That 12v battery (again!)

[Andrew Harrison]

47 minutes ago, Countryside said:

Hasn’t the Mazda 2 got the same battery as the Yaris both built at same place ?

No that's the Mazda 2 Hybrid, two different cars same name

[Andrew Harrison]

11 minutes ago, CPN said:

Not strictly correct. Standard 12v battery construction = 6 cells each at 2.2v fully charged = 13.2v (obviously when brand new)

I stand corrected but got my info from Kwik Fit website 

[CPN]

8 minutes ago, Andrew Harrison said:

I stand corrected but got my info from Kwik Fit website 

That explains it... 😉

I got my information on the 1st year of my C&G back in 1967...🤣

[Chas G]

In hindsight I would not have bought the car if I had known of this problem which Toyota do nothing to deny.

Their advice to fit a solar or electric trickle charger or sit in ready mode for at least an hour every week confirms their is a problem with low use.. The advice I got from the toyota garage i have been using was fit some tails on the Battery and plug in regularly which is what I now do.

The only time I have seen my Battery voltage rise was after a journey which took about an hour and a half without stopping.

I have done everything I can reasonably do to mitigate an unresolvable problem. The smart entry is turned off, headlight sensor turned down to minimum, I have checked that the interior light goes off,  I don't turn the heating on unless absolutely necessary, the Dashcam has been removed and Toyota confirmed that the car is not connected to their cloud. 

I have the complimentary aa roadside assistance, i have been a member of rac for 53 years, i have a noco jump pack, ctec Battery charger,  and jump leads which are all kept in the front of the car.

For the moment I am happy to just plug in every time the car goes back in my garage and i have the necessary stuff to hopefully get the car started if the battery goes flat but I will definitely change the car to a non hybrid in the not too distant future. 

Paranoid perhaps but in 2022 I got carted off to hospital 8 times with heart problems. 

[Andrew Harrison]

11 minutes ago, Chas G said:

In hindsight I would not have bought the car if I had known of this problem which Toyota do nothing to deny.

Their advice to fit a solar or electric trickle charger or sit in ready mode for at least an hour every week confirms their is a problem with low use.. The advice I got from the toyota garage i have been using was fit some tails on the battery and plug in regularly which is what I now do.

The only time I have seen my battery voltage rise was after a journey which took about an hour and a half without stopping.

I have done everything I can reasonably do to mitigate an unresolvable problem. The smart entry is turned off, headlight sensor turned down to minimum, I have checked that the interior light goes off,  I don't turn the heating on unless absolutely necessary, the dashcam has been removed and Toyota confirmed that the car is not connected to their cloud. 

I have the complimentary aa roadside assistance, i have been a member of rac for 53 years, i have a noco jump pack, ctec battery charger,  and jump leads which are all kept in the front of the car.

For the moment I am happy to just plug in every time the car goes back in my garage and i have the necessary stuff to hopefully get the car started if the battery goes flat but I will definitely change the car to a non hybrid in the not too distant future. 

Paranoid perhaps but in 2022 I got carted off to hospital 8 times with heart problems. 

 

[Chas G]

34 minutes ago, Tommy X said:

These 13 pages of battery woes could be added to the 88 pages of battery woes and make it over a century break 

Are you including all the posts here on the Chr, Rav4, Corolla hybrid forums?.......may as well copy and paste the 600+ ones on the toyota.co.uk website then we will have a full house. 

Good job the new Aygo isn't a hybrid......but wait a minute, surely they are packed with candy crush and loads of other useful stuff so maybe they will be along soon.

[Andrew Harrison]

Ridiculous that you have to contend with all that, how many thousands of owners are having to put up with this with a new expensive car.

[CPN]

2 minutes ago, Andrew Harrison said:

Ridiculous that you have to contend with all that, how many thousands of owners are having to put up with this with a new expensive car.

What is more ridiculous John/Andrew(?) is that there is no mention of the many thousands of other Yaris/Yaris Cross owners who don't even know that this problem is "a thing"!

18 minutes ago, Chas G said:

I have done everything I can reasonably do to mitigate an unresolvable problem. The smart entry is turned off, headlight sensor turned down to minimum, I have checked that the interior light goes off,  I don't turn the heating on unless absolutely necessary, the dashcam has been removed and Toyota confirmed that the car is not connected to their cloud.

If you don't mind me saying Chas, that is ridiculously paranoid and it is sad that you are depriving yourself of what the car actually is! A really nice car!

18 minutes ago, Chas G said:

For the moment I am happy to just plug in every time the car goes back in my garage and i have the necessary stuff to hopefully get the car started if the battery goes flat but I will definitely change the car to a non hybrid in the not too distant future.

...also sad...

18 minutes ago, Chas G said:

Paranoid perhaps but in 2022 I got carted off to hospital 8 times with heart problems. 

