Question re: 12-volt battery, please?

Julia2001;
Once you get the new 12V you will be fine. I would not loss any sleep over it. Those devices are expensive and you may never need to use it and if you do have to, it probably wont work anyway. Made in China!!! Your Prius is very reliable auto.
Cheers, H

 

Or, rather, charged.

- Aleks

 

Or, you can get a solar panel, hook it to the battery directly, leave in the trunk under the hatch window (or, better, on the roof between rides) and have it charged by Sun!

- Alex

 

Low mileage & short trips are tough on every car's batteries. Do you have to trickle charge the battery? No. But it will die sooner than if it is.

Your battery will work fine. One day you'll approach the car & the lights won't come up. You'll manually unlock the door, insert the fob, and the car won't start. Maybe it will start on the 3rd attempt.

Now you'll need a jump. Horror stories happen because people don't pay attention to what they are doing. Reverse the polarity on any other car & you'll cause damage too.

Swap out the battery at your convenience or do it when you need it. It's up to you.

 

If you find the new 12v is only showing 12v or less just do what I mentioned earlier. When you park your car leave it in park and the ready light on. The car will charge the 12v in a couple hrs. The engine will start off and on that is all. You should only have to do this if you have many short runs. Like I said early on, don't worry so much about it! H

 

The original equipment battery is made by GS Yuasa. The date code is on top of the battery and is hidden by the battery bracket.

Yes, if you want your new battery to be maintained in top condition. Alternatively if you don't take some action to periodically charge your battery and continue to drive 6K miles per year, your new battery will deteriorate over time and eventually fail.

Well, I would say that if you leave the car READY overnight (in other words, for 8 hours or more) then the 12V battery which is near-discharged probably will become charged. 2 hours is not enough time.

 

Hi Julia,

Regarding your question about whether this is something you can do, there are many posts about how to replace the battery. If you have 10-12-14 mm sockets and open-end/box wrenches then you will have the needed tools. If you can physically lift the battery, then no worries.

I personally would recommend using a battery charger instead of a battery minder, because you then only have to worry about hooking up the Prius to the charger once or twice per month (rather than connecting the minder daily). It is easiest to do this via the main relay/fuse box next to the inverter.

Open the hood, find the relay/fuse box, press hard on the latch at the front of the box lid, then pivot the lid up and remove it. Find the red plastic cover over the dedicated positive jump start terminal and pivot that open so the terminal is exposed. That is the positive terminal.

Find an unpainted metal piece on the body, for example, one of the nuts that hold the driver's side front strut mount to the body, above the relay/fuse box. Use that as the negative terminal. Hook up your battery charger to those terminals, set the charger so that the maximum charging current will be 4A, turn it on, and then you are good.

Regarding what kind of charger to get, you want one that has a current meter on it so that you can see exactly how much current is being produced at any moment in time. Then you can check on the car periodically, for example at the two hour mark, and see how much current the battery is still taking.

 

I've had good luck with the BatteryMinder Plus. It is 2A max, I believe, but each of my cars gets to full charge in a few hours. You can do it once per month or twice, or not at all. You have never done it, still get decent fuel economy which may not improve at all with new or charged battery, and your battery could be 5 years old. So, don't sweat it.

By the way, I tend to defer to Patrick on any maintenance issues. So favor his words over mine. Just sharing my experience.

 

elearnaid sends a six page manual with the battery, it is summarized here:

Optima DS46B24R Optima battery direct fit replacement for Prius 2004 +

They also sell a 0.9 amp charger
AccuMate 12 volt or 6 volt battery charger for sealed or regular batteries

 

The batteryminder I see at amazon is 1.33 A for $44. I think it is the same as mine.
I don't know about the .9 A accumate you reference for $33.
Patrick's 4A suggestion is best, but surely any would work, substituting time for cost savings.

It is not like you fully deplete your battery. It just needs a little love to offset your low mileage/short trips. Same would be true with any car, except alternator cars usually charge more aggressively when running, so not as noticeable.

 

That's a good price, but I don't know if it is a good charger.

 

That Optima has the Japanese type battery posts so the cables in your Prius will fit fine. Most other car batteries sold in the US have the larger SAE battery posts and the cables would have to be adapted. I have the DS46B24R in my 2004 Prius and it went in with no problems.

JeffD