Battery check?

You would have to take it to your local Toyota dealer, and they will check it for free, or they may charge you. You may be able to go to Advnced Auto Parts, but I highly doubt it. Given that this is an advanced vehicle, and the battery may be hard for them to read. Or all the battery cells for that matter.

 

Which battery are you talking about - Hybrid or 12V regular battery?

 

I'm assuming that you are referring to the 2G traction battery. The battery has an ECU whose only function is to continuously monitor the condition of the 14 module pairs (there are 28 battery modules that are grouped in pairs for the purpose of tracking.) That ECU provides info to the hybrid vehicle ECU so the latter knows how much power to request from the battery when the driver requests acceleration, and how much power to use when charging the battery under regen braking or deceleration.

If a module pair voltage varies more than a few tenths of a volt from the other modules, then a DTC will be logged.

There's no point in paying a dealer tech to "test" the battery as no warranty repair action will be taken unless your car has logged a relevant DTC. If such a DTC was logged, then you would see the master warning light come on, and either the hybrid vehicle or the battery icon would appear in the MFD.

 

i remember from the 01 prius a great way to check if any modules are bad is to park on a level, clear area, and put the vehicle in reverse with handbrakes on and lightly press the gas pedal, and if the battery drops abruptly from 8 bars to 1 bar then there might be a problem.
when my 01 prius had a bad module doing this would trigger a DTC and shut off the hybrid system.

 

Hi Patrick,
Sorry, but the dealer's OBD-II scanner has following capabilities to check the HV battery.

• delta-SOC, variations among 14 pair of modules. should be less than 20%
• voltages of each pair modules
• internal resistance of each pair modules

I would like to suggest ozymandias to visit a dealer to get the HV battery checked.

Ken@Japan

 

Patrick's point is, if anything were sufficiently wrong to permit/require warranty replacement, a trouble code would be logged. One can certainly pay a dealer to test the modules but it would be very unlikely to result in warranty replacement unless by chance the battery failed immediately before or during the test.

 

Sounds like his battery is still in good shape according to members input. At 100K miles, you may be on your own. For the most part, I think you still have another 100K + miles of worry free Hybrid battery life. I guess just keep on driving your car the way you are driving it and let us know as you reach this remarkable milestone in mileage. Drive Safe.