Tips for battery health/longevity in the Prime?

don't leave the car charged for long periods of time, and use the timer for overnight charging.

don't park in the hot sun if it can be avoided.

use a/c when necessary. if you are warm, so is your battery.

avoid hard acceleration when possible.

make sure the cooling intake vents are always clear.

pre condition the battery when necessary.

 

Plus:
don't drive at high speeds in EV mode
if leaving in storage for months then discharge the traction battery to a lower state of charge as the owner's manual provides direction
if possible park in a garage
and if we want to get really anal:
Don't let it run down to zero EV miles. Charge a little earlier than the safeguards that Toyota has built in.

 

Everything is relative. Fast for you may be crawling for me or vice versa what speed are you thinking?

I was thinking that the plug-in hybrid battery and the standard running mode battery were essentially all the same battery. I'm not talking the one that starts the gas engine. I'm talking about the standard hybrid battery and the so-called 27 mile charge battery. Will the car not take care of itself for that charge. It will never be down to 0?

Also this post is very good some of it I had not thought about and certainly appreciate the information

 

All three of those are the same battery. The hybrid battery starts the gas engine too. The 12V battery is just for starting the computers and accessories before the hybrid battery starts keeping it charged.

The car is just fine always being without Ev mode range. Even the depleting the hybrid range keeps the battery somewhere in the range of 15% state of charge.

 

still looking to understand the best speed for the EV mode. OK not looking for the 20mph but what is ideal top speed where I should take it to the gas.

 

Very rough rule-of-thumb:

If your gasoline mileage is equal to or less than your current speed, you are probably operating the gas engine pretty efficiently. If your gasoline mileage is greater than your speed, you might be better off in Ev mode.

 

Sorry this does not make since to me sorry I am needing I think a more simple explanation

 

That's pretty simple. Look at your current mileage when you are operating on the gas engine. Is that number (say, 60mpg) less than or greater than your current speed in mph (say, 40mph)? If it's greater, as in my example (60>40), you might be better off in Ev mode. On the other hand, if you are getting 60mpg at 70mph (mileage is less than speed), you are probably doing okay in Hv mode.

 

Answers above in underlined italics.
I was just providing answers to the original post of wanting tips to promote battery health and longivity. No one has to do the additional tips I offered. The owner's manual is generally helpful but does not go overboard in answering detailed questions. I got my info from Battery University. I sure wish Toyota would hold technical clinics for Prime Owners where we could ask questions to the Toyota engineers who actually know the correct answers.

 

Totally agree with Toyota holding technical clinics For those users wanting to know a bit more and why. I don't like just driving the car I like knowing why And maybe How to make it Perform a little better Which will ultimately sell the car more so Because I will be talking about it, Its performance and its Battery life and gas mileage.

I'm still not totally clear On Your first line on driving Too fast in EV mode.Truly looking for a number More so than anything

 

What number are you looking for? You can arbitrarily set any limits on efficiency that you like according to personal preferences, trip distances, outside temperature, road conditions, the presence or absence of hills, and trip altitude changes.

 

In the original post I said for optimum battery longetivity to not use excessive speed in EV mode. Same as Owner's manual. I said it is all relative and perhaps 35 mph should be an upper limit if a person wants to get maximum battery life. Somehow a video covered my response? Since I posted this I find myself often going 45 mph in EV even though I want my battery to last. There is no right answer. It just depends on the person and the driving situation, a decision whether or not a person wants to have the ICE start and how long the ICE would have the opportunity to run before going back to EV. Hope this purely opinion answer, based on brief written statements of not discharging the battery too quickly, is helpful.

 

Since most smartphones have Lithium batteries CNET recommends never draining your phone battery down to 0%. Rule of thumb I've read is to charge it back up from 50%-100% every time.

So if we try this strategy I would drive your EV miles down to about 10 miles then switch it to HV mode to preserve the second half charge until you get home or a charging station.

I know Toyota PP is not a phone but if you want to try preserving the lithium EV battery check out myths that people use to believe about old Nickel batteries:

True or false? Battery myths that need to die - CNET

 

FALSE !!

Toyota already built a buffer into the design. When the display says 0% remaining, that only represents the portion you have access to.

8.8 kWh is the battery capacity. You only get to use about 6.5 kWh of that.

 

Hey John, good to know the CNET article does mention this most modern batteries are designed to not let you drain it to 0%.

So after using 6.5 kWh, Toyota leaves you with 2.3 kWh out of 8.8 kWh total. That's about 23% of the actual EV battery left.

 

I'll be picking up my new Prime+ in a few days. Wondering if the ICE isn't used much, can there be similar issues that are typical for conventional cars that only gets driven for short distances and not have a chance to fully warm up. Like rusted out exhaust and build up in the Engine?

 

If the engine is needed (or called for) it will go through a 'warm-up cycle' which means it will stay on until at least warmed up.

 

Problem would be in trips where you drive say 28 miles on EV and knowing there's only a few miles to go before the EV runs out, you switch to HV (our it automatically does due to low charge) for the last few miles. Then you reach the destination and shuts off the car before the ICE is completely warmed up.

So would it be better for longevity of the engine to manually switch to HV sooner, say at the half way point (way before EV is out of juice) to allow the HV more time to run?