High charging time on a brand new 2020 Prime

The charge time of 5+ hours on 120v would be normal...ok...here's what you do...if you only had 15 miles on a "full" charge...drive it in ev mode around town at town speeds down to 2-3 miles or so left...then go back and charge it again to full charge...i would suspect it will go up...it will take a while to get it up into the 20s+...additionally, given we are getting into colder weather...the electric miles will be reduced vs summer...im lucky to see 22 in winter...also check your tire pressures...and bring them up to 36-38 psi...if the car has been sitting around i would suspect the tires were low...so drive the car and go between ev and hv modes...exercise the car and it will be fine...PS sounds to me like the dealer is absolutely clueless on hybrid plug ins...so if possible i would find another dealer given you have toyota care for 3/yrs 24000miles +/-...

 

Hope you got a decent out the door price since it was ugly lookin on the lot as described above.

Charge time looks Normal to me, but I have a 17 and I'm not sure what if anything was refreshed for the 2020 models. Mine takes 6 hours +/- form 0 EV miles to 100% on a 120 volt and 2 hours 10 min on a 240 volt

EV miles, well that is something your gonna have to figure out by reading other posts here.
If you drive the prime like a regular gasser, EV miles / estimated EV range will suck forever. If you want to get EV range up there are tricks of the trade you're gonna want to know and use.

Dealer service, flip a coin. Some here report decent service from dealers, others reports are negative from the stealers. All my two year free service appointments turned out to be just that, free...

I wouldn't worry too much about your traction pack, not yet anyway. The packs are warantied at 10 years or 150k. but you have to remember, it's not a tesla.
Drive under 50 in EV and your EV range should / hopfully hold steady through the winter and start to rise a little in spring. Under 40 mph in EV mode and you might see EV range rise somewhat in the DC area, even in winter.

Best of luck with your new car and welcome to Priuschat

 

This is normal for the first charge because you are not charging from 0% but something like ~ −13%, as the battery depleted well below the EV–HV cutoff during storage. The second charge and thereafter should be normal.

I recommend that you buy this watt-hour meter to monitor your usage.

 

Just curious, did you get very good discount on this car? I have bought a brand new car with 171 miles on it, but it did not sit on a lot too long.

As others have commented 5 hours 50 minutes charging time is normal. Mine is anywhere around 5hr 30min to 6hr. I don't know if the 5hr 10min is the official time for recharge. As for the EV range issue, is the 15 miles actual miles driven on a full charge? Or is it the displayed EV range? I have never seen the displayed EV range (we call it GOM=Guess-O-Meter), below 20miles, but I have had actual EV range shorter than 20 miles from a full charge on my PP. It all depends on the way you drive and other conditions like temperature and wind. I would try driving a full charge EV range for at least a week, every day at very moderate speed, and see if the both displayed and actual EV range increase over time.

That being said, it would not hurt to ask your dealer to have the traction battery test performed at their cost. It maybe too late now, but if I were you, I would have asked a new 12v battery installed (or price discounted from the sales price). I would worry more about the 12v battery dying sooner than the traction battery being degraded by sitting on the lot for more than a year.

Good luck, and let us know how things develop on your new PP.

 

The fact they had to jump start the car means the 12v battery was well below 12.0v at that time. Who knows how long it sat depleted. For a 12v battery, longer it sit without charge more likely the battery will die prematurely in near future. It is not as expensive as the traction battery, but if it starts to show low 12v battery warning, I would ask to be replaced under warranty. On the other hand, the traction battery is supposed to sit at depleted SoC if not driven for a long time. So I would think the degradation would not have happened that quickly under that condition.

 

The function of the 12v battery when starting is to energize the electronics. The engine is started by the traction battery and one of the motor-generators. If they jumped the 12v and the car started, that showed some charge remaining in the traction battery. Ask for a free load test of the 12v battery. It'll probably be fine and you won't get a warranty replacement. Get it tested.

