What is the lower limit of SOC to start the ICE?

welcome! two purple bars. if you leave it in park, it will do it automatically.

 

hmmm, good question. it's probably more of a computer cutoff limit. i wonder if it's in the service manual.

 

Just have to ask this question. Why are you wanting to discharge the traction battery?

 

It certainly can, if done right. We have scores of customers who have already done this with their Prius and had great results. The car will prevent the battery from being drained anywhere near enough for a deep discharge to benefit the cells. You won't be able to do it with just the car. You need an external load, and an external charge source to bring it back after discharging.

 

One time I went through a car wash and came out the other side with 1 red bar and the Red Triangle with the warning to switch to D or P to recharge the battery.

This was one of those where you have to put the transmission into neutral and get pulled along through the wash. I went in with 4 bars I think and came out with 1 red and was still able to have the ICE engage and charge the battery.

 

I suppose if money is not an issue, experimenting would be fun. But, if the car is running well, I wouldn't touch mine. The traction battery should go many more miles and years on average. There are some very high mileage cars with the original untouched battery. The failure rate is sub-3% I hear on PC.

There is a small chance the experiment will cost, not, save money. But, all in all, good luck with your adventure.

Cheers!

 

As others have said the car will not let you drain the battery to a point of too low to start. If you really want to drain your battery down use reverse, not neutral. To do a charge and discharge test.

With a Mini VCI and Techstream you can look at live battery data while doing the charge and discharge test.

Brad

 

Or with the torque app and the custom PIDs you can also see the NiMH volt delta under load. But at 150k miles I wouldn't touch it. I bought my prius at 150k miles and now has 220k miles on the original battery. Just drove to tahoe and yosemite from san francisco the last two weekends without a hitch.
Right now I have to add just over half a quart of oil 2500 miles into my 5000 mile oil change interval but other than that my prius has been stupid reliable.