I believe it has been discussed a while back, but I couldn't find the thread any more.

We will be out of country for about 3 weeks. Our Prius - Woody has to stay in the garage during this time. I do not plan to have anyone to wake him up or take him out for a walk.

Is there anything I need to do to make sure when we return he can still start ?

Woody is a 2007 Touring Prius.

Any information / experience regarding this topic will be most welcome and greatly appreciated !

 

See if you can get a battery tickle-charger or minder for the 12 VDC battery. Three weeks is nothing but some of the background loads could lead to a low or dead battery. A tickle charger is cheap insurance. As for the traction battery (that HUGE beastie,) don't even worry about it unless your talking about a year or more.

You could put a "force charge" on the traction battery if you want (stomp on the brake while flooring the gas pedal.) It will still have a slow, self-discharge but at least you'll know you did everything that could be done.

Last, I would sprinkle rodent bait around the car. We had one south of here that had a wire cut by rodent teeth. Rodent bait solves the problem.

GOOD LUCK!
Bob Wilson

 

I am worry for the car parts, battery, and the engine since you'll going to leave Woody for 3 weeks,

 

I've left our TCH for a month with no ill effects. After getting back from our long vacation, the traction battery SOC was showing the same as it was when I parked it. The only thing I did was disable the smart key sensors before leaving.

I imagine the Prius will behave the same.

 

The SKS will shut itself off after several days of non-use (just make sure both fobs are at least 100 ft from the car). If your 12V battery is in good shape there should be no problem with a 3 week rest. I'd get a "battery tender" if you wanted to leave it for a few months. That or disconnect the -ve cable. If you do disconnect you will have to reprogram the radio pre-sets and the front window automatic roll-down (it's in the owners manual).

 

That's kinda confusing info - looking at the diagrams, the 12V battery is charged by a DC-DC converter from the Traction Battery - hard to imagine it could EVER run down. YET, our office Prius would not boot (and was jump-started) after a couple days. Don't know anything was left on - since it doesn't even have a Wireless Fob - government model. Anybody know different?

 

The "traction battery" is fully disconnected when you shut the car off, so it WILL NOT charge the 12V battery.

That "government" car doesn't have SKS. Still works the same re battery discharge. The SKS system doesn't "drain the battery" as so many think. It does increase the parasitic drain on the battery a bit. If it can see the FOB when parked it will increase the drain more (SKS car only).

Because the Prius has a smallish 12v battery we see more of them damaged in shipping to North America. They take perhaps a week sitting in the lot in Japan (until there's enough for the boat or until the boat is ready). Then another 10 days or so on the boat. Then another week or so in the lot in North America. Then perhaps two weeks at the dealer. That's a long time for the parasitic drain to work, with probably only a few minutes of running between - not enough to charge the battery. The new battery may not have been fully charged either when installed into the new car. If the battery looses enough charge it will suffer some damage (loss of capacity). The customer then will find it will go dead sitting for a shorter period than expected.

This is what I think is the reason we see so many posts of "my battery went dead while parked for (insert time interval here).

 

My 04 Prius stays parked outside in front of my house. For each of the four winters that I have had the car I drive it only one or two days each month during our cold Colorado winters and I have had NO problems. However it usually needs a car wash!!

During the other months I drive it about 1000 miles each month.

 

Ah HA! We've found a Prius driver who only drives about 9,200 miles per year!! Sorry, this is a bad joke first told by "CNW Marketing" who in their "Dust-to-Dust" report claimed Prius are only driven 9,200 miles per year and would only last 12 years. The Toyota answer is located here:
http://www.toyota.com/toyotalife/hybrid/article.html

Bob Wilson

 

My reply to not driving a Prius for three weeks concerned my doing so many times with no precautions at all and normal start-ups after long delays.

Since our Colorado winters are cold and snowy, my wife and I travel to tropical locations during our wintertime. We just remove the accumulated snow on the Prius upon our return.

And I am not sure if I get 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' from Bob Wilson regarding my accumulated miles. At my four years of ownership time I will have about 30K--an average of "ONLY" 7500 miles per year.