Parking Brake Unavailable?

[JohnD76]

Hi,

I have just vacuumed my car and went to start it and it is refusing to start telling me the parking break and parking assist is not working and it won't let me start the car....

I moved the front seat forward and backwards a few times to clean under them and just vacuumed as I normally do, but I can only imagine this is related, since I used the car in the morning without a problem....

Has anyone seen this before or got any idea what may be the cause?

Thanks!

[Cyker]

Check the gear shifter is properly in P; When I was ripping my dash out to run the Dashcam wiring I had to take it out of P and then forgot and the car totally freaked out when I tried to start it when not in P and I had to turn it off and shove it back into P.

Also check you haven't accidentally pulled a cable out somewhere - For instance if the airbag connectors to the seats get disconnected they can cause totally unrelated errors like that to appear.

 

[JohnD76]

Thanks I will give that a go and report back.

 

 

[JohnD76]

It looks like the issue is the 12v Battery which is dying....

[Cyker]

Eek! Another one!?!  

[Roy124]

9 minutes ago, JohnD76 said:

It looks like the issue is the 12v battery which is dying....

Did you use accessory mode for music While You Work and doors open, internal and boot lights on? 

[JohnD76]

The car was off the whole time, but I did has the boot and the doors open, but with the ignition off. 

Vacuum was powered from the mains in the garage so the car was only having to power the internal lights with the doors open.... From the comment, I am presuming this is a common occurrence?

Not best pleased with the car in all honesty, had the bonnet lock fail on me a few weeks back, which is a first for a 3 year old car and now this.

To be fair, the car is not driven much and it is cold. Thankfully we have breakdown cover so someone is coming out today to replace the Battery.

[Roy124]

How long have you had the car?  The Battery may have been 'mistreared' during lockdown.  The interior lights and boot light can be quite a load on a weak Battery. 

If this it the first Battery event you are aware of one flat may not be the end. 

[AndrueC]

The one time I flattened a car Battery was when I left a door open on my Jazz overnight. It takes surprisingly little to drain a 12v Battery even when it's a 'full size' one let alone the small capacity ones in hybrids. However I thought that the Corolla switches off its interior lights if the doors are left open or am I mistaken?

[TonyHSD]

When cleaning the car every opening and closing of the drivers door actives the electric brake booster and this is the biggest 12v Battery drains in any Toyota hybrid. If your car been not used daily before hand very likely had needed just few more booster pressurises to completely kill the Battery. There are actually few  major Battery killers in latest Toyotas , the booster pump and the automatic parking brake, and the automatic folding mirrors. This excludes obviously the connected services. Best practice when cleaning the car is to set in ready mode with hvac off and let the hybrid system rejuvenate your 12v battery for whatever time takes you to finish your car cleaning 30-60min  👍

[Derek.w]

You best off using any door except drivers door as this door start / awakens a lot of electronic systems.

If rear tailgate is open for extended period of time remove the light fitting to save power it also turns off after a set period of time same as radio.

Do not use a tyre inflator without the car in ready mode to charge the Battery if pluged into the accessory socket.

Charge the 12 volt Battery every 2 or 3 weeks use a smart charger so you have a idea of how low the voltage is before charging.

 

[Derek.w]

Dont use a 12 volt vacuum cleaner without starting car in ready mode.

[AisinW]

Vacuum cleaner takes more than 300 watts, it will suck the tiny 12V Battery dry in no time.  You should  make it to READY mode first or use AC outlet instead.  I usually use my portable vacuum cleaner instead. 

[Tech429]

On 1/21/2023 at 6:20 PM, AndrueC said:

The one time I flattened a car battery was when I left a door open on my Jazz overnight. It takes surprisingly little to drain a 12v battery even when it's a 'full size' one let alone the small capacity ones in hybrids. However I thought that the Corolla switches off its interior lights if the doors are left open or am I mistaken?

Will need to try this out at some point this weekend as never noticed this at all - unless you need to set it...

[AisinW]

17 minutes ago, Tech429 said:

Will need to try this out at some point this weekend as never noticed this at all - unless you need to set it...

