Most decent way to run your 115V essentials out of Prius Prime

Yes, the spinning machine's sine waveform should be clean. The 'garbage' part should refer to just their frequency and voltage.

 

There's a settings screen or something with a button at the bottom to turn it off.

 

So I just ordered an inverter. Seeing how hurricane season is here (and I'm in Florida), I'd like something to power my fridge, which is just around the corner from the garage. It should arrive tomorrow.

One question (for now): Does the negative lead (from the inverter) go onto the negative terminal of the 12v battery, or should it go on a grounding area on the frame? The pics from Krzysiek_KTA show the battery, but someone else said to do it on the frame (white area with black stripes?). The manual also says to do that if the 12V needs to be jumped.

Thanks! (and thanks to Krzysiek_KTA for this thread!)

2020 Prius Prime.

 

If you use the frame or the second negative terminal slightly farther back from the battery (shown in Krzysiek_KTA's recent photos), the car can measure the current and control the DC-DC converter to supply the power. It might work on the actual negative terminal of the battery too, but it would be interesting to test and see if there is any difference in how the car behaves.

Personally I'd go with the second negative terminal (the one that's not actually on the battery).

 

OP,

When operating: Twist your DC cables as much as is allowable without hurting anything....



Rob43

 

Do you remember what lug size you ordered? 5/16 or 3/8? Mine is a Bestek 1000W inverter but it's in storage right now. Thanks!

 

Just saw this thread.. Sorry to be late. You might look into PlugoutPower.com. More power in the offing.

 

I assumed the opposite, that the 12V charges in every gear but N, which at least in my Gen 2 disconnects the motor/generator(s?). I know for sure everything works perfectly with it Ready in P, in my Prime. I spent every Friday night that hotel rooms weren't available at a resort I frequented, which was quite often for about a year, sleeping in it that way with the heat/AC on. Though I usually started fully charged and the engine never kicked on, when it was exceptionally hot or cold out, the engine would kick on after 6-8 hours. In decent weather, I'd have some amount up to maybe 40% of the EV miles still there after 8-9 hours. I was annoyed that, being able to use an L2 charger there, the car doesn't just let you just sit in Ready mode, plugged in. So I'd charge before and after, which worked out fine.

 

The 12V system is powered by the traction battery anytime the car is in Ready mode. And the engine can charge the traction battery in any gear except N.

 

Yes. With the fob in the car, Ready, in P, when the EV range gets to 0, the engine starts and the car just stays in P, switches itself to HV (if you had it in EV rather than HV to begin with) and everything is fine. The engine goes on and off in HV mode as usual, just like if you're driving along in a traffic jam in HV mode with no EV range left. Or you can put it in Charge mode and it doesn't go on and off, it stays on until you reach 80% of the EV range you would have reached by plugging in. Except that when you spend all those hours stationary in Ready using up EV range, it recalculates EV range to be lower, so maybe I should have spoken in terms of SOC instead of EV range.

 

You're certainly correct, I was a little confused about the HV charging vs the 12v charging for a minute there.

I guess I wasn't precisely remembering every detail, biased by the fact that I long ago decided (correctly, I still believe) to never, ever use N for anything I could use P for, in any Prius. And I darned near got myself in hot water using N for things you can't do in P, in a Gen 1 and/or Gen 2. Nothing quite like coasting down a long hill in N to save a penny of gas without having to precisely control the gas pedal, and forgetting you're in N until it suddenly hits you that you're in N, gaining speed, and already 10% over the MG rpm limit. After I did that twice, I decided to not use N ever while driving, except in the absolute safest circumstances while repeating to myself continuously that I'm in N. Stopping using N gave me a chance to see how precise I could be with the gas pedal, with no risk of exploding an MG.

I don't think I've ever used N in my Prime while moving, or for more than a few seconds while stationary. Maybe to avoid thrust while reversing down my oil-change ramps counts as using it while moving, that's the only example I can think of where I have a reason to use N. Or to check if the brakes are dragging with the car on jack stands.

 

How about for:
(*) scrubbing rust off brake disks;
(*) as an emergency tool to handle any Sudden Unintended Acceleration, as 'allegedly' happened in many Toyotas a decade ago? While there is very strong statistical reason for attributing the great bulk of them to operator error, there are also good technical reasons to believe that past firmware designs were not as rigorously safe as they could have been. There was still room for some safety-related design defects to remain hidden in there, potentially emerging as similar events but masked by the very many pilot error incidents.

 

Completely correct on both counts.

In fact, I've used that trick to cause the friction brakes to be used, I'd forgotten about it.

