2 weeks ago, I bought a 2006 rx400h for $5k with 140,000 miles and I haven’t driven It until today. It sat in my driveway for about two weeks and when i first parked it, it had 80% of the battery charge left but today when I started the car and drove it, the charge capacity of the hybrid battery was around 20/40% full. It went up after 5 ish miles of driving to 80% and it remained there for around 15 more miles until I parked my car and left it running with the ac, and radio on for roughly 5-10 minutes and the battery went back down to 20-40%. The avg mpg is still great though and It got 29.3 mpg based off a 20 mile trip. Is this normal for a hybrid vehicle? This is my first hybrid vehicle and I know little to nothing about how the charging system works.

 

Everyting is fine.Your battery is doing what it should. When you park with A/C on the engine-- if hybrid battery has enough charge-- will stop and A/C will still runvia hybrid. This , of course , will drain battery and when it gets to a low level will initiate engine to come on and charge system again. OF course mpg will go down since you're using the engine and not moving .

 

Sounds normal to me. Maybe think about driving it more often though, it’s not great for hybrids to sit.

 

I am sitting with the a/c on a lot in Sun City Arizona. On those days my mileage is about 14. I deliver lunches for the Seniors during the pandemic. It runs a hour or 2 sitting. 2006 RX400h 160,000 miles

 

There is a guy name Kyle in just Answers that is a Lexus mechanic. He helped me out and sent me pages of info for my issue I had.