I blew up the inverter????

I've been reading a little more about charging the battery and I'm confused again (sorry). Should I start another thread?

I'm just wondering about the "remove the battery and trickle charge at < 3A for 12 hours" vs jump-starting the car and leaving it in "Ready" mode for an hour. Do you have to keep it < 3A when jump starting? If you use another vehicle as a donor, do you start the donor car as usual to generate the charge? I realize this is what Ginny was doing (w/a charger instead of another vehicle), so -- it's subject to frying the internals. But if I can't wait 12 hrs and AAA comes along to jump the battery, they're just going to jump it like any other battery by starting up their vehicle, etc. Is this a high-risk thing to do?

Lastly, wouldn't *any* car sustain costly electrical damage for reversing the polarity?

 

I wouldn't start the other car. Starting the other car brings another regulator and charging system into the picture. It takes little power to jump start a Prius, so there is no need for the other one to be running.

As for your other question, yes, reversing the polarity of any modern car is going to be expensive. The Prius has more electronics, so there is more potential for damage, but it's a bad thing with any vehicle.

Tom

 

Thank you, Tom.

So does that mean if I call AAA and they bring a charger instead of using the truck battery to jump the Prius, they need to set the charger to 2.5 amps? Is that enough to at least start the Prius and allow the Prius to recharge itself in "Ready" mode for an hour? Or is that only enough for trickle-charging the battery directly for 12 hours?

If they used the truck battery I'd need to remember to tell them not to start up the vehicle.

As you can tell, I have zero knowledge of electronics ... and thus my overly cautious approach to all this. I *hope* this will be my last question for now, though I'm going to keep reading.

 

I agree with Tom that it is unnecessary to start the other vehicle when jumpstarting Prius. There's no need to worry about the 3A current limitation since this is a momentary situation, then the Prius system will take over.

If you reverse polarity when jumpstarting another vehicle, you'll destroy the alternator, but this probably costs $500 or less to replace. You might destroy electrical accessories that are not diode-protected - however most systems probably are protected (ECUs, stereo, nav.)

Regarding use of a charger, you definitely want to avoid the "boost" mode where 50A of current is provided to the battery for a short duration. The voltage has to be quite high to force 50A into the battery.

 

Hey PW, I have a 100A charger on my boat. How do you think that would work with the Prius battery?

Actually it would work fine as long as the configuration was set correctly. I have a 100A charger and a 100A alternator. Both are controlled by the same smart regulator system. It uses three step charging, where the initial charge rate is all that the battery can take, subject to a high limit setting. The second stage is the absorption stage, where charging voltage is kept constant by slowly lowering the charging current as the plates recharge deeper and deeper. When the charging rate drops below a low setting, the charger switches to the third and final stage, which is float charging. It maintains the float to keep the battery topped off.

Our boat battery is slightly bigger than the Prius auxiliary battery. If the boat battery were able to charge at the full 100A rate, it would still take over two and a half hours to completely recharge. I never let it discharge past half. Just like the HV battery in the Prius, we try to keep the charge/discharge cycle shallow. It's over ten years old now and still going strong.

Tom

 

One thing to keep in mind when thinking about the Prius 12v battery is that it's main function is to power up the computers and accessories before the car is in READY mode. Since it never actually runs a starter it has no need to produce high current so therefor you would never need a charger or jump pack to be set to a high current mode to jump start the car. My salvage 08 came with an extra dead 12v battery (the aftermarket alarm had drained it to 4.2 volts) and it took 3 days with my charger set to 2 amps to recharge it. I charged it with the battery in the car but with the terminals unhooked.

 

Glad you could restore that battery to service. Note that some chargers may refuse to deliver charging current to a battery with such low voltage.

 

Chriss do not trust gealer mechanics. I learned more from a manual than the dealer mech.For instance he didn't know that the rear hatc wouldn' open when 12 volt battery was dead. They said I had a bad inverter/converter at a cost of 4100 $. I called Steve at (autobeyours) with the scan info, He said that the parts would be under $450 I took it to him and he found tha other problems would mislead the inexpereinced. He found that the throttle body and a few other things was the problem. Steve has rebuilt 28+ prius's. He is honest and dependable

 

Never mind.