2011 Prius wont start

Research would have pointed you to get the CEL codes and narrow down what needs to be troubleshoot.

 

welcome!
a dealer can do it, or you can invest $400. in a charger from the priuschat shoppe.

 

Is it possible to jump the hybrid battery with another hybrid battery like the 12v battery?
Aside from any safety items.
I imagine it IS possible, but just how much would you have to take apart to do it?
Could you do it at the inverter? Or would you have to remove the cover on the hybrid battery
to get to the terminals? Then you could use the good hybrid to charge up the dead one enough to
get it running so you could use the engine to charge it.

 

Where in Florida are you located?

There might be a member here who might be close and willing to help out.

Do you remember what the state of charge was on the display when you left it?

Did you do anything preventatively since you knew you would be away for a bit?

 

There is a HV Battery charger, it is rare and usually your dealer needs to get it from Toyota Regional.

Prius HV Battery Charger | Automotive Career Development Center

I would check the 12 volt battery first, it is much more likely to discharge.

 

Welcome to PC!

First of all, don't get any ideas about jumping a traction battery from another Prius. That would most likely destroy both batteries unless they were both already at nearly the same voltage.

If you are in or near north Tampa, Todd at Tampa Hybrids could get you squared away quickly if you can get the car there.

It may be that the traction battery has self discharged over the months, but I think it would have had to be pretty low when you parked it. If that's the case, a Prolong grid charger should bring it back. You should get the codes read with a Prius literate code reader to see what's really wrong, though, because there are other possibilities.

 

So the 7 + year old 12v died then the traction discharged.
A new 12v is installed but the traction as stated needs a charge.
Unless there’s another way, the dealer may have to get involved, it can’t be the first traction battery ever to need a charge.

The traction is also 7+ years old, a new one installed is around 2000$ And would make the prius “like new”,

 

How would(or could) that destroy both batteries? Even if you didn't start the car the charged battery would try to charge the
dead battery, or transfer it's voltage/amperage. Unless the discharged battery is damaged, I could understand that.
The batteries would try to equal out wouldn't they?

 

Yes of course. And if one was really low or had shorted cells, the current flow could be HUGE.......with all kinds of nasty effects when the connection is made. AND people seem to get the leads reversed when doing a simple 12 V jump every day. No reason to suspect that similar mistakes wouldn't happen with this battery too.......possibly resulting in explosive damage and injury.

The first thing to do here, if not done already, is to be sure that the new 12 V battery is fully charged. Many come with an initial charge less than 25%.

 

Wouldn't the same thing happen when connecting a charger? Because the hybrid battery is a higher voltage the damage would be greater.
But as I said "Unless the discharged battery is damaged", would it not be the same as jumping a 12v battery???
All things considered, if you do it CORRECTLY, pos to pos and neg to neg, it would be charged from the good battery.
The discharged battery doesn't know the difference between a battery or a charger being hooked up to it.
It would be SMARTER to hook up a charger to regulate the rate of charge.
Jumping it to another fully charged battery would throw a lot of amperage into it causing it to get hot fairly quickly I would imagine.
With a charger you could use a low amperage charge so the battery wouldn't get hot.
Is this correct?

 

As you might imagine, there are no safe points where you could jump 201 Volt batteries. The Prius does every thing in it power to prevent energizing the external cables unless the computer are sure that the batteries are OK, and in this case they are not OK.

You can tow it to the dealer and have him borrow a charger from Toyota Regional. He might have one onhand but for the amount of times a owner drains the HV battery the $1500 cost makes that a bad investment.

If it was me I would take it to the dealer I trusted most unless you know a independent garage with an HV Charger. They can read codes to find the actual problem. (most third party reader only read engine codes, and this is not an engine problem)

 

Prius HV Battery Charger | Automotive Career Development Center
You will notice they say 'lethal' in the first line and that they refuse to sell it to you unless you have the gloves and are trained.

(you can see the gloves about 18 minutes in this video)

www.amazon.com/OTC-3991-12-Hybrid-Electric-Safety/dp/B004GDSPLS

 

The post said the car sat for 11 months. That would drain the battery. And depends on the state of charge when it was left.
He replaced the 12v battery already. Doesn't want to take it to the dealer. Okay.
Spend the $350 for the Prolong charger, spend an hour hooking up the harness, then let the charger do it's thing.
It seems to ME, he could have found SOMEONE willing to drive the car long enough to charge the battery until it was at the
full mark, then park it. Maybe once a month? Perhaps he didn't have time to find someone. Maybe he didn't think about it because
a non hybrid car probably would have been fine. And he could have just jumped the 12v battery and be on his was.

It's good Toyota makes it hard for the hybrid battery to be ACTIVE unless certain conditions are met. There's a lot of power
in that battery! If they made it easy to get to you just KNOW all the idiots out there would try to hook up a 12v battery to the hybrid
battery to try to jump start the car! Then they'd want to sue Toyota because they didn't make it hard to do! Am I right????
I was only curious if it could be done. Which YES you can do it. SHOULD you do it???? That's another question.
It wouldn't be too hard to run two wires from the hybrid battery to outside the housing to attach to another hybrid battery.
(ADDED: Prolong does it for their charger and discharger)
Of course you would have to do it to at least two of them. And of course it would be extremely dangerous.
In theory, you could and it would work. But in reality...........

 

Already watched that video, it's a good one.

 

Hopefully a charger would not have maximum voltage and current available at the connections just waiting to be attached and would do some simple tests before ramping up the charge. No such safety when bridging a second battery.
So yes, see your statement highlighted above.

 

Direct battery to battery connection would produce tremendous currents. The only limit would be either the resistance of the cells (which are in parallel and therefore very low) or the wires themselves. I would expect it to be hundreds of amps. There could be over 100 volts difference. 100 volts at say half an ohm would be 200 amps.

A Prolong charger, on the other hand, limits the current to about 1/3 of one amp.

You are free to try connecting a charged traction battery to a flat one. But be sure to wear lots of protective gear. And set up a video camera because you could probably put it on Youtube and be famous. If you survive, it will be hilarious. But expensive.

 

I NEVER said I was going to do it. Just curious if it could be done.
Again, as I stated before, in theory and reality it could be done, but is it wise to do it?
This is a project for the myth busters!