Recently I drove the Tahoe about 40 miles. Everything was fine. Parked it, moved it a bit and moved it a bit again... I was loading up my son's appartment. Went to leave and it was totally dead. The only hint was that the DIC indicated the 12V battery was at 9Vdc. Called the tow truck. He jumped it with the portable pack. Nothing. Jumped it with his truck (2x12Vdc batteries for jumping vehicles. Nothing. Then towed it to the dealer.

What was the fix? A new 12Vdc battery. Best I can tell, the battery failed such that the jumps never raised the voltage to the level where the electronics came to life allowing the electric motors to start the engine.

I've never seen an engine fail in such a way where a jump wouldn't get it started or at least spinning. Granted the starter is 12Vdc in regular vehicles and the Tahoe Hybrid uses the 300Vdc battery pack to turn the electric traction motors.

Just offered this info as a heads up. For some, it may make sense to install dual batteries, isolated, so that one can be used if the other fails. The second could even be a small motorcycle or garden tractor size. Heck, it could even be a Nimh or LiPo given that you kept it charged. Since the 12Vdc battery is not used for the starter, it wouldn't take much to bring the vehicle back to life long enough to get it home or to a service station/battery shop.

Happy regenning,
Nick

 

The interior lights does tend to kill the 12v battery rather quickly when left on (say for roughly a little over half an hour) as I've experienced this multiple times while cleaning/detailing the inside of the vehicle which includes the doors opening and closing multiple times keeping the lights on the majority of the time...The lights seem to stay lit well enough that you can't tell until it's time to go start the engine.