How to test the hybrid battery condition?

Without taking it apart there is none, but you can make observations on the behavior of the battery's SoC.

Two real easy things you will notice:

1. If it goes from full to nearly empty and back up again real fast, its on its last leg.
2. While stopped at a light, the motor should shut off after a few seconds and remain that way--provided that you aren't running the AC/heater and the motor is already warmed up. If it runs constantly, then its also an indication that its on the way out.

 

welcome!
you can find out the current condition, but like the doc, they can't tell you how you will be tomorrow.

 

Welcome!
@CooCooCaChoo & @bisco both are right. Best thing I can think of is try to take it for a nice long drive -- 20 miles or so if you can -- and watch the battery indicator to see how steady it is. But I'm not sure how to give you actual times for how fast it should charge or discharge because that will vary according to the load. But if it charges back up from 2 purple bars to almost full in a couple minutes or so, that's not a good sign.

 

^^^good idea^^^, reset the trip meter and see what mpg's you're returning at the same time.

 

not necessarily. weather, temp, grade, speed, etc.

 

Best way to test the battery is to bring a mini VCI setup and your laptop on a drive. Connect via the OBD then make sure min/max voltages are close at idle and watch for large differences during hard acceleration. If you have the same block showing up in the min voltage during accel and max voltage during charge mode, then the pack is on it's last legs.

 

The fact that your even asking about "EV MODE" tells me you know little about a Prius.What little "EV" there may be you may be able to limp along slowly for a very brief distance when the battery is full. Its meaningless to even bring it up how minor it may be. Its not a fixed distance it all depends how well the battery is charged and many other parameters like Bisco says. Not even worth discussing concerning buying a used Prius.
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But the best rule of thumb is if its a 10 year old Prius with 150-200k miles better put $2500 aside for a new hybrid battery. Unless you have electronics skills and like playing whack a mole with bad battery modules while your car sits dead in the driveway.

 

Xenonit
You could ask the owner if you can hook up Priidash to log a 10 mile urban trip and analyze the logs which cover approx. 60 different parameters which include soc,mpg,block voltages,
While you are there you should ask the seller for his permission to post them here.
If you speak nicely to the program's author he can help you with the analysis.

The latest incarnation of Priidash(3mfd) is easy to load, no more X-window/ server/ client installation and execution required.
Hardware requirements are still the same tho .. a speedy ELM device .. cheap clones need not apply.

ccdisce.

 

Hi guys, I'm trying to get a sense of how fast of a battery discharge/recharge I should be concerned about. In a 20 mile city trip I do see it dip to as low as 2 bars sometimes. It takes around 5-10 minutes of normal driving to recharge to about 3/4 or full.

The engine only runs on idle if it needs to recharge the battery from less than 2 bars, but this doesn't happen super often. Only if I take a bunch of short trips where I have to turn the car on and off in a quick succession.

Just got my 08 Prius so my warranty would cover through early 2018. Should I be concerned about anything? Would a hybrid mechanic be able to run some of the tests mentioned in this thread?

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

My Gen 2 would sometime drop to 2 bars right after leaving home on a hot day and it's been in the sun. I think that's pretty normal. The A/C is pulling quite a bit from the battery and, at the same time, the battery is giving a boost to the engine until it warms up -- and the battery is heat soaked and not getting a very cool air supply since the A/C hasn't warmed the car yet. Kind of a perfect storm scenario. So that will pull the battery down pretty quickly. I wouldn't be concerned unless it did that over and over as you drove, especially if the A/C isn't laboring. That's a sign of a battery on its way out.

 

City driving a g2 will reveal pretty wide charge dynamics. Not unusual to be sitting in drive thru with ac and lights on and battery goes real low to one purple. But then It should charge up to 2 or 3 blue bars in 2 miles of mild non stop driving.

Baseline your battery to see where your at. Find a nice lonely flat 3 mile stretch of highway. Get up to 50 miles and hour and set cruise control. On the mfd zero out the mileage by hitting reset button. After 3 or 4 miles of cc at 50 mph what does the mileage say. Should be at least 52 mpg.

My 10 year old g2 does that under those very controlled brief conditions. But normal everyday driving I'm usually at 43 mpgs. with soft tires and almost 40 weight oil. And regular commute at 75 mph.

 

your battery will not be covered by warranty unless it throws a trouble code. you would have the triangle of death on the dash. just drive it and enjoy.

 

Yeah pray for a failure. Oh to make it fail......

 

Thanks guys. From the sound of it my battery is probably healthier than I thought. Just wasn't sure what types of discharge/recharge patterns to look for in the first place.

Now how exactly does one go about destroying the battery in 1 year right before the warranty comes up?

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

What program would you use for that? I don't see the option of monitoring block voltages in Techstream.
Thanks.

 

...under HV battery........................

 

To ruin the battery put the car in neutral keep the AC on high and ignore the warnings on the dash to say to put it in gear or park.

 

What hardware do you use with Techstream? I'd like to be able to get live module/block voltage readouts myself!