Prius (Gen 1) :: Do Hot Weather Impacts On CEL?
Sep 2, 2010
I have a super sensitive CEL light. It has lit up a few times in the past year.Do Check engine light relate to super hot weather?
View 3 RepliesI have a super sensitive CEL light. It has lit up a few times in the past year.Do Check engine light relate to super hot weather?
View 3 RepliesWith the colder weather in the NE, I am experiencing lower mpg with the ES 300h. We have had several cold days here, and my mpg seems to be going down. My driving habits have not changed.
View 5 RepliesThe humidity has an affect on my MPG. I noticed that my MPG went from 49 - 52 MPG down to 44 - 46 MPG when the heat & humidity started here in June. Yesterday a cold front came through and the humidity dropped. I filled my tank up and noticed my MPG is back up to 49 MPG, so the only thing that is different is the humidity. The cold & humidity does affect the MPG (approx 4 - 6 MPG).
View 4 RepliesI've heard that cruise control reduces mileage. This was in relation the Honda Civic Hybrid (Gen II).
View 17 RepliesWhat is your general mpg loss in very hot weather with air running? Any tips re air conditioning use?
View 8 RepliesI have noticed that due to warmer weather and more Prius C owners that the MPG's are going up. No many in the 40's mpg anymore. I enjoy people posting and obtaining over the EPA of 50 mpg, the 60 mpg figure appears to be fairly easy
to obtain with the Prius C.
On our Prius the last mpg was 52.3 calculated this is real world driving with my wife driving 75% of the time and she does not drive strictly for MPG's.
I believe we should all take a minute and pat ourselves on the back as all the countless gallons of gas we our saving and will be saving for our friends and neighbors who have no choice but perhaps to drive large cars and pickup trucks...
Here in the northwest the weather has been dry and temps in the 40's to over 60 degrees. The mpg's have increased about 5-7 mpg over just a month ago.
View 5 RepliesI was heading home last night from work and noticed something odd. It was the first pretty cold night that we have had around 20-25 deg. and I took off from the parking lot like normal.
When I got to the first stop light about a mile down the road I heard what sounded like the engine revving up right when I took my foot off the gas pedal. It did this as I coasted to the stop light. It also did it again at the next stop light just up the street. I thought maybe it was the heater blower, but It really sounded and felt like the engine revving. The car did not accelerate or anything, is this part of the warm up or normal? I also have the lower grill blocked but I don't see how that would make any difference.
So, I noticed after the week long heatwave (using Priidash and the Prius display) that during normal driving (under 65mph and slow accel) that my prius is NOT keeping the battery at 60% SOC....It is staying in the low 50's or as low as 39.5%....If I go above 70mph, I see the battery being drained and not recharged at all....I reset the battery (twice) the first time it made no difference but the second time the car turned on and said I had 60% SOC when in reality before the ECU reset I was at 49.5%. I know my battery is good because I have stress tested it many times. Its in great shape. The only thing I've done differently these past few weeks is I left the car in Park with the AC on 75 auto for about 5hrs on 4 different days....Its a 2004 Prius.
View 7 RepliesWell, for the past few weeks the weather in Los Angeles had been a little on the cool side. I didn't notice the cooler weather, but I noticed that the computer says I was getting around 51 MPG for almost the entire tank (the warning was blinking so I think I used about 10 gallons).
Then today, the temperature rose to around 90 degrees. I noticed the heat. All of a sudden, my computer MPG rose to slightly above 52. I think that would be difficult to do as it must average out the entire tank an extra 1 MPG. And correct me if I'm wrong, but if I got 51 MPG over 10 gallons of gas, in order to raise the gas mileage by 1 MPG in the next gallon, I must get around 62 MPG for that last gallon.
Winters get COLD up here, easily -20F at night.
All my life, I've always went running outside, start the car up, get the heat blasting, run back inside. By the time I walk out to actually leave 10-15 minutes later, it's warm (or at least tolerable) inside the car, and the windows are defrosted.
"Vehicle with smart key system: The indicator light flashes after the "POWER" switch has been turned OFF to indicate that the system is operating." I have noticed that my immobilizer light will not blink when it has the no start issue. usually when the key is out the light blinks but when it won't blink.... it won't start.
View 19 RepliesBut I've noticed my cars ICE runs a lot more when parked now the temperatures are reaching 100 degrees. I would think with the engine and coolant warm it wouldn't. Even without using the AC, or set at the lowest fan speed with a high temp like 78 deg., and the battery with half or more charge.
View 9 RepliesFor the past couple weeks on the way home from work the ICE runs non-stop for 20+ miles. My drive is 25 miles and the weather has been 105+. In the morning everything seems to work fine. In the afternoon even with the AC off, battery almost fully charged the ICE does not shut off at all even at a stop. I even tried putting it in EV mode and it tells me Not Currently Available. My Prius is a 2012 3 with 5500 miles. Is this normal in hot weather or is there something wrong??? Also the mileage sucks, in the morning with the AC on, weather around 90 I get 55-58mpg. In the afternoon I get low 40's even with the AC off.
View 19 RepliesI just got a 2005 Prius, it is getting about 40-43MPG in 50F weather. This is my first time with a hybrid, much less a Prius. Is this normal for this car in this weather, or does something seem wrong.
