Herbie

So do I. All I'm saying is that a lot of heartache, hassle and grief that some people seem to have could be avoided if they took responsibility, but if they prefer to make life harder for themselves then that's fair enough 😊

This is the thing I use and believe me, it makes it much easier

But this is my whole point Paul - it's not the car's fault, it's their own fault for not researching everything they can about a machine that's not like any other they've ever driven. This is the society we've made for ourselves - always someone else's problem/fault, never our own.

Surely people wouldn't be so silly? Even if they didn't know until they took one for a test drive, once they see the power meter and the section marked 'Charge' and the salesman starts talking about batteries and regenerative braking, surely they would think, "Owd up a fraction - this doesn't sound like any other car I've ever had" and go away to do some research? Now with that, we are in complete agreement. Having said that though, as Colin Barber said earlier in this topic, Toyota have been in the hybrid business for a long time and they must think that it's acceptable or they would have changed it by now.

I completely agree. The chances of someone searching for that specific item is almost nil. However, there's a very high chance that they would come across it whilst doing general research to see if a hybrid is the right thing for them. After all, no one would buy a full EV without doing research first because they are something new, out of the ordinary, and not like a conventional car - just like a hybrid. People may not do much research between, say, a Ford Fiesta and a Vauxhall Vectra; or a Kia Sportage and a Suzuki Vitara and so on. They may be different sizes and shapes but all are basically the same underneath the skin, whereas the difference between any of those and a hybrid is as different as night and day. People can't just expect to buy a hybrid and drive it/treat it/maintain it just like any other car they've ever had.

Anticipation is the key, so that you just brake very gently most of the time and maximise the power going back into the battery.

Unfortunately yes, it is. It took me a couple of hours fiddling about and when I finally did get it working I'd done so many things that I couldn't remember which one finally got it going - but it is doable. Alternatively, you could install VMWare or Oracle's Virtual Box and run either Win XP or Win 7 and put Techstream in that.

In theory yes, in reality no. The wattage generated by such small solar panels would fall far short of what's needed.

Usually a sign of the 12V battery on its way out. Other than that, what actual fault codes are you getting from the OBD2?

I can't remember what happened last week, never mind three years ago - that's when we traded it in for our current car 😊

I've just mentioned in another topic that whenever a new member turns up with a 2005 RX300 I'm always weirdly curious if it's my old one, GY05 HVK?

It's not a silly suggestion at all William. Sometimes it's the simplest, most basic of things that throw us - having an interest in things sometimes makes us start off looking too deeply for explanations.

I know I'm weird but whenever anyone joins the club announcing that they've just bought a 2005 RX300, I always wonder if it's my old one? Reg No. GY05 HVK.

No, you don't need to remove the battery from the car to charge it. Some people prefer to disconnect the negative cable while the charge it in the car but again, there's no real need to do so. Sorry Alan but I have no idea if your lawn mower charger would be able to do the job, although I'd almost certainly say no. You really need a modern 'intelligent' charger with regulated output, especially if you're going to leave the battery in the car to do it. The necessity for an overnight charge with a dedicated charger (rather than expecting the car to do it) is that the charger itself has circuitry in it that can also 'condition' the battery and it works out how best to do this. Another reason is that the DC/DC converter (or alternator in a conventional car) has to supply all of the electrical demands placed on the car when it's running and that demand can be very high, therefore not giving much to recharging the battery.

If it really is that low or even anywhere close to it, you really should be using a mains-powered battery charger on it overnight - it would be better for both the battery and the car.

The world would, indeed, be a far better place

There is absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with jump starting a hybrid in the traditional way, but never use a hybrid to provide the power to the car with the flat battery.

NEVER use a hybrid to jump start another car! You may be lucky but you may find it a very expensive thing to have done. Normal advice is to have the engine of the donor car running because the recipient car draws from the donor alternator. That's not a problem because alternators can provide more than 300A to crank the engine. Our hybrids do not have alternators. Instead, they keep the 12V battery charged by means of a DC/DC converter - and that device is not capable of supplying anywhere near 300A. As I said, you may be lucky but you may also hear a loud bang and lots of magic smoke come pouring out from your DC/DC converter. EDIT: You should be alright if the other car is a hybrid because they only take 20A or less to get the hybrid system into READY mode - but I can't be held responsible if it also fries the converter.

Agreed - it is a poor design. Agreed - you should be able to leave a modern car for a good number of weeks. The text in red is the most important. Hybrids are a 'relatively' new technology and they are very complex and they are certainly not the right car for some people and/or situations. Just because I can get a decent sound out of my home hifi doesn't mean I can walk in and operate the mixing desk at a live Rolling Stones gig tomorrow! It never ceases to amaze me that people squirt thousands, even tens of thousands of pounds at a car without doing research first, and expect it to operate and be like just any other car they've ever owned. Google (other search engines are available) makes it easier than ever before to find out a widget's strengths, abilities, downsides, and anything else you could ever wish to know about a given widget before buying it. Hardly a day goes by without someone in this club or the 'other' club on Facebook bleating about leaving their car for a couple of weeks and now the 12V battery is flat. It's just so unnecessary and could easily be avoided if they did a bit of research before buying the car. I passed my driving test in June 1975 and since that day I have never, ever, ever, bought a car 'unprepared'. In fact, my wife gets annoyed with me because when it's time for a change I usually have an idea of which make and model I'd like, so for about three or four months beforehand I get every book, magazine, search the Internet, join the Owners Clubs and basically drive her mad with constant talk of it until I either go ahead and get one or decide it's not for me after all and move on to some other make/model and start the process again. Instead of blaming someone or something else, people need to take responsibility for their own actions. There you go - rant over Oh and Paul, I'm not having a go at you mate, it's just that your post had all the salient points in it

