Long Time & Need Your Help!

You have succinctly stated what bothers me about this thread.

 

I hear you knocking...

 

I use Dr Prius App regularly.to monitor the health of my 2010 Prius battery. It is not difficult. You have to get an OBDII bluetooth enabled adapter that plugs into the diagnostic port under your dash, then pair it with your smartphone. Then you run the battery health test.

Here is a link to the Dr Prius app website: Hybrid battery diagnostic and repair tool for Toyota and Lexus

Take a look and report back if you have questions. We can talk you through it.

 

I've had a prototype version in my 2007 since last October... And for the most part they're barely noticeable. But when you get in a challenging situation and put a huge demand on your Prius and hope you make it home safely and drop down to 3 bars, it's like having a newer far better version of an old Prius.

 

Main thing to monitor w/phone app is battery temp... Also Dr. Prius app makes it easy to read and clear codes so you can keep the car out of limp mode. Beyond that it's knowing what the error codes are pointing to and the more they repeat the more certain you are in what you're gonna fix. Of course me driving around testing a messed up battery is very relaxing compared to a long-time Prius owner dealing with a messed up battery for the first time.

 

You could get the Prolong system and extent the life of the battery.
Less than half the cost of a battery, easy to install.

I've very happy with my Prius. Everything is easy to work on and no failures.
I know some day something will fail. It happens with every car. But it's still cheaper to keep and
repair this one than to buy a new one or get a used one and take a chance of something failing one that.

Since I can do the work myself I don't spend the money on the labor.

 

battery can explode or ignite when you merge on to speedy highways? I’d hate to be in the news that evening. Fireball prius on the highway, right after this commercial break.

 

Seen many reports of that?

The cases of rapid unintentional disassembly I've seen reported here generally involve a pop sound and a bad smell.



They are generally awarded to people who have been regularly clearing their "you need a battery" codes and continuing to drive for months waiting for something to happen, and eventually it does.

 

Doing "research" here or on facebook about something as esoteric as hv battery lifetime testing is questionable. The results are liable to contradict battery science unless the battery is either brand new or is already throwing codes. Somehow I think the Toyotas and Teslas of the world would have incorporated a battery "level of degradation" metric if it could be accurate and not just a wag.

On the forced charging, apparently some Priuschat users do it all the time without damaging the hybrid system. In this case it appears Toyota has built in enough control of their clutchless planetary gear system to prevent most abuse failures. To me the biggest concern with forced charging is an accident if you inadvertently let off the brake.

 

The accelerator pedal in a Prius isn't anything but a game-controller input to the power management control ECU. If the ECU sees you pressing it while holding the brake, it says "ok, that means driver wants to charge the battery" and it does that, but it doesn't do anything that's going to cause problems in the car.

I don't do it routinely, because the way the ECU is programmed to manage the battery on its own is likely better for longevity, but for diagnostic purposes, well, that's what it's for. (They didn't have to program the ECU to do anything special when you pressed both pedals together; it could have just said "I don't know what that means" and done nothing.)

 

+1 on what @ChapmanF said ^^^.

The car's charging system is going to do what it wants to do. If you want an intermediate step, try putting the car in Ready, in Park (not deprssing the brake pedal). Then push the accelerator all the way to the floor and hold it there. You would never do that in an older/conventional car... the engine would race to red-line and bounce off the rev limiter. But not the Prius. It just raises to a fast idle -- no matter how far you push the pedal, or how long you hold it there. Again, the car is going to do what it's designed to do. It won't let you damage it.