My car did that HV battery rebalance thing again

Like many Priuschatter's, your '01 seems to have an opinion as to whether grid charging is legit or not!

 

If you get a chance, perhaps monitor the low and high module voltages?

Bob Wilson

 

Its great that you let it cycle thru. I never had the courage to do that.

 

It would make sense that it does this from time to time. I for one noticed a few months ago, that my vehicle let the battery fully charge for the first time ( I am the only one that drives it). Looked at my display and there it was, all bars full. Never happened before, and hasn't happened since.

 

Mine went up to a 100% charge last weekend when I was using the "B" gear down a fairly long hill and then went down to about 3 bars in town. It stayed there for a little while and then went back up to about 80%. I see people on here that say they have never had their charge up to 100% but mine has been there about 3 times in the about 3 months I have had my 2010 basic Prius and I have only put about 1500 miles on it. I have read that it should operate at about 80% so I don't know if mine was going through balancing and I don't know if going to 100% so often is good for it. I have to go down the long hill to get to town and I always use the "B" to keep from riding my brakes.

 

Are you sure it was 100% charge and not just 'full battery icon' which is just 80%? How did you measure it?

@Eclipse1701d what you are describing is not cells balancing. Battery icon bars full is only 80% SOC.

 

Yes, it was just all the bars, I thought that meant 100%. Thanks for the info. Do you have to put some kind of tester on them to detect 100%. As you can tell I'm a newbie to this and not very techno oriented.

 

I just had another thought is that if that's 80% my bars are usually at about what looks like 6 bars if there are 10, is that Ok? Thanks.

 

6 bars (out of 8) is roughly 55-66.5% state of charge and is the happy spot the car attempts to maintain most all of the time. Have a look at this SOC chart: http://privatenrg.com/ComplexSOC.jpg

 

I see, thanks a lot.

 

You need special external equipment to see this, like the one the O/P used.

 

Don't have vci or scangauge. I drive about 17,000 miles a year, and at just under 42,000 miles, the battery indicator went full, for the first time. So, I digress. It was not 100%. I just found it odd that it indicated full battery. My driving style and location hasn't changed, so that was new for me. It was not caused by a hill, or out of the ordinary regen... As I continued to drive, it indicated full battery for a little over a minute. Has not returned to that condition, since.

 

My light-blue 2002 finally kicked the bucket this week after my college-age niece ran it into a guardrail (she's fine and no other cars were involved). So reminiscing these last 24 hours, stumbled across this old thread and yeah, remember observing this back in 2010 on my ScanGauge and not knowing what was going on... I guess it's pretty rare to actually witness one of these events.

Runaway charging event? | PriusChat

 

Sorry to hear of your 02's demise. Maybe you can find another?

 

Well just by total coincidence, I happened to buy a Tesla Model S last week for myself, so I'm good for now

But yes, my niece is the one who's car-less, and while we're debating whether she deserves a replacement car at all, the first thing I did was look on Craiglist as I knew there'd be a bunch of 2001-2003's available here in California for relatively cheap. And they basically can last forever with proper care and maintenance, not to mention I now can recognize most of the common failures to get the car back in service. Not to mention it's proven to be very safe for the occupants in a crash as well, which gives us some reassurance. So either another 1st gen Prius, or maybe a Leaf...

 

Some senior lessons I've learned about cars for young people.

If they're buying a car themselves, I don't offer advice unless asked.

If I'm buying it for them, my choice is the final vote. If the kid needs a car, a Corolla or Gen 1 Prius will do. Cheap to insure, own, license, maintain. And they kinda have character. If I buy the car for them, I expect them to insure maintain the car--and provide proof when I ask for it. It;s in the kids name, but I keep the title so they can't sell the car or get a title loan on it.

I don't do cosignatures. I'm not a bank.