Prius (Gen 3) :: Battery Not Fully Utilized During Uphill Climb?
Jan 12, 2011
gen 3 owner here. Pretty happy with the car and the mpg. One thing I don't fully understand is when I going uphill on the freeway at 65 mph (such as LA's 405 sepulveda pass), the bar gauge is telling me I am in the power region, but the energy flow graph is showing the battery is switching back and forth between charging and discharging. The battery level just stuck at 1 bar below full. Any way to get the battery to work out more during uphill, as I expect I can recover them shortly as I go downhill?
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Today I was driving up to the highlands, and there is a hill I have to climb called 2 mile hill, it's an 8% grade, I started the climb with 7 green bars on the display, and the engine revved to what sounded like full pace (5000rpm) but I paid attention to the battery and it was actually being charged despite the situation. I got to the top of the hill and the battery was showing all 8 green bars. I'm shocked because I was going uphill at 65-70 MPH and it fully charged the traction battery.
I thought I heard a couple years ago that every couple months, the Prius will do this thing where it will fully charge the battery or something like that because of memory effect of the cells? Why it did this?
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I've noticed that my car is struggling a lot to climb uphill. I am not seeing any signs yet but I hear the gas engine running hard all the time going 30mph-50mph depending on elevation. Battery level on the monitor is always one or two purples when climbing up but it charges pretty quickly downhill. Should I risk driving the car anymore? My next destination is Yellowstone and Banff National Park so these driving conditions will continue.
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I recently got my 2007 Prius back from the body shop after a 13k repair following a crash that crumpled my front end. The car seemed to be doing fine, until a long, steep climb had the battery drop to one bar, speed dropping to 40 despite a floored accelerator, and a red triangle that appeared briefly before disappearing just as we completed the climb. It's the dropping speed despite a floored accelerator and the warning light that have me worried.
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I go over a mountain pass, to and from work. It is about a two mile up and down incline/decline. On several occasions while going up the pass,the gas motor has rapidly accelerated at a high rpm. I back off the gas pedal and check the 'battery indicator bars' and there are none. I then drive very slowly to the top of the pass and the batteries quickly recharge on the decline to a color of all light green bars, indicating a full charge. Same experience coming home. Once I do normal town driving, the bars settle around 'four or five blue bars.' Local dealer says there is on problem. I am driving at 55 mph when this happens.
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My 2007 Prius has 120,000 miles. I live in a mountainous area. I need to climb 3 miles at 6% grade to get out of my neighborhood. Lately I've been noticing the traction battery loses charge fairly quickly and I've been thinking about replacing the battery. Much of my driving is in steep hills and I run a full charge cycle many times a day, so I guess I should expect some loss of life.
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I just got my Prius v for few days. I noticed that I only saw the battery bar fully charged once and for a very short time. Also, when I idle my car for a period, the battery would drop to three to two bars. Is it normal or there is a problem to my battery? I got 49500 miles on it,
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I’ve searched for an answer to my question but have not found it yet.
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My dad's 2004 Prius start despite the auxiliary battery being fully charged. No lights come up on the dash, except for the door ajar light and the blinkers when the car is locked with the key fob. Also, we cannot scan any codes because the car doesn't power on at all.
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The 12V battery must have been drained completely over the weekend. None of the lights (interior and exterior) are working. The car won't start even using jumper cable. I guess the 12v battery must have some juice remaining to power up the computer in order to jump start the engine. Am I correct in this assumption?
My Prius is only a little over three years. What is the warranty on the 12v battery? I read that the OE battery is not the best. How long would I expect the OE 12v battery to last?
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2008 Prius gen ll.. I had to take an unplanned out of state trip this week. For most of the highway time (2 days each way at +/- 65mph) the hybrid battery was almost always fully charged(green bars). The arrow every few seconds pointed towards the battery indicating charging even though the battery showed all green bars. Every now and then, several times per minute it would out pulse a short blast of energy to the system but not enough to bring it down to blue bars.
MPG was down about 10% . P>G didn't seem to except when I was in town. Taking my foot off the gas pedal didn't always result in the 99.9 indication unless I was going down an incline. I went from Northern Michigan to South Louisiana so temperature wasn't the culprit. The only thing different is that my 12v ignition battery failed just before leaving and the dealership replaced it.
