I haven't checked the manual to see if it addresses this issue, but the other day I almost ran out of gas. What happens if you do? Will the TCH allow you to drive on the battery/electric mode only? And if so, how far can you go on electric mode assuming your battery is 80% charged in order to get to the nearest gas station?

From what I've read it is a HUGE NO - NO to drive the TCH on battery power alone. My guess is that is will let you do it but you will be damaging the battery in the process. I'd rather pay for a cab to and from a gas station than pay the big $$$$ to replace the battery.

if it damaged the battery wouldn't the warranty cover it?

I doubt it. I'm sure running out of gas and driving the car on the battery alone would void the warranty. I don't know this for sure but I'll bet it would.

Don't forget that even though the gas gauge reads 'E' and the car display says you have zero miles left on your current tank of gas that you probably have a 2+ gallons left in the tank.

Would you be covered if you ran the engine continuously if you leaked out all of your oil??

NO !

You should be able to go a couple of miles slowly (under 40). If the battery state of charge gauge gets down to one or two bars and you aren't pulling into the station, it would probably be best to stop and bring gas to the car. Just keep it slow and keep some charge on the battery and you will be fine and not void your warranty.

My guess is that the bigger problem is emptying your fuel system and running your fuel pump dry, not damaging your battery. The fuel pump shouldn't be running while you are running electric, but it will need to reprime itself while dry after putting fuel in. That is, once you run out of gas, most of the damage to follow is probably unavoidable, save for running your batteries too low.

-- Alan

Wow, I know that honda will cover the battery if damaged from driving while out of gas. My friend has done it to his 05 civic.

if car gets low on oil a RED light comes on telling to to stop. If you run out of gas you get a YELLOW warning light.

If toyota built the car so that you can destroy the battery by simply running out of gas then I am speachless. How hard would it be to have the car stop when it runs out of gas? The fact that it runs on batteries when out of gas implies that someone created code for the computer for this condition. Someone took the time to ensure the car would work with no gas and just battery power. To me this says that if you use this you are not voiding your warranty.

Hybridriver (Edmunds' TCH forum) did an experiment on running out of gas and posted it. It was reposted here:

http://www.greenhybrid.com/discuss/s...ead.php?t=8510

Electric fuel pumps are not designed nor meant to be run dry. They cavitate and that causes damage to the pump. So running out of gas intentionally is inviting damage to your fuel pump. That said, I had a '04 Prius and before the ECU update to address the issue it hic-cup'd and got into s situation where the ICE did not start (or the Prius thought the ICE did not start). The faulty ECU firmware gave up trying to start the ICE. I was on full charge of the traction battery and was able to drive about two miles on the traction battery alone at which time I was able to pull into a subdivision and call the dealer. At that point the state of charge (SOC) of the traction battery was about 2 bars (25% approx). So my guess is I could have gotten another mile out of the battery before it was depleted. The would be a total of 3 miles. I have no reason to believe it would be much different on my TCH. I've watch the battery level indicator while driving on electric mode.
I'd therefore estimate the traction battery would take the car 3 to 4 (max) miles on electric power alone alone.

The battery won't wear out. Really. "We think it's a life-of-the-vehicle battery," "We don't expect to have any claims for battery failure."


A hybrid battery has an easy life compared to the battery in your laptop, cell phone, or digital camera, which may last 500 to 2,000 charge-discharge cycles. Most stressful on the battery is the top and bottom 20 percent of the charge cycle, meaning from 80 percent to fully charged, or from 20 percent down to discharged. Hybrid car batteries live in the middle 60 percent and are actively monitored, cooled (by fans in the battery packs), and not subjected to charge/discharge in temperature extremes. That's why a hybrid car's gasoline engine may start up immediately in cold weather whereas in warm weather, it would drive off under the electric motor.


Some first-generation Prius owners have hit 200,000 miles, and some current-model Priuses (the ones with the split back window) are hitting 100,000 miles, Toyota says, all with no battery failures. According to a Toyota statement: "We have not had any service replacements, warranty or beyond, for decreased capacity." This seems to mean that if there have been replacements, they haven't been because of tired batteries. Toyota warrants the hybrid battery for 10 years or 150,000 miles. If you needed a new battery, and it wasn't covered under warranty (say if you crashed the car), it would cost just north of $2,000.

TCH-43mpg
VW TDI--48
08 LS 600 HL-20
08 LX 470-16