I believe Corolla automatically shut off all the cabin lights after about 20 minutes. You can check it your self. Auris 2 lights also automatically turn off. 

[beeblebrox]

46 minutes ago, AisinW said:

I believe Corolla automatically shut off all the cabin lights after about 20 minutes.

You are correct.

My Corolla manual states:-

■To prevent the Battery from being
discharged
If the interior lights remain on when the
engine switch is turned off, the lights will
go off automatically after 20 minutes

There is a door position switch and interior light switch on front overhead light console.

Just turn them off when cleaning.

[AisinW]

I think the dom lights are ok, only about 5w each. Just do not use vacuum cleaner without switching to ready mode.

[coachy51]

This is also an issue with my '22 Corolla Hybrid. It took a brief Battery boost to make the parking brake available again. The problem is we have no idea what caused that "unavailable" message and which prevented the car from being driven.

I am suspecting this is a built-in software glitch that needs a patch to fix?

[Cyker]

Nah, it's a normal symptom of a low 12v Battery - All that stuff including the ECU/computers and parking brake motors are powered by the 12v system, and if the Battery can't actually provide 12 volts, lots of those things can't power up or just stop working properly.

They can usually run down to 10-ish volts, but because they all try and power up at once, it will sag a depleted Battery well below that threshold so the computers may start to power on then the voltage sag makes them cut off which pops up errors on the main system.

[TonyHSD]

Another reason to disable all auto functions like auto fold mirrors, automatic parking brake, home lights etc and control them manually before you switch off the car. Doing so will save unnecessary energy drain from the 12v Battery which seems not enough these days with modern cars and the extras they had been loaded with. The biggest enemy highest power consumption are the electric motors aka actuators found in all above components like brakes , mirrors, electric seats, and so on. Then it’s the connected services that constantly drain little by little your batteries. 

[DC_Ms]

Can anybody describe the steps to get to the option to disable the electric hand brake ? Thanks

[Cyker]

Depends what you mean by 'disable the electric hand brake' - The easiest way to literally disable it is to pull the fuse out, but that will generate loads of errors and I suspect that is not what you mean.

If you mean stop it automatically engaging/disengaging when you put it into P, just put it into P and hold the EPB rocker up until it shows the message about EPB interlock being disabled on the dash. To turn that function back on again, put it in P and push the rocker in until the opposite message flashes up.

IMHO, the automatic engagement is one of the best features of the EPB (In older Toyotas they couldn't do this so you had to put the car in P then manually fumble for the EPB switch every time, which seemed daft to me), and I don't get why anyone would want to disable it, since it'd mean you have to do more work when parking, or put all the parking stress on the relatively fragile parking pawl.

[TonyHSD]

3 hours ago, DC_Ms said:

Can anybody describe the steps to get to the option to disable the electric hand brake ? Thanks

Perhaps here or similar videos .

 

The car care nut also has longer version how to, and in the car manual is described too. 
The idea of using manually the electronic parking brake is to have full control over the operating, for example in some situations like parking on level roads , leave the car overnight in freezing cold , leaving the car for extended time without use or prior to car wash it is better not to use parking brake at all unless  strictly unnecessary. 
When you manually engage the parking brake you actually do not load directly the 12v Battery since the car is still in ready mode. 
All 12v power consumption will not take a toll over the Battery itself, where if all consumables are in auto mode there will be extra load after the car been turned off,  so you have a serious power drain to include parking brake, brake booster depressurisation and then central locking plus mirrors folding, all that exclusively feed by the the 12v Battery alone.  I haven’t measured that or any more scientific experiments but makes sense to me . 
 

[AndrueC]

Why would you want to disable it? When I stop and switch off the engine the parking brake automatically engages. Why wouldn't I want that?

[Derek.w]

Just keep Battery charged up and all will be fine hopefully if not time for a new Battery.

Disengage welcome home lights and even the indicators flashing if you want to save some Battery power.

I have not disengaged my indicators when opening/closing doors bit it is a option.

I have removed the boot light as I am always puting stuff in or taking it out and I can cope without it so have not bothered fitting a switch.

I only disengage parking brake if working on the brakes without using service mode.