Has anyone found rain guards for the Prime that would allow enough room to feed the charging cable through the window and still protect from rain? I often park in a location where I feed a 12-guage extension cord through the window (rolled up with just enough space for the cables to fit) so that my charger won't get swiped. Having a rain guard for my back passenger window that would allow this without the rain getting in would be ideal. Any advice is appreciated! Thanks!
Are you aware that the connector on your charger can be locked to the car and only removed by someone with the key fob? You have the option of setting this up in several different ways. It sounds like you want to use the default setting where you manually lock and unlock the cable, or the setting where the cable automatically locks when you insert it into the charging port. (The other setting is useful for public charging stations where you might want the cable locked in place until your vehicle is fully charged and then automatically unlocked as a courtesy to let someone else in an adjacent parking space use it to charge.) Unless someone wants to take a bolt cutter and cut your charging cable for the scrap value of the cable, there is no way to remove the locked charger connector (and hence the charger). Obviously, there is always the possibility of malicious vandalism -- but I think I'd rather have the charger vandalized than have the car window smashed by some idiot who thinks the device has any value with the connector cut off. You could also affix intimidating warning stickers to the side of your car near the charging port:
Thanks Old Bear! I wasn’t aware. Can the charging unit itself be left out in the rain? It’s made for that?
I would definitely expect that to be covered in the fire starter paper user manuals you received with the car. I do not have time to do your unpaid research now since I do not own a Prime.
CCID (Charging Circuit Interrupting Device) on the charging cable is weatherproof but not waterproof. I would not leave it laying on the area where the unit could get submerged in water. There is a weatherproofing box you could use in that situation, but I have never used it before. Medium Green Weatherproof Indoor Outdoor Electrical Cord Connection Enclosure... - Walmart.com Toyota does not recommend using wrap on the cable for the reason of overheating so I would think enclosure for CCID is also not recommended, though I could not find a specific warning on this in the manual. If you are hanging CCID on a wall as suggested by the manual, unless water gets to the height of CCID, they should be OK to be exposed to rain.
A little snippy are we today? Actually, you make a good point about the paper user manuals. They're bulky and very hard to navigate. Fortunately, Toyota and most other car makers allow you to download PDF versions -- which have the advantage of being computer searchable using the free Adobe Acrobat reader. You can even save them to your Kindle or most other portable eReaders. Given the nice LCD displays so many cars have, you'd think that the manufacturers would build in PDF readers and embedded searchable user documentation. The only short coming would be (as a friend pointed out) the ability to find instructions about what to you when your battery is dead.
Many things on this site are undocumented "features" and "secret menus" we have found. It seems more & more people would rather ask somebody else than use the provided information they already have available. I agree the pdfs are more convenient. I have downloaded the ones for my Prius.
