I am a Prius owner who will not be using it during this winter. I will be starting it every 3 weeks. Will this be enough not to have the battery die?? The car will be in L.I. New York

If you can, attach a trickle charger to the 12v battery. You can then ignore your prius for up to two months. The Main battery doesn't loose charge quicly, but the 12v can.

Turning the car on will qickly recharge the 12v from the main battery, but you will need to run the ICE in park until the main battery is charged to the green. You may have to start the defroster to keep the ICE on.

JeffD

should be, but call the dealer and see what the party line is, if its not in the manual. 2 weeks may be safer. NimH batteries have a pretty high self-discharge rate compared to lead-acid or Ni-Cad.

Where on LI? I grew up in West Islip.

Also, if you have smart entry/smart start, be sure to disable it by pushing the button below the steering wheel. Leaving it on will cause the battery to discharge faster. When you return, you can still unlock the car by pushing the fob button or using the key.

-Justin Fons
www.MilwaukeeHybridGroup.com

Jeff thanks. I will look into the trickle battery. I am a newbie with the car what is ICE. You have helped me much more than the dealer or anyone. KD

ICE = internal combustion engine.

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The best thing to do is bring it to AZ, where it'll stay nice and warm for ya. You don't want the car to live in a freezing cold garage in NY all winter long, do you? I promise to start her every day, just to keep the batteries charged, of course...

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From the wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NiMH

I'd be interested in what Toyota thinks the proper procedure is for long term storage.

Toyota recommends running the Prius 1/2 hr on monthly intervals, IIRC. Twelve volt batt definitely requires maintainence. High voltage have been left 6 months with no problems.

Did you know you can charge the HV to its max (80%) by force charging? You are in "D" and stepping on both pedals, not moving. I would do this before an extended shutdown.

DAS

Don't trickle charge the 12v battery. That will do more damage than good. If you intend on leaving the car stored that long running it every 2 weeks will keep the 12v battery going. However if you insist on being overly cautious get a battery tender. This is a much more sophisticated device. It will charge the battery until it si full and then turn off. It monitors battery voltage and will charge when the battery level starts to drop. This prevents overcharging, which can seriously damage a battery. Trickle charges continuously charge a battery which means that at some point that battery is going to be overcharged. Overcharged batteries can generate a great deal of heat, they can blow their electrolyte and in general anything that causes batteries to heat up or loose electrolyte are a bad thing.

It has been said:
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2005 Prius, Melinium Silver over gray, package 5 (AI)