Watch my commute.. is this normal?

It does seem to take a relatively long time to get out of pink and into blue...maybe your 12v battery is going south and drawing more current than normal during the first few mins of driving, thus reducing the current available to charge the traction battery. Operation seems normal once it gets into blue and above.

The apparent self discharge overnight is weird though...since the HV battery should be completely disconnected from all load when the car is off.

Thanks for posting your results after the swap...I have a lot of miles on my gen 2 and may be due for replacement in the near future...so it's good to see some actual results.

 

I'd check the 12V. Also the discharge of the HV overnight is not normal. Did you notice the same thing in the previous HV before it went bad?

 

Discharged overnight is a very bad 12 volt battery.

You were told that when you posted about your 12 volt battery in the other post. 11.6 is done and you should start seeing an instantaneous red reclamation point upon start up only. That does not throw a code just alerting you your 12 volt battery is about to leave you stranded.

But you may have 2 issues. I know your 12 is bad but it should no drain to pink. Only discharges down a few bars unless your parking it in the pink or only one blue bar.

Replace the 12 asap and see what it does but I believe both your batteries are bad.
Take the Hybrid battery out and open the case and you should find alot of corrosion on the buss bars.

 

why is it going green and staying there? it should hover in the middle most of the time. do you have severe elevation changes? your mpg's tell me you're not getting battery assist, it's just charging while you drive and discharging while off.

 

looking through your re involt experience, i think you need to take it back. sounds like they rushed the job so they wouldn't lose your business. too bad, this is the first black mark i've seen about them, although i haven't seen many reviews. or, maybe it's just your 12 volt.

 

If he has the EV button installed, maybe he can let it charge up to green and then engage EV mode and feather the accelerator to see how quickly the HV battery discharges and how much range he gets...this would be a good test to see both if battery assist is working and how good the health of the traction battery is. I think a good fully charged battery should give at least a mile in EV mode, maybe more, not sure.

 

That sure ain't the way my car has EVER looked. I'm always in the middle. Period.

 

I would go ahead and change the 12 volt battery at this time. I also note that your driving style is either on or off the gas pedal, with no gliding. Based on the ambient temp of low 70's I am guessing you were running with the windows down and the air off. If that is the case, the traction battery will turn green in some instances, especially if you are constantly charging the battery which is apparent by your driving style.

Once you change the 12 volt battery, if the traction battery still discharges overnight I would then head over to Reinvolt and show them what you are seeing.

Like bisco said, Reinvolt has a good record and this would be the first black mark for them. We have to remember that none of us are perfect. Hopefully the 12 volt change out will do the trick.

One question does come to mind and that is this: "Before your traction battery went south, what was your MPG for your normal commute?" Or "Did the scan gage show low 30's for your commute on the old traction battery"?

Ron

 

that's a good point. 8 min. is a short commute, but ice should be warmed up after a couple minutes at 70 degrees.

 

You actually replaced the HV battery before the 12v? Really?

 

I think it stayed in the green a long time. Were you going down hill a lot.

I started out in the pink the other day. I moved it in EV mode and it went to pink while moving it in and out of the garage with the EV switch on over last few days.

I took it for a 3 mile ride and it didn't take much to go blue then it went green just like yours then went back to blue. When I got home I had 6 blue bars.

 

Yes. You should have spent $200 before you spent $2000.

 

A quick search here on PC would have shown that all kinds of wacky errors show with a bad 12v.

 

Yes Jeff, I think you had a HV failure. Your 12V battery is not that great, and it certainly wouldn't be a bad idea to replace it, but it's not bad enough to cause the real weird anomalies like throwing erroneous codes. In most cases where that happens the 12V battery is way down around 10 volts.

The worst the poor 12 battery might be doing at this stage is causing a bit of extra load on the HV battery (due to DC-DC converter loading), especially at start up. This can lead to decreased fuel efficiency.

 

Thanks for posting that video Jeff, it show some interesting behaviour that highlights why the Prius fuel economy is often less than stellar with very short trips.

Regarding the fitness of the refurbished HV battery, it's difficult to say too much without knowing the reason for why you're starting out the trip with only 1-2 purple bars state of charge (SOC). If you start out with a cold engine and very low SOC like that then you're going to get poor results. I'm sure everyone here would get similar results *if* we started a short trip in that state. As far as I can tell from the video, the performance seems about right once the battery regains it's SOC.

What's the terrain like for that commute Jeff. It looks like it's probably a small uphill section near the beginning and a larger downhill run near the end. You're definitely stuck in "hybrid stage 3a" purgatory, near the end of the trip, and that's messing with your fuel economy too. If you don't know what "stage 3a" is then don't worry, it's nothing wrong with your Prius. It's an unfortunate mode of hybrid operation that we all have to deal with. I can give you some more info on how to improve this later, but right now I'd like to concentrate on the reasons for your very low SOC at start up, as this seems to be your most problematic issue.

So what's the story behind the very low SOC at the beginning of the video. Look very carefully at the SOC *immediately* after pressing the power button on your next commute. It's important to know if you're losing SOC overnight or if it's just rapidly falling in the first 15 to 30 seconds *after* you press the start button. There are several things that can conspire to make the drain on the HV battery fairly high in the first minute or so after a cold start. It really helps a lot to let car just sit in "P" and the engine warm for about 50 to 60 seconds before you get underway. Preventing those purple bars of low SOC in the first few minutes is key to getting better performance,