The 12V seems to be getting about 11.7-11.8 under load.
Tire pressure is about 33PSI, going to increase it most likely from the sounds of other people having it higher.
I got a new Prius Plug-in 2012 and when the cold weather came this winter, which isn't that cold at 40F, the 12v battery seems to get discharged very often. This week, I must have jumpstarted the car twice already. The 12v battery seems to get drained when I park outside in the (not so) cold, or when I park underground for hours. I also notice that the traction battery gets filled up; it's as if the 12v battery drains into the traction battery.
(I leased a Prius 2010, not plug-in, for 3 years and this never happened even if I parked it for days in even colder weather.)
It has been cold recently (out of the past week, highs in 20's or lower). This hasn't been as much of an issue before, but in the past week I have had the red triangle of death, brake warning light, check engine light, and VSC light all come on at the same time, three separate times. Also, the display screen shows a red outline of a car with "!" through it. Each time this has happened, the lights didn't come on as soon as the car was "Ready" but only after the gas engine was running for a minute or two.
The first time the lights came on, I was driving back from class, but after I got back to my house I did some internet research and saw it may be a low oil indicator. Checked the oil, it was almost at the bottom mark on the dipstick, and it had been over 10,000 miles since the last one (oops! we don't normally do that). After reading some stories online, I took it in to get an oil change, and the lights went off for a couple days. Second time the lights came on, I checked the oil level, it was definitely over-filled, so I took it back to Walmart and had them redo the oil so that it was at the right level. I checked the oil level before leaving the parking lot that time and it was at the top mark on the dipstick. Again, all the lights were off for a couple days.
Today, I drove my car for about an hour in the morning (temperature was around upper teens, wind chill below 10) and had no problems. Then, this evening I turn the car on and start driving out of the parking lot when the car beeps at me and flashes all of the warning lights again. I drove back to my house and it is now sitting in the driveway. I am not planning on driving it until I can have a car mechanic friend take a look at it on Tuesday, but he doesn't know anything about the hybrid system/battery.
My wife and I have also noticed that since the weather has been colder, the hybrid battery (shown on the "Energy" screen when driving) seems to be charging and discharging much faster than normal. I haven't seen it at only 1 bar or full of green bars more than a couple times in the 2.5ish years we have owned the car, but in the past two weeks it has happened 5-10 times (estimated). I am not sure if this is due to the weather, or if it could indicate a problem with the (hybrid?) battery. For obvious reasons, this makes us nervous :/
As a side note, I changed the transmission fluid sometime in December, so I was wondering if possibly I didn't put enough fluid back in. I have checked the diagnostic screen and found some codes, but most of them seem to relate to the audio, which doesn't concern me as much as the code that seems to indicate the transmission, which is why I mention the change I did a while back. I just don't know why it wouldn't have shown up until now. I'll attach some pictures I took tonight of the codes and lights.
Also, the battery is a couple years old, but after sitting for a couple hours the battery was reading 12.1 V according to the diagnostic screen, so I don't think that is the issue. We haven't had any trouble getting the car to start, and once it is running it still seems to drive normally with the warning lights on. What these codes mean, and a possible cause for the warning lights?
I don't have a lot of data yet, but the last couple of times we had temps over 80F, my mileage took a significant hit - about as bad as when temps are below 20F (more than 10%)... Shutting off the A/C doesn't change things much...
View 19 RepliesI think this happened last year. Whenever it happened, I know it's happened before. It only happens when it's cold outside. Yesterday, it was 18ºF which, Priapus was happy to show me, equates to -6ºC.
View 14 RepliesI noticed that if I turn on the car and just drive with the AC on, depending on the outside temperature, the battery goes down to 2-3 bars from 6 bars within a mile a so. As it has been discussed in this forum extensively, the higher the battery charge swing, the lower the battery life. I noticed something yesterday, I warmed up the car till the engine stops with the AC on, and then the drive off. The battery stayed at 6 bars for all my commute and I believe this is healthy for the battery. Suggest/observe similar behavior or am I just burning gas for nothing. I have a scan gauge and definitely you get worse fuel economy for the first few miles if you warm up the car.
View 10 RepliesI have an 05 Prius with 108k miles I bought about 2 months ago. My commute to work each morning is 1.5 miles with speeds of 25mph or less.
Usually the car has acted the same way each day. The ice spins consistently as I creep along to work. But last night the temps dropped to -10f and this morning when I left for work it was about 3 above. I turned on the car and instead of the few seconds after ready it takes for the ice to turn on it turned on right away today. I let it warm for about 3 minutes then set off. Right away I noticed the ice start to Rev up.
And as I slowly approached 25 MPH it was revving abnormally high. It was showing energy from the ice to the wheels and to the mg and charging the battery which was at the normal state of charge. All blue, right before green. When I stopped at a light about 1 mile in the ice turned off as normal, and started right away as normal. But it seemed the ice was still revving as if it was working very hard to pick up a slow increase in speed.
I pulled into my parking spot, battery showing green state of charge now, and the motor stopped as usual. I do not run the heat on this trip and it takes usually 5 minutes, so I just tough it out.