Doors Locked

[Alar]

I have 2008 Prius and it has been running well. I had not used the car for about 8 or 9 days and now the all the doors are locked. My smart key or the manual key would not open the door. My manual is inside the car. I looked up information online, called the dealership...even the technician is puzzled why it would not work with the manual key even if we assume that the Battery is drained. Anyone has any idea what the problem could be?

[synchronome]

Could be that the 12v Battery has gone flat.

Previous threads on this subject have shown that the key can be very stiff to operate, coupled with a very small 'handle' on it so not much leverage.

Hope you get it sorted

Edit

Was going to say that the lock might be frozen in this cold weather, then noticed you are in California :D

[Aamir2892]

I dont think it would if the Battery is drained becuase it electric central locking.

[moonstone mart]

12v Battery will be dead, but very strange you cant open the drivers door with the small key located inside the keyfob.

As said above they are usually quite difficult to turn with them being so small, poss a double locking failure but not seen it happen before on all the dead Prius i have had to open up.

Mart.

[timberwolf]

12v battery will be dead, but very strange you cant open the drivers door with the small key located inside the keyfob.

As said above they are usually quite difficult to turn with them being so small, poss a double locking failure but not seen it happen before on all the dead Prius i have had to open up.

Mart.

Hi Mart,

It seems to be a commonly mentioned failure on various Prius forum, do you see a lot of 12v Battery failures on Prius cars compared with the other Toyota models?

[moonstone mart]

12v battery will be dead, but very strange you cant open the drivers door with the small key located inside the keyfob.

As said above they are usually quite difficult to turn with them being so small, poss a double locking failure but not seen it happen before on all the dead Prius i have had to open up.

Mart.

Hi Mart,

It seems to be a commonly mentioned failure on various Prius forum, do you see a lot of 12v Battery failures on Prius cars compared with the other Toyota models?

Not loads of failures just flat batteries, the owners just dont seem to do the miles that other toyota owners do. Or leave the prius standing for days.

Mart

[Alar]

12v battery will be dead, but very strange you cant open the drivers door with the small key located inside the keyfob.

As said above they are usually quite difficult to turn with them being so small, poss a double locking failure but not seen it happen before on all the dead Prius i have had to open up.

Mart.

Hi Mart,

It seems to be a commonly mentioned failure on various Prius forum, do you see a lot of 12v Battery failures on Prius cars compared with the other Toyota models?

Not loads of failures just flat batteries, the owners just dont seem to do the miles that other toyota owners do. Or leave the prius standing for days.

Mart

True...I have not been driving much over the winter break. Is there an optimum number of miles I need to drive to keep the Battery from failing?

How hard do I have to turn the key? I am afraid of doing anything to mess with my warranty. And the service technician thinks I might have been given the wrong manual key when I bought the car last March. I don't remember if we ever checked to make sure the manual key works. I assume that the smart key has to be turned off to make sure that the manual key works. Am I right?

[moonstone mart]

12v battery will be dead, but very strange you cant open the drivers door with the small key located inside the keyfob.

As said above they are usually quite difficult to turn with them being so small, poss a double locking failure but not seen it happen before on all the dead Prius i have had to open up.

Mart.

Hi Mart,

It seems to be a commonly mentioned failure on various Prius forum, do you see a lot of 12v Battery failures on Prius cars compared with the other Toyota models?

Not loads of failures just flat batteries, the owners just dont seem to do the miles that other toyota owners do. Or leave the prius standing for days.

Mart

True...I have not been driving much over the winter break. Is there an optimum number of miles I need to drive to keep the Battery from failing?

How hard do I have to turn the key? I am afraid of doing anything to mess with my warranty. And the service technician thinks I might have been given the wrong manual key when I bought the car last March. I don't remember if we ever checked to make sure the manual key works. I assume that the smart key has to be turned off to make sure that the manual key works. Am I right?

Not sure of an optimum amount of miles but i would say give it a good drive every now and again as its short journeys that run batteries down.

The small manual key (from inside the keyfob) does need a good amunt of pressure as its only a small thing its quite hard to turn it (have had salesmen not be able to enter a prius with this key as they just werent turning/trying enough).

You may have the wrong key but i havent seen that happen yet.

You wont need to turn the smart key off to use the manual one.

If/when you do finally open the drivers door you will need to po the bonnet (hood) and in the fuse box there are 2 small +ve & - ve tabs/posts so you can connect a jump pack or Battery charger.

At work when this sort of thing happens i connect a jump pack to the under bonnet posts so i can open the boot (trunk) remove the plastic covers etc and then remove the 12volt aux battery and give it a good charge. this way you know the battery will be fully charged instead of driving the car alot and relying on the car to recharge it for you.

Mart. :)

[clbwi]

We just had this problem after leaving our Prius undriven for 3.5 days. We found that, in order to open the door with the manual key, we had to spray some lubricant into the inside of the keyhole. Then we could open the door and open the hood/bonnet to get to the Battery. As soon as our service person connected the charger to the Battery, the car started right up. He said to keep it running for 45 minutes to make sure the Battery got recharged. Since then, it has been running well.

[ColinBarber]

Hi Mart,

It seems to be a commonly mentioned failure on various Prius forum, do you see a lot of 12v battery failures on Prius cars compared with the other Toyota models?

The Battery is quite small so it doesn't take long to drain.

The main issue seems to be you get no feedback as to when the Battery is on its last legs. With a normal car the aux Battery is starting the engine, so you can tell by a slow crank speed that there may be a problem and you sort it out before it completely fails. With the Toyota/Lexus hybrids the first you know about it is when you cannot unlock the doors!

Probably worth using the manual lock every year or so to make sure it is working nice and freely.

[timberwolf]

A dead thread revival from 3 years ago on the subject of dead 12V batteries, I think that's funny!