The other thing to try if you get into an unintended acceleration scenario, is to hold the power button down for a few seconds, I forget how many. It is supposed to turn the car off no matter what else is going on, though I don't know if that locks the steering wheel too. In any case, at some point steering becomes less important than stopping, as not many routes can be driven at 104mph until you're out of gas without killing you somewhere along the way. I remember it being suggested as one more way to stop the car. I should test it on both my 2005 and my Prime, somewhere safe to do so.

 

I'm remembering that path as taking about 3 seconds, which is an eternity in such cases. In the Officer Saylor loaner car tragedy, he tried that but didn't know how long it took, and released too early. Later designs were programmed to recognize the repeat-button-stabbing action that he also tried.

Neutral is much quicker, with a delay only about 1 second. But even faster is to attempt to shift to Reverse, which the computers recognize as invalid and instead shift instantly to Neutral.

Prii don't have steering wheel locks. A shut-off will kill the power assist, but old fashioned manual steering mode still works. Try it while parked, then remember that it is far less stiff when the car is rolling.

I'm regarding steering as always more important than brakes. Absent brakes, steering can be used to chose softer targets, avoiding head-ons and solid objects and aiming instead to sideswipe barricades or plow into fields or ditches, hopefully well before hitting triple digit speeds. But steering failure can almost instantly drive you into a hard target or rollover before brakes can slow things down.

 

Does it? In another thread someone reported shifting into reverse at some crazy speed, like 20mph. I would be afraid to try it at highway speed.

 

Good info about Reverse instantly putting it into Neutral. In HS in 1975, I accidentally put my 1966 Plymouth Fury into reverse when manually shifting the auto through its gears. Luckily, it was at maybe 20mph and just locked up the wheels and didn't do any apparent damage to the engine or transmission, though a few years later the transmission was slightly ailing when the the engine blew at around 120K miles. Back then, that was pretty high mileage for a car that hadn't ever needed drivetrain repairs.

I don't disagree with what you say about steering vs braking. It's just that by the time people realize how desperate their plight is, they've passed the best opportunities for safely hitting stuff and typically are up around 100mph with it floored. On a straight stretch on a highway, you can go straight pretty far even if not aimed perfectly, before hitting anything. I wouldn't intentionally ram another vehicle, but there's no guarantee you can steer around them all either when you're zipping by lots of them in traffic, and it's better for everyone to hit at a lower closing speed. Judgment call depending on 100 things at the time, and usually decided by instinct rather than careful analysis. When desperate, the first time you visualize a way out that might work, and options are rapidly disappearing, you generally take it.

Good to know the steering vs slowing decision doesn't have to be made in a Prius, I should be ashamed for reaching 20 years this month since buying my first one, and not realizing that none of them locked the steering when off.

Another thing to consider is to engage the cruise control and tap the speed way down. The car applies quite a large amount of regen braking (and maybe even friction braking?) when you do that if the speed and setpoint get far enough apart. Even when I tap it down when the speed limit changes, if I'm going downhill, sometimes it will fell like downshifting two gears in a regular car. Likely a lot more deceleration than just turning the car off, if the brakes truly aren't responding. Maybe just turning cruise on and off would regain control of throttle, as the problem might well be that the system thinks the cruise is set to max speed and braking signals are being ignored, or something similar. When things happen which make no sense, it could be anything, and it's hard to guess what will return controls to normal.

 

Someone? How about me, several dozens of times to train it into muscle memory, at 60+ mph.

I didn't try the same with Park until after numerous others reported it first. Then I did that too, though fewer times because it is slower and more prone to fumbles. As an otherwise manual transmission driver, the shift lever is far more natural and doesn't require taking my eyes off the road, so that is my preferred path.

The ECUs are smart enough to protect the car from damage in these cases, so override invalid commands to instead do something safe, while issuing a double-beep warning.

 

Hmm, the plot thickens about shifting to Reverse while moving. But if in an unintended acceleration situation, having it actually engage reverse, rather than go into neutral, might be preferable. Remember, no gears actually are physically moved or changed, just the direction of the motor-generator torque (and usually pretty soon after that, rotation) being applied is changed electrically. I'd have to scratch my head a bit to figure out how well the MG would succeed in spinning the opposite way when the shifter commands it, or if it would just apply deceleration torque to the drivetrain. Something would have a fun time suddenly changing what it's doing.

In my head, I mainly think in terms of the Gen 2 and Gen 3 planetary gear configuration doing things similar to what a differential does when a wheel slips or not, but I know things changed significantly in Gen 4, and I actually haven't ever checked out what the gearing configuration physically looks like in the Prime.