At normal speeds, when I pulled off the interstate for gas/food/sleep the system worked OK, blue bars charging and discharging and good gas mileage. P&G worked normally. I've had this car for 5 years now and only a few times over that period have I noticed the hybrid battery fully green.
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So I bought a 2006 Prius from a dealership and drove it a few times in the first week I got it. The next 5 days or so I didn't use it, until today when I tried to start it up. The car wouldn't unlock with the key remote, so I opened it manually with the key. Then I tried to start it up, nothing. I then took a battery charger and hooked it up to the 12v battery under the hood. There was a constant beeping noise (like you were to honk your horn) then it stopped about 3 minutes later.
I charged it until it was fully charged (a green light pops up when it's full), but the car still wouldn't start nor were there any lights on the dashboard. I then opened the trunk and charged the battery until it was full, it too made a honking noise for a while then stopped. I saw all the lights (ABS, orange triangle, and others) light up so I thought maybe I was on the right track; however when the charger light turned green I unhooked the battery and tried to start the car. Again, no lights on the dashboard and nothing when I try to start the car. What is going on???
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Heading out on 4 week 3k mile road trip. Have 12v adaptors for a very efficient laptop and smartphone.
It seems that in "Accessory" mode the PIP is using only the dinky 12V battery so this is not a healthy solution. Is there a recommended strategy to put the car in semi-ready mode and reduce all possible drain so that utilizing the 12V will not be draining the traction battery reserves much at all?
I'm thinking that perhaps trying to put the car in "ready" mode with the FOOT OFF the brake indeed fires up access to the traction battery without firing up other things that require the full power monty that Ready mode with the FOOT ON the brake requires. Seems to me the PIP is a great mobile office solution if we could gain access to traction battery reserves without running much else.
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1993 Chevrolet S10 Blazer will not turn over the battery is fully charged when key is turned there is nothing not a sound only smoke coming from a wire on top of fender under hood.
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45 days into the ownership of 600 and never seen the hybrid battery fully charge. The top bar never turned blue, is this normal?
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I spent some time searching the forums last night and found a bunch of you are having the same problem I did with a dead battery. I took mine in for service and the dealer told me that Volkswagen has discovered a software glitch in the radio that causes it not to fully turn off. This is a constant drain on the battery that will eventually kill it if it goes unused for "long" periods of time. They didn't say how long it would take to fix it though.
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We bought a new battery the van would not spark when the battery was fully charged but when the battery gets low it start to spark...
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I have a 2.5L 2010 camry se ... Car was running perfectly fine last night. The next morning all the lights were on but when i turned the key to start it up, i just heard a click and all the lights shut off. Checked the battery with voltmeter and its reading fully charged but lights on the dash are no longer lighting up. Starter problem?
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I have a 1998 Ford F-150. It has an issue with starting sometimes. The truck won't start with a fully charged battery but when I hook it up to a charger, the truck starts normally. It was going to get the wheels aligned today and when the mechanic went to drive it off the ramp, it wouldn't start. I told him to put a charger on the battery and it started right up. Without the charger it just cranked over and wouldn't start. It doesn't do this every time I go to start it only occasionally. The mechanic had no idea what the problem was and has never heard of this kind of situation. I'm assuming it is an electrical problem but I'm not an expert with engines. The battery was fully charged at the shop and the battery is a year old.
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2005 Prius transmission starting to slip after hard mountain road climb? Just started to do this. Is there a transmission dip or check capability?
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A few days ago I posted a thread about losing power on a steep hill climb with a cold engine. I replaced the hybrid battery and all seemed well. A few days later, the problem occurred again--bummer. (The car has 120K miles and has spent most of its life in a hot and mountainous environment, and I knew the hybrid battery was failing, so that's not a problem.)
The car starts the climb OK, gains a few hundred feet in elevation, still has some charge left in the hybrid battery, then loses power, surges a couple of times, then comes to stop. The engine continues to run at idle and I get no warning or check engine lights. The "ready" light stays on. This time, the second time it happened, I turned off the car, turned it back on again immediately, and all was well. The remainder of the 1000' climb went fine. As did several other similar climbs on the same drive. Since then I've climbed this hill with a cold engine without a problem, so it's intermittent.
I hesitate to pay Toyota for a code scan since the check engine light did not come on. Should I do this anyway? My local auto parts store will scan for free, but I know that their scanner will not read Toyota-specific codes, just industry standards.
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