EV Factory switch - not working

When I first installed my switch I had the same trouble. I thought it didn't work either. I took it for a drive and it seemed to work OK. I found out that the EV switch does not work in P (park) or B. You must be in D or R for it to work.

Hopefully that is all it is.

 

Do you hear any sort of beep when you press the EV button? If it's not beeping, you may not have proper contact somewhere.

 

Huh?? *My* EV switch works fine in park, which in fact is how I
prevent initial engine startup when needed. Is there something
peculiar about the cruise-control circuitry that prevents the
coastal widget from working unless you're driving? That would
be a total crock if it's true, and yet another reason to just
put in a direct switch. It seems like the coastal units have been
dropping like flies this year...
.
_H*

 

Is that the right answer? My '06 doesn't beep going into EV mode, but it goes into EV mode nonetheless. The way i can be sure is to put the MFD on a screen OTHER than "energy monitor" and entering EV mode will switch the display to energy monitor.

Still, you might not have proper contact somewhere. What I did, with hobbit's gracious guidance when installing, was to first insert the ECU pin/wire, and then power up and test by touching the bare end of the ECU wire to grounded metal (rim around the DC outlet, i.e. cigarette lighter if you don't have panels off). That worked, so I knew that the first and most crucial part was in place. Getting the wire routed, the switch in place, and soldering the ECU wire to the harness wire was trivial after that.

 

Hobbit, you installed mine, a direct switch. Remember when we first started it up and the engine came on? We didn't know why. Well, ever since then it works as advertised except not in park. Go figure, but that is what it is doing.

 

I was confused by this, so I tested it out this morning. I thought maybe because I have the MFD set to "Beep Off" mode so button beeps aren't there, that EV mode doesn't beep either because of that. But no, it doesn't beep when entering EV mode, but it does beep 3 times when it can't enter EV mode. I guess this is a difference in model year? I think I remember hearing that somewhere around here before too, so I never gave it a second thought.

 

Coastal EV kit no longer working...

Hi All,

I installed the Coastal EV kit a year ago. It worked perfect for about a year and lately it stopped working completely. I did got to Toyota recently for an oil change so I'm wondering if maybe some firmware update disabled it. Or do you all think some loose connections is a more likely scenario (after 1 year)?

Cheers,

-Lee

 

I'd bet on the side of "loose connection." I think if there were a "firmware upgrade," 2 things would happen:

1. Everyone here would know about it.
2. Your dealer might charge you a large amount to install it, but even if not they'd probably go out of their way to tell you about such a thing being done to your car.

 

I just did the light switch EV mod and it goes to the Energy screen when I turn on EV mode. No beeps. I only get 3 beeps when I gas it too much or if I go over 34mph and do not manually turn it off. Perhaps other years had beeps. I wish I had a beep instead of having to watch the screen to change!

 

Based on some of the posts above - I tried turning my Coastal EV mode "on" after turning the car on and immediately putting it in Drive and it worked. I could have sworn that in the past it worked fine from Park (but now it doesn't). And it's always been 50/50 for me as to whether I got the initial beep or not when putting it into EV. I'll try to run some more experiments and follow up.

 

The coastaletech unit works fine when in motion. Any time the battery reads more than two bars, engine temperature is nominal, and your foot isn't buried in the throttle, it should engage. Otherwise it should beep and complain "Cannot switch to EV mode now."

~ dan ~

The big issue causing failure in the coastaletech module is exactly what I described before - the contact points fatigue due to thermal creep. It's easily remedied by soldering the connections solid or by THOROUGHLY crimping the wire taps in place, which (again) is harder than it looks because of the tight space.