would be amazing. I'm currently googling where to check the cooling fan and intake vent.
rapid fluctuations in the battery gauge. hopefully, you just stresed things a little in the arizona heat. there is way too much to learn about the battery than i can teach you. it shouldn't be a big concern until your dashboard lites up. there are hundreds of threads here on failing batteries and repairs.
Thanks for the input, it's been extremely hot here the last two days so I'm hoping that's the case. Found some youtube videos on how to check out the things you mentioned! Again, truly appreciate the input and anything more you guys might think of
If you've never had the 12 volt battery changed, and it's original, that's one OLD battery, time to swap. And good luck with the big one.
The traction battery getting weak is one possibility. Another is that the throttle body interior and throttle plate may need cleaning. Also, check the engine air filter and replace it if necessary.
Was the air conditioner running? If so it drains the battery quickly in the heart. This is regular and okay, although as the car gets older the battery may drain quicker especially with ac on. I agree on advice up above. Cleaned my fan 6 months ago and it was pretty dirty granted it had 230,000 somtimes thousand miles on it at the time.
What Aaron said. - Your HV battery is getting on toward 10 years old and will likely have some loss of capacity. The aircon is powered directly from the HV battery, and can be a fairly significant drain with the engine off and the weather hot. - Also, the displayed SOC is quite nonlinear (see attached graph), which means the it does tend to drop somewhat quicker than expected once it goes below 6 bars. - Another thing that several of us with an older Prius have found is, that as the battery loses some capacity the SOC monitor at times has trouble estimating the true state of the battery. In particular, some of us notice that after the SOC has been high (7 or 8 bars) and is coming back down, it tends to initially overestimate the charge remaining and then need to make a somewhat rapid (downward) reassessment when it reaches about 4 or 5 bars. Unfortunately this often results in the SOC dropping from 5 down to one or two bars unexpectedly quickly. - Finally, just to make it a worst possibly combination of events, given that you were sitting at the lights having just left work it is very likely that the engine (cat in particular) was still relatively cool. Under these circumstances the Prius will try to limit the power from the engine and pull as much as possible from the battery (and electric motors) in preference. This will have further hammered the already fairly discharged battery and very much hampered performance as you tried to accelerate. You may want to start "nursing" your battery a little bit at this point. Two things that I find help a lot is to: 1. Let the Prius engine warm for about 40 seconds to one minute (experiment with what time interval works for you) in "P" before you drive. Hold the brake and tap the accelerator to force it to start if it doesn't do so by itself. Even if the weather is warm and it seems unnecessary, it greatly reduces the initial demand on the battery when you start accelerating. 2. If at all possible, try winding all the windows down and flushing out the hot air without using the aircon for the first minute or two of your drive. (Yes I know, hard to do if you're stuck at lights. That's why I said, "if at all possible".)
Good advice Uart. I'd also recommend checking the amount of flow through the inverter coolant reservoir. The pump may be getting weak at this point. To do this, open the reservoir cap with the car on and look for turbulence (flow) thru the reservoir.
