Battery Display Charge/Discharge Rapidly

This is quite normal behaviour in the morning, especially on a 9 year old battery

 

IN summer the A/C is going to drain batt. One thing you can do if let the car warm up 2-3 minutes the engine will come on and then go off, now go.

 

No, that did not hurt your battery.

shortly before the dash lights up like a Christmas tree.

Have you heard the battery fan running?

You live in a hot climate that is hard on batteries. All of these batteries are getting close to failing. Buy a Mini VCI cable and do a charge and discharge test.

Brad

 

That's normal. What you should look for is if the battery charges or drains too fast or if you can't go about a mile in EV mode.

Something odd that I've noticed is that if the battery is green, and I drive at 65mph, I can go further before the battery turns blue when compared to driving at 55mph with the same green battery.

 

on the verge of battery failure.

 

I have a similar issue* and am still trying to get to grips with the explanations given.

But I can still drive >1km on EV with ease, the Prius does this all the time out of its own "free will" on a straight ~2km long road while on cruise control (30mph) and it drops only 1 or 2 bars. That's what puts my mind at ease.

* the part I am most concerned about is that during the first minute or two the HV battery drops FASTER then it would have had I been driving in pure EV, yet the combustion engine is ALSO using loads of petrol at the same time...

 

In the first 50 seconds after start-up, the car is propelled purely by the electric motor (under 42 km/h and no request for power) and during this time the ICE is running with a modified valve setting to allow the ICE to warmup faster. While in this mode the ICE is not able to provide much power and is why the electric motor is used to propel the car. This is known as stage 1 of the hybrid warm up. Once the engine coolant is at about 45℃ (IIRC), the warm up cycle moves to stage 2, where the valve timing returns to normal and the ICE can take over propelling the car. You can read in more detail the 5 stages of hybrid warm up by clicking on the link in my signature.

All in all, your car sounds perfectly healthy.

I think you will find that the HV battery will drop at the same rate if you force the car into EV by pressing the EV button and drive for a minute or so - gentle acceleration and do not exceed 40 km/h. I do not recommend doing this on a regular basis as it can be very hard on the HV battery.

 

Yes this is a problem with the battery, but it is something you can address. When the battery display drops rapidly fto empty and the car force charges, this is what is called a negative recalibration. It it is the first tangible sign of a degraded battery that is starting to fail. Your most cost effective course of action is to recondition the pack with one of our Prolong Reconditioning Packages. If you treat the battery soon enough, you will most likely be able to recover the pack and enjoy a couple years or more of life extension from your current battery. We have sold a close to a thousand of these to Toyota owners who have had very good results extending the life of their hybrid batteries.