Understandable but surely you didn't have to rely on driving yourself on those occasions?

[hind]

54 minutes ago, CPN said:

So, your battery must have been really bad...

If you manage to press the Start button and then it fails with too low voltage, then you are stuck in a loop from which only jump starter or another Battery can break, because the regular charger, even the CTEK, would be unable to overcome the high current when all systems start up (which reaches up to 15 amps). So the voltage drops to 3V, the charger pumps it to around 6-7V, the systems wake up, draw more than the charger can supply and everything dies again. That's why I didn't want to check if it would start 😉 

I guess this might have affected the Battery in the first place (this happened to me last time after 2.5 week of parking) so now it lost about 2/3 of it's capacity and when flying out of the country, I have to trust my old diesel which stays for 2-3 weeks between rides and starts every time - with a black cloud of unburnt oil from the exhaust 😛 

[Chas G]

@CPN "What is more ridiculous John/Andrew(?) is that there is no mention of the many thousands of other Yaris/Yaris Cross owners who don't even know that this problem is "a thing"!

Probably because they use their cars enough to keep the Battery charged.

I can confirm that my trips to hospital were all 999 ambulance and also that the Toyota Yaris Cross is a good car but so was my ultra reliable 2020 Yaris Y20 which required no input from me other than an annual service and petrol. 

I attach photo just taken of my plug in hybrid suitably plugged in and showing "all systems go" on the Ctek charger.😁

you can see how tight it is the garage. Good job i have lost some weight. I went to the doctor some time ago and she said I was 105kg and clinically obese. Horrified I said I wanted a second opinion and she said OK, you are a fat bustard 

[CPN]

12 minutes ago, Chas G said:

...so was my ultra reliable 2020 Yaris Y20 which required no input from me other than an annual service and petrol. 

Surely that was also a hybrid, wasn't it?

[jthspace]

1 hour ago, Chas G said:

If it was the Multu battery that was the problem wouldn't Toyota have changed supplier.

I have seem loads of posts from owners of hybrids from different manufacturers complaining of the same problem. I have no reason to believe the other manufacturers are also using Multu batteries.

I never had an issue with the original Battery, it was coming up to winter and for £70 it seemed a very small outlay (0.0035% of purchase price) to help ensure I wouldn't be left with an issue when I needed the car.  

There may be a few people who have had 12v Battery issues part of the 90,000+ Yaris Hybrids sold up to 2021 but, in general, you ever only hear the complaints on forums, not "happy campers" who have never suffered a flat 12v Battery.

Toyota signed a contract for x number of batteries and the contract is being fulfilled. They have a relatively small number of complaints so why change supplier? I don't know what price they got per unit, but it will be substantially less than £70, probably half that.

Hybrids are different technology and have to be treated slightly differently to previous technology.  I, and others (and you) decided to change our 12v batteries in the hope that it will reduce risk - as far as I'm concerned my risk mitigation has worked. Has it for you?

I don't charge/battery mind the 12v at all, my usage seems to be OK. I've got an emergency boost in the glove box if its needed.  When we go away in the MX5's for more than a week, I'll leave the Yaris on a Minder.

[Roy124]

5

2 hours ago, Chas G said:

 

Their advice to fit a solar or electric trickle charger or sit in ready mode for at least an hour every week confirms their is a problem with low use.. The advice I got from the toyota garage i have been using was fit some tails on the battery and plug in regularly which is what I now do.

.........

I have done everything I can reasonably do to mitigate an unresolvable problem.

,.........

I have the complimentary aa roadside assistance, i have been a member of rac for 53 years, i have a noco jump pack, ctec battery charger,  and jump leads which are all kept in the front of the car.

.......

Paranoid perhaps but in 2022 I got carted off to hospital 8 times with heart problems. 

Definitely overkill, except for that last paragraph.  There is no substitute from a reliable mode of transport immediately available 

A few months back we, in East Midlands,  were offered an ambulance from Birmingham  and a 4 hour wait.

The only assured transport is one of which you have direct control. 

When we needed assured transport our car was garaged and plugged into a sump heater and trickle charger with a snatch cable.  We had a second vehicle that would travel behind us within 2 minutes. 

[Chas G]

1 hour ago, CPN said:

Surely that was also a hybrid, wasn't it?

No. Very last of the 1.5 petrol cars

[hind]

42 minutes ago, jthspace said:

They have a relatively small number of complaints so why change supplier? I don't know what price they got per unit, but it will be substantially less than £70, probably half that.

Well, something did happen. It looks like that just recently, Toyota Poland managed to change the Battery testing procedures

Quote

The result of the talks between the Polish representative office of the brand and the Japanese headquarters of Toyota is a new procedure for checking the condition of the battery, prepared in Poland (taking into account our climatic conditions), which will be valid throughout Europe.