The traction battery power is also used by the heat pump and the seat & steering wheel heaters. Expect lower battery miles in cool weather.

Do the EV driving and recharges several times. If you don't get up to at least 25 town miles on the battery...I'd be concerned.

 

For new vehicles in inventory, Toyota instructs dealers to run the hybrid system for at least 30 minutes, every two months, to maintain the HV battery. See bulletin T-SB-0006-19 Rev2, “Maintenance for HV and Auxiliary Batteries” (PDF), January 15, 2020, and Tech Tip T-TT-0606-20, “Maintaining vehicle freshness and reducing vehicle problems during COVID Crisis,” April 23, 2020.

You can check if these instructions were followed. Ask the dealer, or someone else with a Toyota Techstream diagnostic system, to open the Data List page for the Hybrid Control System, and read the value for “Number of Long Term Leaving with IG OFF,” which as the Repair Manual (more info) explains, is the “Number of times power switch not changed from off for long period of time (1440 hours (60 days)).” If this is anything other than zero, check “Time of Long Term Leaving with IG OFF” values on the same page, which indicate the number of days for each of the last three such periods.

If any of these is much longer than 60 days, then the car was mishandled by the dealer, and I’d give serious thought to requiring them to take it back and refund your money, less a reasonable charge for whatever use you’ve made of it. You may need some legal advice about the best way to go about this, of course.

The check described above is an objective one, so there shouldn’t be much opportunity for mischief. If you get a printed Data List report, check that the Total Distance Traveled value matches the car’s odometer, to be sure you haven’t been given a report for a different vehicle.

For the HV battery, I’m not aware of a test available to dealers that provides a quantitative result or would reveal whether the battery’s capacity or service life has been degraded by improper storage. There is a Battery Diagnosis procedure in the Repair Manual (under Engine/Hybrid System: Hybrid/Battery Control: Hybrid Battery System: Utility), but it provides only a “Normal” or “Replace” judgment, indicating a grossly-malfunctioning or end-of-life battery.

You may be thinking of the another bulletin—T-SB-0007-19 Rev1, “Battery Maintenance During PDS” (PDF), January 24, 2020—that applies to the auxiliary (12-volt) battery, for which dealers have more capable diagnostic equipment. As @Salamander_King and @Tideland Prius have kindly suggested, if you keep the car, you should insist on a replacement 12-volt battery at the dealer’s expense.

 

Before you do anything, get the watt-hour meter I told you about:

My guess is that your garage circuit is unable to provide the full current, which is about 12 amperes. The watt-hour meter also shows the current drawn. If the current and/or voltage are less than they are supposed to be, you need to rewire your garage circuit with a thicker wire (lower AWG).

 

Another competent dealership. NOT.
At the very least, you should have the 12 V battery tested two or three times right in a row.......or leave it sit untouched for about 3 days and then check the voltage.
I would be more worried about the 12 V battery than the HV one.

P.S. Where did you come up with the "normal" charging time ?
Do these models always charge for the full time no matter what the SOC is at the start ??

 

I've seen mine indicate as high as 6h10m or maybe even 6h20m at the highest. I've never timed it at home, but I suspect it finishes in less time. On Chargepoint chargers it usually finishes in a little less time than the car estimates.

I think the extra time is to allow the traction battery heater or cooler to run, even though it often shows long times when those definitely won't run. Toyota is really bad at software.

 

Time varies based on voltage too. That's a factor often overlooked. Notice how level-1 is listed as a range, from 110 to 120. My level-2 times are faster than others because my actually runs at 244 volts, which exceeds the usual maximum of 240. Also note that the commercial EVSE in public locations, like ChargePoint, run at 208 volts. This is why you'll see charging rates top out at about 3.3kW but people at home report 3.6kW.

In short, there are lots of numbers to take into account. Not having those inputs known or consistent makes software, like estimating, very difficult. And that's without even mention of the impact temperature has...