The problem is that there has been no respect for the law or anything/anyone for so long now that it's just a way of life to some people. One of the cat theft videos on YouTube shows the 'lookout' stood in broad daylight, quite openly and brazenly holding a machete while his mate jacks up the car. Two minutes later, they're off and gone. I'm 63 and of an age/upbringing where if a police officer even looks in my direction I feel guilty. You only have to watch a couple of episodes of something like Police Interceptors or Road Wars to see just how little respect remains and how people openly treat the police with contempt. I'm afraid that the only way to be sure of not being a victim of cat theft is to buy an electric car because they don't have cats - otherwise, any car/cat is fair game to the scrotes of this world.

I agree, it would be far better to have a solution from the factory. But again, a simple reading of the owners manual - as we all should do when we get a new car - would prepare you for it. It's our responsibility to find out how our new machines work when we get them. I'm not singling you out in any way but to be honest, I'm shocked at just how many people in this owners club and our 'sister' club on Facebook just get a hybrid and have no idea how they work or what they should do differently to owning a conventional car. I sometimes feel like giving them a good shake and shouting "RTFM"

I think it's the "something like that" option and nothing to do with the hybrid battery or DC/DC converters at all. Here's a screenshot from the owner's club showing a page from the owner's manual. The way I interpret this (and if I'm wrong I'm happy to be corrected) is that it's nothing more than a voltage sensing circuit and a relay. A circuit monitors the state of charge of the 12V battery and if it drops to a preset threshold a relay opens to prevent it dropping any further, to the point where it won't start the car. You get in and discover that the car won't start so you push the battery reset button, which then closes the relay and the 12V battery can then use its remaining power to start the car in the normal fashion. The problem with this system (or at least the way that Hyundai have implemented it) is that it's a special 12V battery that has been incorporated into the high voltage battery, so no nipping down to Halfords or wherever to get a replacement if ever needed.

It's not "a weakness" but a design 'feature'. A conventional car needs a big beefy battery to supply the starter motor with 300A or more to crank the engine. Our hybrids don't have a starter motor. All the 12V battery does is to boot the computers, pressurise the brakes and get the hybrid system up and running to READY mode, which is our equivalent of a conventional car with its engine running and just sat idling. This takes less than 20A to achieve rather than the 300A or more of a traditional car. This benefits the manufacturer in a couple of ways: A smaller battery costs less so there's an immediate financial gain there A smaller battery weighs less, which helps to keep the overall weight of the car down, which in turn helps to keep emissions down to the ever-lowering limits set by various governments It doesn't matter to us as the owners of an individual car but if you multiply it up by thousands of cars you can see their logic. The downside for us as the owners is that we have to be aware of this and either use the car more or take precautions. The owner's manual does inform you of this, I believe If you need to leave the car at, say, an airport carpark for a couple of weeks then you should carry a jump start battery pack or jump leads etc., just in case. There will always be a drain on the 12V battery, even when you're fast asleep in bed at 3am, to feed the clock, the radio presets, keep the alarm armed and so on. I remember reading that it should be somewhere around 50mA or 0.05A. My RX has a battery of 51Ah and for the sake of this discussion we'll say that it's brand new and fully charged. 51Ah/0.05A = 1,020 hours (42.5 days or 6 weeks) to completely discharge. However, in reality it will not be brand new and fully charged so the age of it will play a part, and also, for the purposes of starting a car, it will effectively become useless well before that 6 weeks - so you may get 3 weeks out of it.

The traction battery should be able to stand for at least a couple of months without use and probably a lot longer than that - it's the 12V battery that will give you problems. Toyota's advice during the last lockdown when we really couldn't drive anywhere was to put the car into READY mode with the shift lever in 'P' for 60 minutes per week. The petrol engine will fire up as and when necessary to keep the battery topped up but don't leave the car unattended as someone could drive off in it. If you don't do it (or actually drive the car) the 12V battery will probably be dead within two to three weeks.

No, but being a bit thick, the thieves seem to think that because the petrol engine in a hybrid doesn't run all the time, the cat will be in better condition than those of non-hybrid cars. Cats can be damaged or poisoned by engine faults but leaving things like that aside, a cat is a cat is a cat. Going back to my chemistry lessons at school more than 40 years ago, a catalyst takes part in a reaction but is not changed or affected in any way by that reaction which should, in theory at least, mean that whether the cat is brand new or 20 years old, and whether it comes from a hybrid or a conventional car, the precious metals within it should be as good as the day it left the factory. Having said that, I don't know if the precious metals can suffer from any other form of degradation or age-related problems but my understanding is that they don't - I just wish the scrotes knew that and would start going for cars other than hybrids.