Dropped by my local Toyota today and saw four people heavy in conference with electrodes in hand, noticing a small charger on the other end of the electrodes, I asked them if they were looking for the battery charging contacts. They nodded and I relented and devulged this very top secret information. It seems they had to open the trunk to clean the interior AND the battery was empty. Two days later I drop by again to pick up a waterpump belt and the same new car is still sitting in the showroom with the hatch up! I thought that is bad for the battery. No hatch lights, no door lights. So I talked to one of the tech writers that was closest. It seems that they do this deliberately ( leave the car with a dead 12V battery) so people cannot get electrocuted! I explained to him that probably this battery is now totally useless! he said, "oh we will just charge it up" So should you buy a new Prius from Roseville Toyota, be aware that the 12V battery may be totally useless, or very much depleted before a year is up. They have no concept of the damage they are are doing. Now I realize why my new 2005 had to have a new 12V in about 9 months. Of course at the time, I was warned of "my" possibly abusing the 12 volt battery. It apparently has NEVER occured to them to simply disconnect the HV switch and the Neg lead on the 12V.
Yeah, I get my work done at Magnusson Toyota in Auburn. They were the only ones who knew that a transaxle fluid change was a 1/2hr job. The other monkeys were trying to charge me $300 like they do for the Tacoma s. I never had a problem with Folsom Lake Toyota (where I bought my car).
It is sad to think that such ignorance can be found at a Toyota dealership, 11 years after the start of US Prius sales. However if this was an ongoing problem you would think that TMS USA would notice the Prius 12V battery warranty claims coming from this dealer, and take action... BTW it is not necessary to disconnect the traction battery switch, just disconnecting the negative lead on the 12V battery would be sufficient. I would not want to encourage tampering with the switch since 1) it would probably get lost and 2) whoever is reinstalling it would forget to slide the switch down after pivoting the lever 90 degrees.
This is Roseville Toyota at the the Roseville Auto Mall. And of course I cannot assume they do this on every showroom car. Incidently the Tech writer made the assumption that the 12V was a lead acid battery while also stating that there had been NO improvements in batteries over the years. I did not bother educating him on either count. As I said closed minds! So, now to go change my water pump belt. :cheer2:
This is all so true , but these turkeys don't take time to read Prius chat!!! So what should we expect!
You know, it is possible we 'blame the victim', the owner may have had his 12 volt battery damaged before the poor sod ever took possession. For those of you wondering 'why did my battery only last 3 years and that guy on PriusChat made it 9 years' this can be some of the problem. But we will go on claiming you left the door ajar, we are like that.
Roseville Toyota is owned bye the John L Sullivan Auto Group. He has Chevrolet Saturn? (His website still claims that) Toyota Scion Dodge Chrysler. Dealerships in the mall. He is an old time car dealer. I'll let you figure out what that means.
I had Roseville Toyota do the Inverter cooling pump recall on my car. No problems with that procedure. I won't take my car to Maita where I bought it because they lied about doing alignment work.
But where are people supposed to get "electrocuted" with a working 12 volt battery? The only that that works without the fob in the car are the lights? Like any other car.
Yep I've been thinking the same thing Ed. The whole premise of protecting people from being electrocuted doesn't even make sense to me.
Electrocution risk: perhaps to reinforce the mystique to shoppers that the dealer is the only place qualified to work on a Prius.
