hybrid battery question on C

hard to say without a scan, but you might want to invest in a prolong grid charger.

 

At four years and 100k miles, the battery is starting to age. Here is an overview of the hybrid battery life cycle:
How do I know if my hybrid battery is failing? - Hybrid Automotive

Sounds like you might be in the first stage. By beginning to maintain the battery now while it is only mildly degraded, you can easily increase its performance & capacity and extend its life by several years.

 

Could be a dying 12v battery too.

 

the prolong charger rebalances the battery pack, so that the cells are closer to each other in voltage. you can find threads here with user experience.

 

Define "quickly". Is the car new to you, or do you have a reasonable track record with the car and you're noticing a difference in its behaviour? High or low ambient temperatures can affect the battery, have they changed recently? Have you checked the battery cooling air inlet underneath the left end of the rear seat to make sure that it's not blocked by dirt or fur?

The hybrid battery on the Prius C is quite small and you shouldn't expect it to be able to keep the car in EV mode for very far, especially if there's even a slight uphill grade. The Prius C isn't an electric vehicle, the battery's purpose is to store a bit of power when the engine is running efficiently so that it can provide supplemental power when the engine isn't running efficiently.

 

Considering this poster sells products that purport to prolong battery life, I would treat this pronouncement with a grain of salt.

Toyota has done an incredible job with the technology in it's line of Prius vehicles. Consumer Reports tested a 10-year old Prius with 200,000 miles on it to see how it compared to a 2001 Prius they tested when it was new. The answer is that they both performed nearly identically. A mere 100K miles on a Prius battery is nothing to worry about as long as it hasn't been abused.

 

True, but I have read about the 12v battery causing the hybrid battery to discharge quicker, so it's worth a look. But yeah, if he's in the business of "prolonging" then salt grain accepted.

 

It is summer time and HOT in the South.....well, pretty much everywhere.
Running the AC full blast is one thing that will cause the HV battery to "cycle" more during a drive.......especially a stop-and-go one.

 

If you're driving at lower speeds on relatively flat roads the car will happily drive electric-only, run the charge down. It doesn't know how long this condition will continue. That's normal I think.

If I see charge getting low due to such conditions, I'll purposely pulse more, then glide, try to avoid electric-mode, at least some of the time.

 

It's my observation that when you start the car cold the engine comes on but isn't used to actually propel the vehicle for the first short while (15 to 30 seconds, maybe?). I've always assumed that this is to get oil circulating through all the galleries before putting the engine under load, a great strategy to prolong engine life.

You can tell this is happening because if you start the car with a cold engine and then hit the throttle, the car will surge forward but the engine sound will show no signs of being under load as it normally would. At the same time the battery gauge drops like a rock, and you can hear the whine of the electric motor. That motor is clearly capable of a lot more acceleration than it's normally allowed to provide, no doubt because the car is engineered so that in normal conditions the battery is used only when it's more efficient than the gas engine (including the gas that will be required to recharge the battery after its been used).

The only time I've ever seen my battery gauge drop below two bars is during heavy acceleration right after a cold start.

 

No a C won't do that. It never uses battery exclusively above something like 27 MPH.
It has a smaller battery pack; well, pretty much everything is smaller.

 

Maybe. Easy enough to test.
And if the 12 V is over 5 years old......in Miami.....might as well replace it anyway.

 

Oh yes, it will. You can't use the EV mode button to force the car into using the battery at higher speeds, but if the battery has a good charge on it and you're not demanding too much throttle, then it can go into EV mode of its own choosing. I regularly take advantage of this by lifting my foot from the accelerator pedal briefly which encourages it do to this. It will stay in EV mode this way up to 74 km/h as long as you're not trying to push the throttle too hard (although at 73km/h the only way to keep a light enough touch on the throttle is if you're going down at least a slight decline).

 

no.