04 Prius is dead and tried to jump start it with no success

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How old was your 12v battery, If you didnt turn off the SKS feature under the steering wheel then the 12v could've drained.

Charge or replace as needed.

 

While it is true you will need to charge or replace your 12V battery, it should have gone into "Ready" mode when you tried to jump start it, provided the other car's battery was fully charged and you hooked up the jumper cables correctly. Did nothing change when you tried to jump start it? Be very careful when you hook up another car's battery to the Prius. A crossed cable or short can at the very least blow an expensive fuse and at worst destroy the inverter, a $4,000 part at the dealer. I hope that hasn't already happened. It's best to use a jump start kit with a fail-safe polarity switch to revive a Prius with a dead 12V. If you have no other option but to use another car's battery, that car should not be running when connecting to the Prius. (Unlike other cars, the Prius has no starter to be cranked at startup, only a few low power-drawing computers). There are connection points in the fuse box on the driver's side under the hood of the Gen 2 Prius. There is no need to connect directly to the battery in the back.

I hope this helps.

 

You need to fully charge that battery or get a replacement. Driving around doesn't really do it for the prius

 

I'm glad to hear you are back on the road, but you are correct that allowing the battery to drain may have killed it or at least made it unreliable from now on. The best strategy may be simply to replace it, but if you are careful you could try charging it with a plug in charger and then testing its capacity using some of the techniques described here:

2007 Prius - trickle charging 12v battery overnight | PriusChat

 

how old is it?

 

How long is your once-a-week drive? Unless the car is in the Ready mode for 10 hours or so, the battery will not fully charge. Further, if it is only driven once per week, it is mostly sitting with a low state of charge, which will certainly shorten its life. If you are parking on the street, I'm guessing using a trickle charger is not an option for you. Ideally, you would have a charger of the type that can be continuously plugged in and will switch from bulk charging mode to float charging mode when the battery reaches a full charge. Since I'm guessing you wouldn't want to have an extension cord stretched across the sidewalk, tripping passers-by, your best option might be to get something like this:

1.5 Watt Solar Battery Charger

I was using one of these for our Gen 4 that sits for long periods of time between drives, but I found that a single 1.5W panel was not enough to keep the battery fully charged, so I added another one, along with this:

400 Watt Universal Solar Connector

So far, so good, but now we are reaching the time of year where we don't get so many hours of sunlight. I may yet need to add a 3rd panel. I'm told that you don't really need to worry about overcharging a 12V battery if the total output of your charging system is less than 5 watts, so a 3rd panel should be OK. I am trying to keep the battery charged in this way because I don't want to leave a live extension cord stretched across the driveway for weeks at a time while we are out of town.

 

in ny i would expect 6-8 years under normal use. but once a week driving won't keep it from draining due to constant draw, and as you say, cold is a problem.

if you have an sks button under the steering wheel, turn it off. the will reduce the draw when not in use.

 

How many minutes/hours per week do you drive it?

 

If you cannot or will not charge the 12V from time to time, I don't know what advice to give you. A new battery will also fail to start the car within a month or 2 and will die an early death under those conditions.

We haven't even gotten to the HV battery. Unless you have installed a new one from a Toyota dealer recently, it will likely fail soon as well, given the age of the car. If you no longer need the car for anything other than pleasure, I would advise you to sell it now before the HV battery fails and buy one (Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic or similar) that is better adapted to occasional use.

 

And even with a non-hybrid, if it's going to regularly sit idle, for days at a time, interrupted only by short trips, you'll need to keep it on an automatic charger, one that can be left on indefinitely.

Street parking will make this difficult. Even underground parking such as you'd have with apartments, not so practical, unless there's a nearby 110 volt outlet that'll work.

 

Davecook covered it nicely except to say stop jump starting your Prius. It’s the quickest way I know to cause huge damage to the car. There is thousands of posts on this site about this.

Use search forumS button up top search

Dead battery.

So many people reverse polarity jump start there Prius and blow it up. There in the trunk jumping the battery which is nuts. There is specific jump points to use under the hood never jump directly to the battery.
It’s hard to reach it’s dark it’s confusing and completely unnecessary.

You killed the 12 volt battery replace it with a new battery. You already are the luckiest guy on this forum using AAA to jump it and they didn’t blow it up. AAA has totaled many a Prius on this site. They bring huge current to a job that a dewalt 12 volt drill battery can be used.

NEWB+DEAD 12+AAA-$$$$$$

 

All over the place. I would say 5-7 years for a Prius that is driven regularly and has not seen a sever discharge event, requiring a jump, has had a great life.

How many jump starts have you had so far? Your 12V batteries will always live a SHORT life, given the regular LACK of use.​

THAT is insufficient to recharge the 12V. You would want to leave the car READY for hours to recharge the 12V battery.​

Wat. You live in NYC?! Great public transportation (subway & buses). Is a car not be a liability there?

Think of all the money you would save by getting rid of the car. NO maintenance. NO gas. NO liability/collision/comprehensive insurance. Why not just rent or taxi/rideshare a vehicle when needed?​

Maybe NOT initially. But probably in a short period of time, say 2nd month, you will be in the same boat. Remember, lack of regular use is the underlying problem.

If the car has SKS, you could deactivate it, which will slow down the self discharge rate. BUT, you will still be in the same boat (maybe in 2months), b/c of lack of regular use.​

 

For those of you who may have been influenced by what seems to be a recommendation of the Harbor Freight 1.5 Watt Solar Battery Charger, I would like to report that I have now bought 4 of these and 2 of them have failed. For this product, at least, I am officially off the bandwagon. I was using one of these to maintain the battery in my pickup truck and when it failed, I replaced it with the another from Harbor Freight, mainly owing to the convenience of being able to drive a few miles and pick it up the same day. Now that the additional one I bought to double the charge on my Prius battery is also failing to deliver the promised ~20V, I have given up and ordered a 5W panel from Amazon, which I hope is up to the task.