ICE comes on anyway

are we shooting for 1,000 posts?

 

i'm doing my part.

 

Just wanted to add me experience to the 'slope ICE' incident list. I've put 10,000 miles on my Prime without experiencing the ICE-surprise. Then it happened to me twice in the last week. Garage kept car (at 55-60F), outdoor temps in both cases in the low 50's. Both times well less than full SOC.

Can't remember much more about conditions for the first case, but did take more careful note the second time. On the second one, climate was on ECO mode, no cruise control, in EV mode since startup, had about 21 miles remaining from original 31 mile state at full charge start. I went down a moderate hill, about a half mile steady descent, at 45mph. Put it in B mode all the way down, fairly hard braking to a stop sign at the bottom.

As I reached the stop sign, the ICE kicked on. I turned, and accelerated away, with the engine making a good bit of (typical HV type) noise. Throughout this event the display showed 'EV mode', but the cartoon car icon was black/empty, indicating the ICE was on. Not long after that the ICE turned off. It seemed like only a minute or so - shorter than a normal warmup cycle, but I'm not positive about that. Then it appeared to be back in normal EV operation. (I may have toggled it to HV at that point, and then back to EV - vaguely remember trying that, but not sure - if I did I'm pretty certain it was after the ICE cut off on it's own.)

I'm going to drive over and try that hill again to see if I can replicate it.

 

Living with well below freezing temperatures has led me to experiment a bit and the "speed limit" for when the engine kicks in during very gentle acceleration drops as the temperatures do. I try to always use a block and cabin heater (which affects said "speed limit" positively) but when it's REALLY cold (-20'C) the ICE always fires up right away as soon as the car is turned on.

All this is with the heater completely off (just to make that clear).


iPhone ?

 

Tried it again two times this morning, and couldn't reproduce. One thing I should have mentioned for the ICE-on incident in previous post was that the vehicle was fully loaded - probably about 800lbs. Today it was only about 270 lbs load. Maybe that load produces a lot more regen...

 

The car has a mind of its own anyway. I was driving on the freeway in EV mode, plenty of charge left in the battery, foot part throttle, then the ICE came on. Go figure. I'm not about to obsess over it.

 

Agreed. As a Comp Sci guy, I am just curious about the way they programmed this thing.

It also is making me realize how it is becoming very difficult to isolate intermittent problems with these software-driven cars. Problems with my first car in 1974 might be a weak ignition coil, or a bad ignition switch, etc. Relativity easy to diagnose. But now it might be line 12,354 of 8,000,000 lines of code!

 

As a software guy, what do you think about self-driving cars? I submit it's impossible to write code that would account for every possible off normal occurance that could happen driving a vehicle.

 

Maybe true...But ask yourself how well human-driven cars are handling some of those off-normal occurrences...
I like the vision where the cars are not just deciding what to do autonomously, but they are communicating with other cars near them and working together...Something else human-driven cars haven't shown a great propensity for unless you factor in certain hand gestures...

 

Just wondering if my ICE might come on anyway, today or tomorrow, because it is cold again. 954.

 

One would think if there were a lot of bugs in it, we'd be getting a bunch of firmware updates. Happens very infrequently, if at all. My 2013 got a software update for the inverter issue. That was it. It might not be as complex as you think it is.

 

Pretty sceptical. We've got a long way to go with AI in general. As ct89 says, the key might be having cars talking to each other so they stay out of each other's way. A glitch could still get you killed (and diagnosing such a failure will be a bear!), but is such a glitch less likely than the myriad of errors humans make everyday while driving? Perhaps...

Yesterday I had a situation where a power line crew was working in my neighborhood, and had a temporary one-way stretch in place with a guy at each end with the rotating 'Slow/Stop' signs. They screwed up and sent both opposing lines on a collision course. Fortunately it was a short, slow speed encounter, and I realized what was happening and pulled to one side to let the others by.

How would an autonomous car have dealt with this? It would have to recognise the line crew's presence (understanding their handheld signals), and then deal with their error. Might have made for an interesting gridlock situation, but at worst probably would have stopped all vehicles without a collision taking place.

 

Perhaps, but never assume because there are no updates, there are no bugs

 

I am happy to say, I will NEVER own an autonomous car, let alone ride in the bloody things. I just hope they keep them off the roads I drive!!

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
AChoiredTaste.com

 

IBM tech sport's first question on any call (ThinkPad pre- and post-Lenovo and servers): "Did you flash the BIOS?"

Microsoft: Patch Tuesday

Adobe: Home of the "OMG, yet another Flash zero-day patch!"

Granted, I don't have a Prime, all I've gotten are 2 Entune updates. Wish Toyota would provide release notes.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

My ICE came on again today, 3rd time in a week after none the first 7 months. In EV mode, level ground, coming to a stop on a rural road, 'B' not engaged. Ran for about 15 seconds as I accelerated away, then cut off and stayed off the rest of the EV miles for the day.

This is getting irritating. I'm not happy about the ICE coming on and running for a short cycle - not good for a motor. On the other hand getting my North Carolina dealer to address something intermittent like this would be just about impossible (doubt they've ever worked on a Prime).