MPG Decline/Bleed Overnight?

Bisco, so that was $260 total? I had another dealer just quote me $300 total, so that's not too bad I guess.

I called Toyota Factory Warranty, who told me the following:

-Installing a non-Toyota 12v battery (i.e. Optima) in my Prius would void the Hybrid warranty (150k miles/10 years in CA).
-Having a non-Toyota dealer mechanic install a Toyota battery would void the Hybrid warranty.


Any thoughts on that?

 

Update - brought the car to the dealer and had then install a new Toyota 12v battery. Total was $317 with tax. I figured it wasn't so much more expensive than my mechanic, so it made sense to just have the dealer do it.

I'll post again after seeing whether the "MPG bleed" still happens...

 

Good news. When I parked the car for the night after the new battery install, the MPG counter read 50.6 MPG. This morning on start, it read 50.6 MPG. This is especially encouraging, because the new battery install reset my MPG computer to zero, meaning there were only 14 miles driven when I parked it last night. This means the 50.6 MPG number is still very volatile; so in theory, even a slight MPG bleed would have greatly affected the reported 50.6 MPG this morning.

I will continue to keep an eye on these numbers for a few more days, and post results again, because it would seem to be a very good bit of info to confirm.

 

So, after having closely observed the "MPG bleed" behavior of my Prius over the 11 days since my new 12v battery was installed, I can say that the problem has entirely disappeared. No more MPG bleed happening. The MPG number exactly matches at night parking / next morning starting. And even spanning 2 days of having been parked.

So, from my perspective:
MPG Bleed = get a new 12v battery

Thanks again to one and all.