100,100 miles and looks like Hybrid battery is failing

If the car hasn't thrown a failure code, there's no reason for Toyota to think the battery has failed. It may be weak but hasn't failed

 

Your symptoms sound like a hybrid battery issue but until the car throws a code, Toyota won't do anything for you. Your chances of getting it covered are pretty good if it failed today.

Changing the fluids would not do this to your car's hv battery.

 

Have you noticed your car doing some mild revving sounds at stop lights? When my battery was going (at about 110,000 miles for me) my only symptom was the engine revving at stop lights on occasion. Then all of a sudden one day every warning light that exists on the console lit up. The car looked like a Christmas tree. Took it to the dealer immediately because I was afraid to drive it and they said it was the hybrid battery. I did not believe them at first - at all. Then did a little research on prius chat and found that was indeed a sign of the hybrid battery dying. Toyota Paid for the battery but I had to pay the labor.

 

Expect your battery to fail soon (maybe in one month approx), because these are the symptoms of failing HV battery. By symptoms I mean discharging and charging rapidly (at least on MFD SOC) in very short time. Normally totally drained battery would charge to top blue bars not earlier than at least 5 minutes of driving. Mine is taking 10 minutes from this SOC but I get one purple bar very rarely, like 5 times a year. 110 000 miles on her and still going.

 

anyone else notice a lot of these lately?

 

I concur with Miso03.

My HV battery in my 2006 failed about 2 years ago, at 170K miles - unfortunately well out of warranty.... - and exhibited the same symptoms you described (rapid extreme charge & discharge in uncharacteristic ways, like driving at steady speed on flat ground), about 2 weeks before failing.

The car makes it VERY apparent when it fails, the MFD will say "Problem!" (IIRC) across the top of the screen, and all your dash lights will come on like a Christmas tree.

The GREAT news is that the car will not strand you - you can still drive it, but it may go into turtle (self-preservation) mode if the battery is real bad. In my case, the first 2 days or so the car drove 'normal' despite the lights being on, but by day 3 it would only last a couple minutes before it would go into safety mode, until I pulled over and rebooted. ;-) That would buy me another 5 minutes.

Anyway, day 4 I parked the car until I decided what to do. Note that it is NOT recommended to continue driving like this, as there is risk of causing further damage, but it clearly designed to at least not strand you.

Finally, Toyota only wanted to sell me a brand new pack for $3K, so I seeked out a private rebuilder who did it for $1200 instead, and also backed his work for a year / unlimited mileage.

2 years and 48,000 miles later, still running like a charm!

Great car.

Cheers!

 

...meaning, lots of folks worried about possible batt failure at 100,000 miles? or 8 yrs ?

If you look at Prii sales, I think big uptick in 2007/2008 so more coming. So far batt failure rates in 2007-2009 have been much less than 2004-2006, so either the batts improved or, if its just tiime lag, we'll be needing a bigger band width here.

 

no, i mean a lot of first time posters, coming here with problems, but lacking clarity and good communication skills.