How to Replace Battery 2010-15 Toyota Prius

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Open the hatch. We're going to unlock the cargo floor. Turn that one that way—there's arrows. Turn it this way. Lift it up. It actually folds. Just pull it out of the way. Pull this little cargo bucket out of here. Put it aside. We can go into the side, passenger side, lift up this cover, and pull it out.

12 volt battery for the vehicle is under there. There's an additional cover right in here. Pop that out, and it'll give you a little extra space to work. Unplug the temp sensor. I need to unplug it because it's connected to the bracket that holds the battery down. Take a 10 millimeter wrench. I'm using a ratcheting wrench. You can use a regular wrench. Just going to loosen up the negative battery terminal first. Probably only takes a couple turns to get it loosened up. Put that aside. That disconnected.

Come over to the positive side. We can loosen up this battery terminal here. Now, when you're loosening this one, just make sure that you do not touch the other end of the wrench to any other piece of metal, because you will cause a short between the positive terminal and ground, and you'll cause some sparks. You'll heat up the wrench and burn yourself. It's not good. Get that loose. We'll just wiggle it gently. Work it off the terminal. You may need to loosen it up some more. Put the wrench down. Use both hands. Put that aside.

Now, because this battery is inside the passenger compartment, it does have a vent tube, so we're just going to unplug the vent tube from it. Put that aside. There's a 10 millimeter bolt here, and a 10 millimeter nut here. I'm going to actually going to need the deep socket for that one, because that has a bit of a tall stud there. There we go. We'll put that nut aside. Pull the bracket out.

Of course, always be mindful that the positive terminal does have a charge to it, so again, if you touch it with this metal bracket, and it's touching the body, you'll cause a short. It will spark, could cause a fire, so just be careful. We'll put that aside over there. This battery does have a convenient little handle. We'll just pick it up, lift her right out, and it could be replaced.

Install the new battery. I don't want to catch that line. Move this out of the way. This one doesn't have a handle. Get that lined up on the bracket. Sit in place. Make sure I have the line here free. I'm going to leave the caps on the terminals for now, until I'm ready. That way I don't touch the positive terminal by accident.

Reinstall the bracket. Get the bolt installed. Get the nut installed on the stud. Tighten the bolt. Once it gets tight, stop, do the same thing for the nut. Plug the temp sensor back in. It'll click when it locks in place. Push the vent hose, very important, pushes right back into place. Remove the positive cap. Leads to all the positive battery terminal. Get this threaded down. Tighten it up. Cap's in the way. You don't have to kill this, but you do want to make sure it's nice and tight, so it has a good connection. These terminals are in really good shape, they're really clean. Typically when the battery's inside the vehicle, the terminals stay nice and clean, because it's not exposed to the elements, like under the hood of a car. That fits pretty good. It's not moving. Put the protective cover back down.

Now, we can install the negative terminals. We'll pull the cap off. Those can be on there pretty tight. Just going to use some pliers to take this off. There we go. Reinstall the negative terminal. Hope the alarm doesn't go off. Make sure the negative terminal's nice and tight.

Okay, reinstall all the trim. Reinstall this cover. It's got some tabs that slide up underneath the carpet part, and then clips into place. This cover goes over. Cargo tray goes back in, and cargo floor goes back over. If you've got a rubber protective mat or anything, that can go back over. You can lock this down. Battery is replaced.

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