My Camry Hybrid’s starter battery dies. This has happened the third time since I purchased it on 11/30/06. I drive it daily to the train station which a little more than 7 miles from where I live. It sits there for 10-12 hours and in the evening I drive it back home. My dealer’s service center is unable to diagnose this problem; they “I do not drive it enough.” I took this Toyota Customer experience center and a couple weeks of back and forth they also claim the same. I wonder if others are facing this problem. According to the rep. at Toyota Customer Experience Center many customers have reported this problem and the reason they are having this problem is because “they are driving enough” I have driven it a little more than 4300 miles since I bought it.
Any information on this is appreciated.
TIA
There are just too many typos in my message; so here is a revision
My Camry Hybrid’s starter battery dies. This has happened the third time since I purchased it on 11/30/06. I drive it daily to the train station which is a little more than 7 miles from where I live. It sits there for 10-12 hours and in the evening I drive it back home. My dealer’s service center is unable to diagnose the problem; they say “I do not drive it enough.” They just recharge the battery and say there is no problem with it. I took this to Toyota Customer experience center and after a couple weeks of back and forth they also claim the same. I wonder if others are facing this problem. According to the rep. at Toyota Customer Experience Center, many customers have reported this problem and the reason they are having this problem is because “they are not driving enough.” I have driven it a little more than 4300 miles since I bought it.
With 2, 7 mile, trips a day I would expect that to be enough too keep a battery charged.
I am not sure you come under the lemon law, but here is where to check.
//www.jdpower.com/cc/auto/bbb/lemon_law.jsp
Hopefully someone here knows of a news group for just this car or has an answer.
Maybe try a solar battery charger while parked away from home and/or a trickle charger at home. good luck, Phil
A battery is like a bank account. If you take out more than you put in, you soon run into trouble.
This is a simple problem and I’m surprised the techs can’t move forward with the diagnosis.
The first test is to measure the current draw on the battery while the car is parked and off. It should be within specifications, something like 100-200ma for example. If it is higher and outside of their specification, you have to hunt down the cause of the excessive draw. The design may be such that it draws more current than other cars and so needs to be driven longer to recharge it. But they should be able to quantify that not just throw their hands up in the air and give up. You could have them check another car on the lot as a comparison if the draw is excessive to see if it is normal.
Next, start the engine and measure the battery terminal voltage. It should be >14 volts or the battery will not charge.
As a final note, once you drain the battery, you must restore the full charge. It must be trickle charged overnight or until fully charged. If not, the battery will rapidly sulfate and lose much of its capacity. When that happens, the battery will appear to be fully charged but not last very long. Have the battery charged and load tested to insure it is still good.