Difference in EV mileage between Base and Advanced?

start by jacking up the car and spinning the wheels. alternatively, feel the temp diff between the two cars after the full ev drive. maybe call the dealer and see what was going on. and finally, stop both cars on a hill and see how far they coast.

 

and chazz is right, in his correction, if the engine oil level is affecting your ev distance? you've got bigger fish to fry. although, i suppose the weight of the extra oil could be bogging you down.

 

Good catch. OP could try: drive both cars for a decent stretch, pull over, feel the rims, see if one feels warm, the other not.

 

toyota dealership? may have to get toyota involved. i wonder if regen could be somehow involved?

 

well, if they stonewall you, i would get an email to toyota customer service, with a copy of the brake fluid work. maybe nhtsa too, brakes are a safety item, needless to say.

 

An infrared thermometer would be great for this too. They're only ~$20 and will pick up smaller variations in temperature than people can.

 

That must be dealer specific. Are there any trouble codes listed?

 

From all the details Greg gave, it seems likely to be a battery problem, maybe the 2012 battery was abused?
Before going into other routs checks I would check the amount of charge each battery is getting with a kWh meter, this, however, should be done from a same starting point (say, 4 bars on the HV battery icon) to full charge.

 

Might be a bearing issue. On my Gen II Prius, my bearing failed, driver's side. The noise is very subtle but I was able to pick up the noise but my wife who claims to have better hearing than me said she couldn't hear a thing nor could the mechanic who was riding with her. It did turn out the bearing was bad.

Or a maybe the previous driver drove it hard and the accumulated mileage at the long term advanced speed is weighing the average down. Toyota does protect the battery with rather cautious algorithms. Best way to test this is to pull the negative lead on the 12V auxiliary battery. But it erases all of your stats.

 

sounds like the battery is fine, leading back to the brakes...

 

Low probability answer; overheating inverter due to defective inverter or inverter cooling system. Could be checked with Torque App or ScanGuage II to check operating temperatures of crucial components.

 

I have the Eagle L/S tires on my Leaf, and they are only very slightly lower in rolling resistance than the OEM Ecopias were (about 4.3-4.4 m/kwh in warm weather, vs 4.4-4.5 for the Ecopias). I think the Eagles are rated lower overall mainly because of reports of hydroplaning in heavy rain at highway speeds. (Me, I always slow down in heavy rain!) Still the difference in rolling resistance is probably more than the tires, so I agree that the brakes, bearings, etc need to be investigated. I'd also make sure the car was never in a flood.

 

It is becoming more and more challenging. It seems that while driving in EV, part of the energy drawn from the battery is leaking away in one way or the other. Maybe they have to check the electrical circuits and motors involved.

Electrical energy leaking away usually produces heat, so there may be parts in the car that become more hot than normal; this may even produce some smell.

P.S. More than 3 kWh for full charges are quite good results for the batteries.

 

Why doing this? What will it achieve? Certainly nothing regarding the actual EV miles you are reporting (you are reporting actual EV miles in this thread aren't you?).