Signs/hints that your hybrid battery was on its last legs

NiMH electrolyte has a problem with crystallizing as it ages, which means it can store less electrons, as low as 50% of orginal capacity before car gives warning lights. It's easily eliminated by deep cycling the pack several times. Back in the 90's laptops used to run on NiMH and had this problem. Lithium batteries chemistry resolved it for the most part, but if you have a really old lithium battery for your laptop it can charge and discharge quickly too.

 

You don't know how to use a phone app? But you used to run sound boards at concerts and used to be an electrician? It seems pretty clear that your avoidance of learning to figure stuff out is a problem, not your actual skill level.

 

The greatest motivation in consuming information on hubs like Priuschat is to learn what you don't know and go as deep as your interests would allow, in order to fix your vehicle. If one wants simplified information, a dealership will make it easy. But you sure as hell won't be learning anything interesting about how your vehicle works from them.

Forums like Priuschat are entirely run by knowledgeable folks who have an interest in sharing their knowledge and wisdom with others, free of charge, akin to the open source movement for software. The last thing you want to tell these folks is that you have no interest in learning and want simplified answers. A horse can be brought to the water. It's up to the horse to drink.

 

Put salt in the oats, and you can make it drink.....

 

When a battery has little capacity left it takes an equally small time to discharge or recharge it. Remember the car has a big charger and uses advanced monitoring of the battery. When a battery has a failed cell or two it may never reach fully charged. So we are talking weak (low capacity) versus failed (bad cells).

 

Here's an example; the traction pack is made up of approximately 28 individual batteries (modules) chained together. You get a couple of weak modules, they won't take a charge as well as the rest of the modules. Conversely, they'll also output less than the other modules in series - ergo faster than normal discharge and recharge cycles. The charging ECU treats the 28 modules as a single battery, which we refer to as the traction pack.

 

I was looking at the soc % via obdc on my new Gen5. It goes up and down a lot. Perhaps there is a graphic on the car's instrument panel as well, but I haven't looked for it.