High charging time on a brand new 2020 Prime

At the very least get a 12V out of them,maybe some extra oil changes if you prefer a dealer doing it.

 

I measured the voltage it my circuit. It's 124V open circuit, but it drops to 116V while charging. The current is limited, so lower voltage generally means longer charge time.

I think a more important measurement than charge time is the amount of energy. It should be ideally over 6kWh on a L1 charger. There's another thread that discusses it. I think you can expect about 6.5-6.8kWh max on L1. On L2 it should be more like 6-6.3. It will vary depending on several factors including the actual SOC remaining when you park (usually 12-14% for me on Hybrid Assistant).

 

You are creating a crisis for yourself where none really exists.

It is HIGHLY unlikely that just sitting ignored has done ANY damage to the HV battery.

It is very LIKELY that the 12 V has been damaged from neglect and the dealership should replace it for you.
The simple fact that a jump was needed on the lot is ample proof.

It is even possible that a new 12 V will make you happier with the charging time.
But even if it doesn't, you need to "get over it" and move on.........one way or the other.

 

This is great!

Here is my charge history. Some state of charge (SOC) levels may be inaccurate.



I think a good indicator of the battery health is how much kWh a 100% SOC takes. Mine is about 6.91 kWh per 100% SOC @ 120 V. However, this number seems to have been slowly and uniformly decreasing with each charge, indicating that the battery capacity in terms of kWh has been slowly and uniformly decreasing with each charge. Could you measure your kWh per 100% SOC? It should be around 7.0 kWh per 100% SOC @ 120 V for a healthy battery.

The 12 V battery is 100% covered under the warranty—no questions asked. Do not attempt to replace it yourself while under warranty. Go to any dealer to have it replaced free of charge. Moreover, the LN1 battery size is quite unique and it's very hard to find an aftermarket replacement. You will have to buy an OEM one from a dealer when the warranty expires. However, there still seems to be only one aftermarket-brand battery of the LN1 size—it is an ACDelco. Nevertheless, when the warranty expires, it's probably safer to go with an OEM one from a dealer.

 

While I don't see any reason to suspect your 2020 PP's traction battery is substantially degraded beyond normal aging, if you are so worried about it, and the dealer is giving you this choice, yeah, go-ahead pay $3000 and get the 2021 model. The dealer will love you for that switch.

 

Yeah, for a new battery you should get at least 6.90 kWh with the 120 V charger. Level 2 charger kWh will be ~ 6.3 kWh.

Do a few more measurements and see if you are still getting ~ 6.1 kWh instead of the normal ~ 6.9 kWh. If the 6.1 kWh is correct, you have a degraded battery. A healthy battery should get you about a 37-mile round-trip (to eliminate altitude change) range in gentle (hypermiling) city driving in the eco mode.

 

My Prime already had 23k miles on it when I got it in March of '19 but I can tell from the eco history that it was almost never plugged in by the original owner. Since then, I've added about 23k more miles to it. I've only bought gas twice this year, so almost all my miles are EV. In January, I started occasionally checking the amount of electricity it takes to fill the battery from depleted or within a half mile either way of depleted. Here's what I got using L2 charging as measured from the wall. Prior to keeping records, my observations were always just over 6 kWh for a depleted traction battery. Note that the energy measured from the wall is not all put into the battery. Some is used in cooling and other operations. L1 charging would take more kWh since it runs fans and stuff more than twice as long. There's been essentially no change in my battery's performance that I can detect. I should have another opportunity next Sunday to take another reading.

 

Be careful with "should" expectations. That is an extreme for warmer climates, not even close to what I have ever seen... despite 3.5 years of ownership. Low 30's is my high returns... which is still in excess of the EPA rating by quite a bit.

More realistically is to measure against the reported efficiency. How many miles are you getting per kWh of electricity, then take into account how much kWh are consumed total per charge.

 

Indeed! Miles per kWh can vary tremendously with temperature, terrain, and traffic demands. Range will vary with the efficiency. Even here in FL which is a fairly constant climate, it varies from 25-35 miles. EV range is a horrible way to estimate battery health.

 

I have not done many full charges on my 2020 PP but for my previous 2017 PP using the "kill-a-watt" meter on L1. I have never seen anything higher than 6.9kWh for a full charge. The average over 3 years was ~6.5kWh. I also have seen people reporting less than 6kWh for a full charge with an L2 on the brand new battery. I think OP's full charge of 6.1kWh on an L1 is lower than what I have seen on mine, but with very limited numbers of data points and many variables to be considered, it does not seem to be unusual.

Below is the graph of average kWh/full-charge (only full-charge from 0% EV to 100% EV was counted) during 30 months of my 2017PP ownership.

 

But what if the car has run the traction battery down to 10% before you start charging? About 13-14% is where it switches to HV but it can still go at least a couple miles before the ICE starts up. Also, see my answer (post #22) in PRIME is the third worst in the battery degradation. How is yours holding up? | Page 2 | PriusChat.

 

The displayed 100% SoC is very stable at 83-84%, but the displayed --% SoC (notice that there is no 0% display) is variable depending on how much HV drive you did after depleting the EV range as pointed out by @jerrymildred above. This --% SoC can be as low as 7% to as much as 15% real SoC as reported by others. For my limited number of data points (n=4), this range was 10.2% to 14.12%. See the graph below. In addition, you have ambient temperature factors with battery heater and/or battery cooler, climate preconditioning setting, and maybe other undisclosed variables Toyota has built-in for the battery charging algorism. For me, the full-charge with very similar conditions can show a wide range from 6.1 to 6.7kWh in the same month.

 

Right, the 0% SOC is not very accurate; so, for that reason, when you calculate the kWh per 100% SOC @ 120 V, it is better to measure the kWh from, say, 50% to 100% or 30% to 100% and then scale it to from 0% to 100%, instead of actually measuring it from 0% to 100%.

My garage circuit is on the weak side (due to long wires or higher wire AWG), with the voltage dropping well below the standard 120 V when charging, and this may be a reason why I am seeing a little higher kWh per 100% SOC @ 120 V than most people. Moreover, I charge at 8 A instead of 12 A because of the circuit limitation, which takes roughly eight hours. This may also affect my kWh per 100% SOC @ 120 V.

 

Yap, that would make your total charge higher than normal L1 charged at 12A. The fans and other charging components of the car have to run longer.

 

The OP can easily test the kWh per SOC @ 8 A vs. 12 A @ 120 V. It's a settings option he can switch on the multifunction display.