We picked up our new 2020 Prime today. It had a full tank of gas and a fully empty EV battery. Yesterday, when I test drove it the EV battery was also discharged. I was told that they don't sell many Primes and the salesperson was responsible. I call it complete stupidity. Any one have any thoughts?
Sure: charge it up and move on. Maybe just for giggles: check your tire pressures too (with the car having sat a few hours). If they're all at max sidewall, you know the dealership was just "mailing in" the PDI, and maybe you want to dig a little deeper. For example, I believe there's a couple of oblong hole plugs that are supposed to be installed on openings towards the rear, on the underbody, just inboard of the rear scissor jack bearing points. They've been reporting missing, or just tossed in the glove box.
That's nothing new. Dealer almost never charge up the PRIME. It is not good for the battery to be fully charged and not driven right away. I would say, 9 out of 10 PRIME sold in the US was not charged. This includes the NE region where tons of PRIMEs are sold. My two PRIME were not charged when I picked up.
Thank you for your valuable information. I consider the case closed. Primes are hard to find in Florida.
My car wasn't charged either, in fact, the charger was in the back of the car all in plastic. I plugged it in that night.
Fortunately my dealer is on top of things. They have two chargers in the dealership (And it's a temporary space too, while the original location is under full renovations) - One for test drives and the other in a customer spot (but seems like the dealer also uses it to charge their Primes). Both my test drive and my personal vehicles were fully charged. Unfortunately, plug-ins are still rare (and the Prime is Toyota's only plug-in vehicle... for now) so salespeople aren't trained (or just slipped their minds I guess). Sucks? Sure but honestly because it's a small battery, it's just a small cost so I'd just forget about it. But I'd check the other stuff to make sure it's done like the tyre pressures.
congrats! unlike gas, it's best to let them sit uncharged on the lot. rarely does any dealership remember to charge them before delivery. it's disappointing, but no biggie. all the best with it
My dealer did not have a level 2 charger. So they plugged it in the morning I was picking it up and it was about 70% charged when I got it. I agree with others that most of the time they are delivered uncharged. My 2017 was not charged when I picked it up a few years ago.
Congrats on your new Prime ! I see you've been a member for about 13 years with just a few posts, I'd recommend sticking around for awhile to learn about all the new fun things with your Prime. To add to the already mentioned things to look at, if you have a conveniently located 240 volt outlet near your Prime, you can use your 120v EVSE unit (charger) to charge your Prime much faster. Your cost is less $50 dollars and your charge up time will drop down to 2:28 minutes. Rob43
The drive home from taking delivery can at least include some EV, even when leaving the dealer with nothing. It's an opportunity to use Charge-Mode, which supplies electricity at double the level-2 rate while in motion. See...
Same here. There are plenty of options out here, so they are more compliant to consumer requests. They had a 120v outlet on the outside of the showroom which was perfect for our Prime for delivery.
My central MS dealer had a single Prime to test drive and it was never charged. I requested that it be charged before delivery to myself and they took care of it. On a side note, the OEM MFG plant I work at changed battery voltage specs on our hybrid so they would come from our supplier into the plant with less overall charge. We don't make sure its fully charged as dealers do this during PDI (pre delivery inspection) as they do with the full gas tanks. When we ship cars, they have maybe 10-15 miles worth of gas and since everything costs money, i'm sure that has something to do with it and very likely any federal regulations about batteries and charge states ya know?
My 2020 Prime wasn't charged either. My drive home from the dealership was 55 miles and it didn't charge up much on the way home either. But I was not using charge mode - just regular hybrid. Still, coming from a 2015 Prius this seemed a little unusual to me. The next day I gave it a full charge, and took my first EV drive. Very impressive! I think my biggest challenge now is going to be keeping my battery in a depleted state when I'm not driving much. I hear that's better for battery longevity. I'll need to find a balance between EV and Hybrid modes. I could be tempted to almost never use my ICE. I'll have to force myself LOL
Reminds me of the misconceptions we had to address back when Prius was new... decades ago. btw, I just celebrated my 20th anniversary of Prius ownership. You'll find that assumptions come from people not posting enough information. That ends up feeding a common belief. After awhile, that becomes a misconception... which can take years to finally squash. Fortunately, we have many years of data to combat with already. In this case, longevity belief comes from people not understanding that there is no "full" for Prius Prime. There is for other devices that us lithium batteries, like your phone or an electric lawn-mower. But for the Toyota system, maximum is really only 84% of total available capacity. There's a buffer built into the software which prevents you from ever reaching full. So when the display shows 100%, it really isn't. That limits the "not driving much" concerns down to if you aren't driving at least once per week or you have the vehicle continuously parked in very hot conditions. Otherwise, there is no longevity benefit. My old 2012 Prius PHV is still working just fine without ever having done anything special for it. I recharged twice per day (overnight and at work) for over 5 years. The new owner (a friend of mine) just recharges whenever without any concern.
