Does anyone know how long the cycle times are on the prime? I accidentally left the car in ready mode in a closed garage .. I know it turns off after an hour and will run the engine to keep the catalytic converter at temperature.. I know this is a very bad idea, I'm just concerned how much CO was released into the house
The age and loss of capacity of hybrid battery defines how often the engine ran... In your case the engine probably didn't run for very long. Car exhaust has a pretty distinctive smell. How air normally circulates in the garage as relates to your house defines how much you'll smell it. But that's all in the past. I'm sure you already ventilated all the vehicle exhaust out, right?
Welcome Satsuke2; An attached garage that's built to minimum federal standards, should have vents - so exhaust fumes can escape rather than get pushed into the living areas of your house. Unless you keep the door from the garage to the living area propped open.
A family member did that wit their car once, we are very lucky their garage was drafty. I put a CO alarm in our garage right when we bought the place. Since then I added an automatic door closer to the door between the garage and the house. They're required for new-builds in my area but it seemed like a very sensible thing to retrofit.
That matches an experience with our very first Prius. We were eccentric enough to put a CO meter under the tailpipe for a relatively long time to see what would happen. It stayed at 0 the whole time.
Even though a Prius produces negligible CO, we in California still have to get a smog test every two years. Thank you, SMOG test center lobby. In the old days, this would involve putting a sensor in the tailpipe and forcing the engine to run at a particular RPM. This clearly did not work for hybrids, so now they just plug in an OBD2 device and read out the the smog stats from the car's ECU. And charge $95 for the effort.
The point of the test is not to give you a pat on the back for having a car that works right. Or to drain your wallet to cover the process. It exists to spot cars that have fallen out of good repair and are producing more pollution than they should.
When I worked in an auto shop in the 1980's in California that smog machine required alot of work... If a Prius only needs a printout of data via the OBD2 port then its not ok to charge $95 for something that could be done in a matter of seconds if DMV worked with a company on an app to do that. As always, when it comes to voices arguing the importance of keeping vehicle costs down there's nothing but the sound of silence.
Ahh; what about the physical inspection. Deleted CAT; spark plug anti-fouler attached to the downstream sensor, ect.... They gotta eat too and that smog machine isn't cheap, nor is rent and utilities..... FWIW: a new car gets it's first smog after 8 years. If the car changes hands, it's smogged every two years.
