Charge long or often?

What is maximum cold soak? I only because I rarely ever use the timer. What's the advantage of it?

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I plug mine in at midnight and disconnect it at 6am. Should I turn on the heater prior to driving the vehicle when it's freezing cold? And if so for how long?

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I have seat heaters so it really doesn't have to be warm right when I sit inside.

 

Does the battery warmer turn on automatically in cold conditions?

 

That's when you allow the battery-pack to rest as long as possible before the recharge begins. It's for longevity.

Toyota conveniently gives you the scheduling feature to make that easy. I have mine set on weekdays for charging to complete by 7 AM in the morning and 4 PM in the afternoon. That makes the process basically brainless. You just plug in and let the car figure out when to start charging and pre-conditioning. To override the schedule, just click the "Charge Now" button when powering down.

It's a simple way to get the most out of your investment. Coming out to a car that's warmed or cooled for your departure is rewarding in itself. Knowing it's also taking steps to extend the life of the battery-pack is a great bonus.

For those of you who decide to take advantage of time-of-use discounts from your electricity provider, it requires setting the schedule anyway. So, why not?

 

Because if you come home with a dead battery and have to run an errand an hour later it could mean the difference between driving on battery or burning gas. Yes, you can override but that's a pain to remember.

 

Pressing CHARGE NOW when shutting down or hitting the button later when plugging in becomes trivial after you've done it a few times.

 

I just purchased the Prime Premium. The service manager at the dealership in CT told me the car will not start - period - if it has not been plugged in after 3 days. I am more than skeptical. Thanks.

 

Haha, omg. This guy should be fired on the spot for a comment like that.

you could, in theory, never ever plug it in and be just fine

 

Quick Question - on days when I only have about 10 miles of EV driving to do, what do you guys think of this idea? If I have a 9:30am departure time, I could set the charge timer to finish the charge at 10:30am. Then unplug early at 9:30am and leave with a 70% charge approx. This way I only take as much EV power as I need (approximately) and bring the car back drained.

Any downside to this?

 

It would work. The only thing would be if you decide to drive longer or need to use a lot of heat or AC, and you run out the battery charge, you will be burning more gas.

 

I unplugged this morning an hour early as planned. On the dash, only 1 of the 3 lights was fully green, while the middle light was blinking. Pulled out of the garage and the car said I have 30.7 miles available on EV. I was impressed.

I need to test this by doing a full charge tonight and see what the reading is. I haven't been paying much attention to this until now. It will be interesting to track any fall-off in capacity over time - I'm sure temp will play a role too.

My 2015 NiMH battery still feels like new with 135k miles. I don't notice any difference since the day I bought it. I expect that by 2023-2025 I'll be noticing some degradation.

 

You might want to switch the HSI EV gauge to % instead of miles. That way you have both EV range in miles which can be seen on the left corner of the dash by toggling the trip button on the steering wheel as well as % of battery remaining. See the photo below. With an L1 EVSE, the last 1 hour of charge is tapered and slowed down. Also, the charge usually finishes earlier than the time set on the schedule. In my experience, as early as 30min before the scheduled departure time. So if you unplugged the charge cord 1 hour before the scheduled finish time, you might have had only 30 min of charging remaining for the slow finish up. Thus the SoC (State of Charge) of the traction battery at the time you unplugged might have been over 90% full.

 

Ditto. I like having both miles and % available. And I've unplugged with 20 minutes left on L2 and seen it at about 99-100%. If you have your EVSE plugged into a meter, you can see the current drop as the battery gets close to fully charged. That's part of the battery protection logic.