LS500h

Can I sit in the car with the A/C on at idle. During a very hot baseball game for a grandchild, we decided to sit in the car with the A/C on with car at idle. It appeared that the battery was running down. Being a hybrid, often the engine stopped, so I could not increase the idle to help charge the battery. Do we run the risk of running the battery down to dead, or will the engine kick on often enough to keep it charged? Thanks.

dan25man

I can't answer your question directly (I don't own one yet) but I'd imagine Toyota was smart enough to keep the batteries at the correct charge. I'm fairly sure if you put it into "Sport/Sport+" mode the engine will always be on. If you want to force the car to keep itself charged.

Higgie

No problem, as long as the car is "on" in P or D the car will charge the HV battery and you will never get a flat battery (HV or 12 volt)
The A/C in our hybrids is electric and runs from the HV (310 volt) battery.
Never put the car in neutral for a long time, because then the HV battery will not be charged.

LS500h

Thank you. We did have the engine on and in "P", We noticed the hybrid battery status indicator going down and down (on the Multi-information display), so we decided to shut the car off, afraid we would run down the battery.

Higgie

If the battery level reaches two bars, the car will start and charge the battery, this takes about two or three minutes and then the engine will stop again.
As you can see in the picture below, here my car was in park and i was messing with the AC settings. (Sorry, is in Dutch.)

LS500h

Higgie - thank you. We "blinked" before it got to two bars! If we had waited a little longer we would have seen the engine start and charge. It was 98 degrees (about 37 C) outside with no breeze, so we wanted to cool off at the game. Thanks.