 

For me with my car, it's really hard to determine when the traction pack heater or cooler is being used. Unless there is an app connected that will display if and when they do turn on and at what temp they're maintaining. Every once in a blue moon I'll see a notice on the MID asking if I want to use the cooler. I've never seen anything on the MID or MFD in my PP Plus (PP+)? indicating the heater is being used.
I suspect that when the heat4er or cooler is being used the charge time should / could be shorter than if they were not being used. Just a guess on my part though.
I'm still learning about NiMH properties besides trying to keep up with all the different types of lithium and their recommended property range. It's just a bit overwhelming for me at best.

 

The listed charge times are just estimates based on a set of likely assumptions. Others have already mentioned the amps and watts from the outlet can vary. The other big one is battery temperature. It heats up while charging, and if it get too high in temperature, the system slows down charging. You don't whether you used timed charging or charge now. Charge now starts charging as soon as it is plugged in. If that was right after a drive, the battery is already warmer from recent use.

The battery could need some 'exercising' after sitting at a lower state of charge for some time before it reaches its max charge. i have read that being the case for new phone and tablet batteries. Any heating or cooling will reduce range, so miles driven is a poor metric. You need to know how much electricity is actually going into the battery.

Have them replace the 12V. Their lives are shortened by deeper discharges and sitting at charges below 100%. In other problem threads, a dying 12V was the cause of issues and thrown codes. It also isn't charged while the main battery is.

Using the cooler and heater will extend the charge time as the energy supply is diverted away from charging. At Level 1, charging might stop completely to power those. With other plug ins, the extra time and energy used means the battery was kept near an ideal temperature for better health, and might have a higher charge that others in the cold.

On the Prime, the heater is just for keeping the pack above freezing. Charging below freezing can cause permanent damage to it. So it will get the pack up that point to charge, and keep it at a certain point for a few days to a month after; depends on the market it was sold in, to avoid damage from discharging too cold a pack. I believe it can be turned off in the settings menu.

Cold cabin air will cool the battery better, but the way it is implemented on the Prime isn't great. There is only a quick option to turn it on during shutdown, and that only appears when it is above a certain temperature out. The message is quick enough that people miss it. No way to have it default to yes all the time. So is it for cooling the battery, or keeping the cabin from getting hot from the charger and battery while parked under the sun?

 

The Primes charge rate ramps up at the beginning of a charge session and slows down at the end of a charge session.
Similar behavior with most / all li-ion battery pack chargers and li-ion battery electric cars.

The Primes traction pack heater and cooler used during charging are optimized to use minimal energy from the EVSE, rarely if ever using the Heat Pump or A/C Pre-Conditioning systems while charging from the plug / EVSE ( I've never seen either of them switched on automatically during a charge session ) .

Again, as mentioned above, the prime typically doesn't take as long to charge as the time that's shown on the MID when the charge begins by between 10 to 20 minutes in my experience.

Typically, when using either 120v or 220v charging, the last 30 minutes of charge time is a Very Slow - charge rate with pack cooling fan speed also slowed way down.

 

Minimal energy from the EVSE is still energy from the EVSE, and I haven't seen any literature stating the systems are designed to keep the pack at a temperature ideal for charge rate. Everything seems to point to them just being used to avoid the extremes where battery damage can occur. The manual states using either can result in longer charge times.

The heater defaults to on, and will come on when the pack is at or below freezing. It can be turned off in settings.
The cooler can't be turned on or off in the settings. The manual implies that the pop up screen is the only way to turn it on or off(p136); no keeps it off, with statement on what yes or selection neither means. No statement on it being used automatically, and why even have the pop up if it ran automatically without option to turn it off?

The heater is a resistance wire. The fans running is likely to prevent hot spots and too great a temperature gradient within the pack.

For the OP, under why charging time may increase(p135), "The charge in the 12-volt battery is low, for example due to the vehicle being left unused for a long period of time."