"Charge Immediately on Plug-In"

Some people live in cities where they are charged different rates for their electricity, depending on the time of day. The Prime allows you to make a time schedule for when it will take a charge. So you can plug it in, but it will only charge during the times of cheap electricity.

Where I live the power company charges the same all the time, so it makes no difference.

My house is powered from solar panels. Many of our appliances are on timers [chest freezers, etc] so they will only run during day-light and they shut off at night. It is the same idea.

 

If you have events programmed, it's always going to wait until the next event unless you override it and tell it to change immediately. There are several ways of overriding it.

 

The downside of that is battery longevity. The less time the battery spends fully-charged the longer it will last. That's why Toyota wants you to charge it up immediately before departure.

 

That's an interesting idea although not currently possible. I think how it would work is in the NAV system there would be a category "Charge Stations" that you could assign to home, work, grocery store, etc. anywhere that you might regularly charge at. You could then set separate schedules for home and work, and it would automatically use the appropriate schedule for those locations. In the case of grocery store you would not set a schedule so it would know that at that location you always want to charge now. And if you are at a charge station not programmed into your NAV it will assume that you want to charge now.

 

Yes, I would just setup whatever schedules that makes sense to you and based on your Electric costs. And anytime you want to override the schedules, just plug in and remove and re-plug in within 5 to 7 seconds and it will start charging immediately. This way, you don't have to worry that you missed the scheduled events but can manual charge anytime you want. Best of both worlds

 

I think that maybe the Volt or some other vehicle does have location based charging plans. So if you are home it charges in a certain way. You can set a few different locations. I can't remember where I read that or if I was just imagining it. It would certainly be a nice to have feature that says if I am at home I want you to charge in this manner and if I am out on the road I want you to charge in this other manner if I bother to plug in. Generally if I am cruising about and decide to plug in I want it to charge now, but if I am at home I want it to use my schedule. When I don't I can override it at home, but it is annoying to have to remember to override it away from home.

 

After you plug the cable in, the message on the MFD is automatically displayed. All you have to do the next is push the O button on the steering wheel to start charging. It's that simple. I wouldn't do the plug and unplug stuff at all.

 

You can, and it's only two button pushes.

 

I doubt it. Looks like a one-time setting to me.

 

Page 148 - "To start charging immediately without changing the charge schedule setting, turn “Charge Now” on to temporarily cancel the charge schedule and enable charging immediate after connecting"

Sounds like only the next scheduled charge is skipped. Although if you are a charge station and turn on Charge Now, I would hope that the fact that you afterwards drove the car and used EV would cause the next scheduled charge to not be skipped. Otherwise you would drive home from the charging station, plug in but it would skip the next morning's charge, which would not be what you want. Hopefully it's smart it enough to figure that out by itself.

Or maybe the next scheduled charge isn't necessarily skipped, maybe when finished charging the Charge Now turns off, and as long as that happens prior to the next scheduled charge then it won't skip it.

 

Leave drivers door open, plug in, reach in and push button, close drivers door. I have to walk past the drivers door anyway.

Or try as below (I'll have to try that myself).

I don't want to mate and demate the charge cable unnecessarily, as it has a finite life.

 

Tried it. Works fine.