Mularczyk emphasizes that it has already been delivered to all authorized Toyota service centers in our country. We therefore encourage owners of cars affected by the problem to contact the dealership and perform a battery test according to the new procedure. However, when making an appointment, it is worth asking whether the service itself already has a new battery tester.

Full source (automatically translated to English): https://motoryzacja-interia-pl.translate.goog/samochody-uzywane/porady/news-kupila-nowke-za-100-tys-zl-auto-nie-odpala-wiec-do-pracy-cho,nId,7305589?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp 

[Chas G]

2 minutes ago, Roy124 said:

5

Definitely overkill, except for that last paragraph.  There is no substitute from a reliable mode of transport immediately available 

A few months back we, in East Midlands,  were offered an ambulance from Birmingham  and a 4 hour wait.

The only assured transport is one of which you have direct control. 

When we needed assured transport our car was garaged and plugged into a sump heater and trickle charger with a snatch cable.  We had a second vehicle that would travel behind us within 2 minutes. 

The beauty of getting older - everything starts to fall off and conversations with friends can centre around medical matters.

[Roy124]

Chas, how true.

[Chas G]

29 minutes ago, hind said:

Well, something did happen. It looks like that just recently, Toyota Poland managed to change the battery testing procedures

Full source (automatically translated to English): https://motoryzacja-interia-pl.translate.goog/samochody-uzywane/porady/news-kupila-nowke-za-100-tys-zl-auto-nie-odpala-wiec-do-pracy-cho,nId,7305589?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp 

Thanks for your post. Maybe I should book a holiday in Cracow again.....but this time stay off the slivovitch.

Sounds a bit more hopeful but it would be helpful to know if the solution is just to change the Battery or whether there is a software issue. I certainly wouldn't mind stumping up for a new Battery if that definitely sorts out the problem.

Ps I did place an order with the rac but at the last minute, after waiting in all day, they gave me a lot of excuses and recommended I take it to toyota and refunded the £148ish I had paid.

[jthspace]

24 minutes ago, Chas G said:

Ps I did place an order with the rac but at the last minute, after waiting in all day, they gave me a lot of excuses and recommended I take it to toyota and refunded the £148ish I had paid.

😳

Offer I made still stands..... free tea.

[Mojo1010]

I bet Chas already got a few of those charged up mugs 🙂

[hind]

Even if they exchange the damaged Mutlu to a new Mutlu, that's still a win for the users who 

a) already damaged their batteries, but only to some extent - ie. they lost the capacity, yet the usually tested params: max current, internal resistance and voltage are still inside "acceptable" criteria. That's the #1 issue because as mentioned before, for hybrid vehicles, the Battery has to give just 20 amps - not the hundreds. So after recharging (or boosting) even very damaged Battery would be able to start the car in a workshop.

b) got their batteries from a faulty batch (if there was any) and I expect it to be true, because I've seen a case where a guy driving ~100 km every day was not able to start the vehicle after 2 years. 

I've observed something similar (point a.) in my diesel Ford Focus. The capacity after 7 years of usage dropped to mere 3Ah (from designed capacity of 64Ah), the voltage was around 12V, yet it was still capable of cranking 1.6 TDCI engine. When tested in a Battery shop, it still produced around 400 amps (when new, should deliver 640A), so that was outstanding achievement - yet when left for more than a few days, it was impossible to start because the capacity quickly depleted - the installed alarm drew some miliamps and it was enough to discharge the battery in a matter of a week. 

[Chas G]

It is noticeable by the low number of posts that the 12 volt Battery is much less of a problem in the rav4, chr and Corolla. I would be interested to know whether they have the "M" batteries or a different make.

[hind]

They are bigger - LN1 size and 45Ah capacity. Yep, still Turkish. There is no difference in "starting" a hybrid in Corolla, RAV4 or Yaris, just a matter of powering up the HV side. That's why upgrading to higher capacity in Yaris solves (more or less) the problem.

[Chas G]

8 hours ago, mr_blibby said:

Hi... In the process of replacing my Arona and was about to press the button on the new Premiere version, but being put off by all the battery issues ... dont do many long runs and prob less than 5k a year, so could be an issue for me ...  

I found these videos useful in explaining the issue if not already been posted

 

I found both videos interesting but they made me wonder:-

1. First video. If I pay Halfords to fit a Battery. How do I know if it is any good even though the voltage is OK

2. Second video. I would be interesting to see how he used the information he gleaned from his hour cleaning the car and observations while driving. He mentioned a link top right but I couldn't see it.

Thanks 

Chas

[Derek.w]

I sorry to to say if you doing low milage or a lot of nightime driving then you have to charge the Battery now and then like once a week or fit a solar charger saying that I just refitted my solar charger but its not working so have swopped it out for a less powerful unit that I also have.