Newbie battery question

The internal combustion engine does not need to be running to charge the 12v battery. The Prius does not have an alternator. The 12v battery is charged from the hybrid battery by the dc/dc conveter whenever the car is in ready mode and the car is in park or drive. But it will take many hours for the car to fully charge the 12v battery. It is best to fully charge the 12v battery by using a charger.

 

if there is a safe place, she can leave the car 'ready' in park for about 8 hours and the battery should get a good charge.

 

READY mode is when the word "READY" lights up on the dash. It is the state you get into that allows you to drive the car. You get to READY with a single press of the power button with your foot on the brake. If the battery was totally flat (so she had a completely no power situation just like disconnecting the 12 V battery), she will need to press the power button twice for that first start. In this scenario, the first press of the power button will go into an IG-ON state (usually attained by pressing the power button twice with your foot off the brake) so lighting all the warning lights, then the second press moves it to READY.

I'm sorry about the long explanation but the two-button press catches a lot of people out.

I hope that helps.

 

It's not going to ready if the 12 volt is dead so she's dead in the water You attach the jump starting pack if it's got small enough clamps on it to the red thing in the fuse box under the hood and to the strut tower nut now you have lights and you can ready the car now once the car is ready you should leave your jump pack sitting on the car while it's sitting there running for like 4 or 5 minutes this helps surface charge the battery from your jump battery then after a few minutes ago by pull your jump pack off from the front of the car everything should be on and working and then maybe she can drive somewhere where she can use an outlet to plug up her trickle charger for a while after she gets the car running go looking for an outlet somewhere I mean I don't know what to tell you but you know I have several outside here friends of mine that apartment complexes have outlets outside not a whole lot of them and I'm sure they're not there for car charging but etc hell even if you have to pay somebody $2 to let your car sit there on the trickle charger for 2 hours something then go to AutoZone and get the battery tested tested because now you can open the trunk pull the plastic aside except the pieces wherever and literally have them clamped to the battery in the back and tell you that it's no good or it is good whatever they're 3 to 5K battery tester is generally pretty good and then go from there then if this battery is going to continuously do this while y'all are figuring out what to do at night you need to put a piece of towel down so that when you close the hatch it doesn't latch so in the morning you can connect right to the battery terminals on the battery rather than messing around at the jump spot up front.

 

if she drove home after the jump, it probably did not charge the 12v enough to start again (ready)
she will have to have it jumped again, then lwt it sit for 8 hours in ready. if that doesn't work, the battery may be toast.